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Big publicly traded companies from the defense and tech sectors were among the organizations that donated the maximum allowed amount of $1 million to President Joe Biden’s inauguration committee, according to a disclosure filed Tuesday.
Boeing
BA,
and Lockheed Martin
LMT,
each gave that sum to the committee, as did Qualcomm
QCOM,
and Uber Technologies
UBER,
Also providing $1 million each were AT&T
T,
Bank of America
BAC,
Comcast
CMCSA,
medical technology company Masimo Corp.
MASI,
Pfizer
PFE,
and a union, the International Brotherhood Of Electrical Workers (IBEW).
Biden’s inaugural committee reported raising a total of $61.8 million, down from the $107 million that former President Donald Trump brought in. Trump’s inaugural committee set records with its fundraising haul, and its spending went on to draw considerable scrutiny, with the Washington, D.C., attorney general’s office filing a lawsuit alleging waste of the funds.
Biden’s committee did not accept donations from fossil fuel companies, but it didn’t go as far in limiting contributions as former President Barack Obama did in his first inauguration, when he accepted no money from corporations. About 50 groups, ranging from Demand Progress to the Revolving Door Project, had asked in a December letter for Biden’s inaugural committee to follow Obama’s example.
An expert from one watchdog group told MarketWatch earlier this year that making a large contribution to an inaugural committee is “a way to try to ingratiate yourself with an incoming president and a way to try to curry access and influence with a new administration.”
