Pentagon gave ~$350 million in contracts to Alvarez & Marsal, a firm tied to senior official George Kollitides (ProPublica, Oct. 9, 2026)

Case

ProPublica reported on Oct. 9, 2026 that the Pentagon awarded almost $350 million in two contracts since December 2025 to Alvarez & Marsal Federal, a consulting firm affiliated with the private-equity firm where senior Pentagon official George Kollitides II was a partner. The larger, $281 million deal was a no-bid, other-transaction agreement that advises Kollitides' own office. Current and former defense officials told ProPublica that former Wall Street executives in this part of the Pentagon favor people and companies with ties to the Trump administration; the Pentagon says Kollitides complies with all ethics rules, and no violation has been established.

The contracts (documented by ProPublica from federal spending records)
ProPublica reported that since December 2025 the Pentagon has awarded almost $350 million in two deals to Alvarez & Marsal (A&M) Federal, roughly five times what A&M entities received from all U.S. agencies combined in the two decades before Trump returned to office, per federal spending data. Both contracts relate to Pentagon offices where George Kollitides II is the head or has a senior role.
The first deal, $67.6 million, was signed in December 2025 through a Defense Department entity focused on the industrial base, months after Kollitides joined the government. ProPublica said documents show A&M was by late 2025 helping vet possible loan deals for the Office of Strategic Capital.
The second deal, a $281,089,206.65 no-bid consulting contract finalized in June 2026, is to advise Kollitides' Business Operators for National Defense (BOND) office. Records show A&M has already been paid about $31 million; experts told ProPublica the full amount is likely not guaranteed.
Both deals used an other transaction agreement (OTA), a method normally used to fund experimental weapons that lets the Pentagon bypass regular rules on public disclosure and oversight. Experts told ProPublica an OTA for consulting was extraordinary, and the size is among the largest such awards through the department's main support division in the past decade.

Kollitides' roles and ties (as reported by ProPublica)
ProPublica reported that Kollitides, a former Cerberus executive and Remington CEO and, for almost 10 years, a partner at Alvarez & Marsal Capital, was brought in by Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg, his former Cerberus boss. He is co-chief of staff and senior adviser to Feinberg, vice chairman of the Office of Strategic Capital's investment committee, and director of the Economic Defense Unit and BOND.
A securities filing in April 2026 described Kollitides as still a senior adviser to Alvarez & Marsal Capital, two months before the $281 million contract was finalized. A&M Capital told ProPublica he had stopped working there only days before its questions arrived in early October. The filing was for D. Boral Acquisition I, where he took a board seat; Bloomberg reported he stepped down from it at the end of September.
ProPublica said A&M Capital (private equity) and A&M consulting are distinct but share back-office staff, have overlapping ownership, and describe a strategic relationship, per company documents.
ProPublica reported that Kollitides' employment classification (highly qualified expert, after seemingly exceeding the 130-day cap for special government employees) generally keeps financial disclosures confidential. ProPublica requested his disclosure forms in August and has not received a response; it is unclear whether he received an ethics waiver.

Trump-linked loans at the Office of Strategic Capital (reported)
ProPublica reported earlier in 2026 that the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Capital, which Kollitides helps lead, granted a small North Carolina startup linked to Donald Trump Jr. a $620 million loan after a top aide to the president intervened; Democratic lawmakers accused the office of "a staggering level of corruption and influence peddling." (Summarized from the Oct. 9 article; the earlier story has not been separately verified here.)
A defense official told ProPublica the office is in the late stages of a $220 million loan to Florida drone-parts maker Unusual Machines, where Trump Jr. sits on the advisory board and was granted a stake. The Pentagon did not answer whether his connections play a part.
The Pentagon has said "no company receives preferential treatment" and that "political connections play absolutely no role" in its funding decisions.

Allegations, expert opinion and denials
Current and former defense officials told ProPublica that a clubby, politicized culture has taken hold in a Pentagon wing run by Kollitides and other former Wall Street executives recruited by Feinberg, and that it favors people and companies close to the administration. They said the Office of Strategic Capital, launched under Biden with an open application process, now leans more on leaders' personal networks to choose companies and the consultants who vet them. These are claims by unnamed sources, not findings.
A former military officer told ProPublica a recruiter for BOND said all applicants would be asked who they voted for, and that he was dropped from consideration after voicing discomfort. The Pentagon did not respond to the account; it is a single anonymous source.
Former federal ethics lawyer Virginia Canter called the sole-source contract "way too cozy to be legitimate." Ethics experts told ProPublica officials are generally barred, absent a written waiver, from taking part in awards that affect their own finances, which could apply even to a salaried employee.
A Defense Department official said Kollitides "does not and has never had" investments or financial relations with A&M consulting and is recused on matters related to A&M Capital. The Pentagon, speaking for him, said he complies with all ethics laws; Kollitides did not answer whether he played a role in the awards, and the department did not say whether he was paid by A&M Capital when the deals were signed.
The A&M consulting business did not answer ProPublica's questions. A&M Capital said it is separately managed from the consulting business and that none of Kollitides' work for it related to defense or his government service.

D. Boral board seat and stock (documented by SEC filings, per Bloomberg Government, July 29, 2026)
Bloomberg Government reported that Kollitides was appointed inaugural director of the Pentagon's Economic Defense Unit on Feb. 4, 2026, and that six days later, on Feb. 10, he joined the board of D. Boral Acquisition I, a British Virgin Islands blank-check company, per its SEC filings.
Per the company's SEC filings, as reported by Bloomberg Government, Kollitides received an indirect interest in 100,000 founder shares (the headline puts the value at up to $1 million). The company raised $287 million in an IPO that closed Feb. 12 at $10 a share, its filings describe him as responsible for all Department of War investing and economic activities, and directors can sell their shares only when the company completes a merger, sale or acquisition, which had not happened as of the article.
D. Boral Acquisition I is an affiliate of D. Boral Capital, a New York investment bank. Bloomberg Government found no record of the SPAC or any D. Boral Capital affiliate having obtained Defense Department contracts. The Pentagon declined to comment, and D. Boral Capital and its chairman did not respond.
Bloomberg Government reported that D. Boral Capital affiliates and Trump family entities often overlap in deals and board members (D. Boral Capital was lead underwriter, adviser or investor for deals involving Dominari Holdings, in which Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump are investors, and American Ventures Acquisitions I). Two other directors named the same day serve on boards of defense-related companies that count Trump Jr. and Eric Trump as investors or advisers.
Bloomberg Government reported that special government employees are barred from taking part in matters directly affecting their financial interests or organizations they serve as officer, director or partner, but that, unlike full-time appointees, they can hold outside jobs and are not subject to the same financial disclosure rules. Danielle Caputo of the Campaign Legal Center said the arrangement "seems to be" a conflict of interest and a violation, "certainly," of the spirit of the law; Sen. Warren called for an independent investigation. These are opinions, not findings.

Earlier oversight request: letter to the Pentagon inspector general (Aug. 4, 2026)
On Aug. 4, 2026, Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Richard Blumenthal and Tammy Duckworth and Rep. Robert Garcia asked the Defense Department inspector general to identify Pentagon awards since January 2025 involving companies affiliated with the Trump family and to review whether officials followed applicable rules, including whether non-public information was shared with outside investors before announcements. The letter is a request from Democrats; it does not report an IG finding.
Citing a Washington Post analysis (July 13, 2026), the letter says Trump Jr. and Eric Trump are affiliated with 1789 Capital and American Ventures, which invested in at least 15 defense-sector companies, and that those companies then received $3.2 billion in awards and $3.1 billion in future contract options. That figure is the letter's reading of the Post's reporting and has not been independently verified here.
On Kollitides, the letter says Feinberg hired the former Cerberus defense head as senior executive adviser to run the Economic Defense Unit as a special government employee able to keep private-sector work, and that his involvement in $200 billion of Pentagon investment decisions "presents conflicts of interest as long as Kollitides maintains roles in private investment advisory firms" (citing The Guardian, June 18, 2026). The letter predates the Oct. 9 ProPublica reporting and does not mention Alvarez & Marsal.
The letter says it describes the $620 million Vulcan Elements award as a conditional loan commitment, that 1789 Capital (which counts Trump Jr. as a partner) invested in the company in August 2025, and that Peter Navarro reportedly intervened (citing ProPublica, May 28, 2026), possibly violating federal ethics regulations. The senators also say they had repeatedly sought an explanation from the Defense Department and White House without a satisfactory answer, and that the IG had declined several of their earlier requests. These are the signers' statements.

Wall Street Journal reporting and the revolving-door detail (secondhand via Raw Story; not yet verified against the WSJ)
Raw Story, summarizing a Wall Street Journal report of Oct. 8-9, 2026, said the Pentagon has paid about $300 million to Alvarez & Marsal, based on documents reviewed by the Journal and people familiar with the matter, as part of Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg's push to overhaul how the military builds and buys weapons. Raw Story's wording is "paid"; ProPublica reported that A&M Federal had been paid about $31 million so far on contracts worth nearly $350 million in total, so the $300 million may describe contract value and should be checked against the WSJ original.
Raw Story's summary says one of Feinberg's senior deputies, Pete Guinto, recently left the Pentagon to join the consultancy (Alvarez & Marsal). The summary gives no date for the move, no title, and does not say when it occurred relative to the awards, whether he had any role in them, or whether he knew of them; those facts are not established by the sources read here.
Per the same summary, some Pentagon officials privately asked why taxpayers, not defense contractors, are footing the bill, and others told the WSJ the work partly duplicates what the department already does. Feinberg defended the arrangement, citing a shortage of capable operators in the department; an A&M spokeswoman said the firm is proud to serve clients at all levels of government, and a spokeswoman for the investment arm said its staff has no hand in running the consulting side.

Research notes
Open leads: (1) ProPublica's earlier story (cited in the Oct. 9 article) that the Office of Strategic Capital granted a $620 million loan to a North Carolina startup linked to Donald Trump Jr. after a top White House aide intervened (propublica.org/article/donald-trump-jr-vulcan-deal-white-house); verify and consider its own entry. (2) A reported late-stage $220 million OSC loan to Unusual Machines, where Trump Jr. sits on the advisory board and was granted a stake (per a defense official quoted by ProPublica). (3) ProPublica's August request for Kollitides' financial disclosures is unanswered; watch for a response. (4) Coverage to cross-check: Wall Street Journal (Oct. 8) on the A&M contracts; Guardian (June 18) and Bloomberg Government on his board seat at D. Boral Acquisition I; American Prospect (Oct. 16) on Feinberg; Semafor (Mar. and May 2026) and the May 27 Senate Banking Democrats' letter to Hegseth on the Economic Defense Unit. None of those have been verified here. (5) Instagram video from @unitingnow (Oct. 17) summarizing this story adds a claim that the units prefer complex transactions, loans and equity stakes over cash grants; that line does not appear in the ProPublica article and is not used here.

Note
The Pentagon says Kollitides "is in full compliance with all ethical laws and regulations" and that any claims otherwise are false; Alvarez & Marsal Capital says its work was unrelated to defense and that it is separate from the consulting business. Whether Kollitides violated ethics rules turns on details (waivers, compensation, his role in the awards) that he and the Pentagon have not provided.

Sources
[1] ProPublica: The Pentagon Gave $350 Million in Contracts to a Firm Closely Tied to a Senior Defense Department Official (Aaron Davis and Robert Faturechi) (https://www.propublica.org/article/george-kollitides-pentagon-contracts-alvarez-marsal) · 2026-10-09
[2] Letter from Sens. Warren, Blumenthal, Duckworth and Rep. Garcia to DoD Inspector General Platte Moring III re: corruption in the Pentagon awards process (https://www.warren.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/2026.08.04-Letter-to-DoD-IG-re-Corruption-in-Pentagon-Awards-Process-1.pdf) · 2026-08-04
[3] Bloomberg Government: Pentagon Investment Arm Director Joined Firm With Defense Ties (Holland, Tiron, Murphy) (https://news.bgov.com/bloomberg-government-news/pentagon-investment-arm-director-joined-firm-with-defense-ties) · 2026-07-29
[4] Raw Story (Bennito L. Kelty), summarizing a Wall Street Journal report: Trump's billionaire Pentagon deputy defiant after he's confronted with corruption claims (https://www.rawstory.com/steve-feinberg-pentagon/) · 2026-10-09

Connections

Shared mechanism — Denials in the face of documented facts: how Trump, his family, his businesses, the White House and the Pentagon have answered fraud and conflict-of-interest allegations (2017-2026)
The Pentagon's categorical ethics assurances about Kollitides, set beside the specific questions it left unanswered, are one of the cases compared here.