Cunningham’s Company Cashed In On PPP While He Blasted The Program

July 7th, 2020

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – The Washington Free Beacon this morning uncovered that Cal Cunningham’s company received millions in Paycheck Protection Program loans, all while he criticized the program for “harming communities.” This development is just another example in the long-running list of hypocrisy Cunningham has engaged in during this campaign.

“Cal Cunningham has spent this entire race saying one thing and doing another in order to fall in line with his liberal benefactors in Washington,” said Tillis campaign spokesman Andrew Romeo. “If Cunningham can’t be honest about where he stands on a program that has saved over one million North Carolina jobs, voters shouldn’t trust him when he pretends he won’t be just another vote for Chuck Schumer’s extreme agenda of tax increases and job-killing policies.”

Members of the media who recently interviewed Cunningham and were tricked into thinking he actually cared about PPP transparency have a duty to North Carolinians to follow up with Cunningham and get the facts on these shocking revelations. Here is a list of media outlets Cunningham tried to fool:

• Spectrum News: “I’m hearing from a lot of small businesses for instance here in North Carolina that need access to the loans that they can’t get today. The Paycheck Protection Program – we’ve seen that money end up in some of the wrong hands. I think we need to focus on making sure small businesses can keep people on the payroll. And very important for North Carolina, a lot of women-owned and minority-owned businesses have been cut out of that very process. And finally, a very very important – and it’s a priority I’ve been returning to time and again – we’re spending a lot of money. Necessarily in order to protect people in a time like this, there needs to be very robust accountability and oversight for how money is being spent.” (Cunningham interview with Spectrum News, 5/28/20)
• FOX 46: “FOX 46 sits down with Senate candidate Cal Cunningham” (Fox 46, 5/6/20)
• CNN: “In North Carolina, Cal Cunningham is “very concerned” about the lack of “vigorous and meaningful mechanisms for oversight.” (CNN, 4/24/20)
• Raleigh News & Observer: “Cunningham, who wants more oversight of the federal spending” (News & Observer, 4/22/20) 
• Spectrum News: “Democratic challenger Cal Cunningham says more oversight is needed of the federal response to the pandemic.” (Spectrum News, 4/15/20) 
• CBS17: “We’ve just had $2.2 trillion expenditure from the federal government. And it’s been my experience in serving in the Army and one of the experiences I had both in Iraq and Afghanistan is, when it comes to federal money, we need oversight, accountability. We need checks and balances within how that money is spent. And there were original versions of the CARES Act that did not include important oversight. We identified that and that’s an incredibly important part. Congress has a role, our senators have a role. As the senator from North Carolina, I think one of the roles that I would intend to play is to provide oversight for how the money is spent. And we know it from past efforts during staunch economic disruption that money gets misspent, ends up in the wrong hands, it ends up in executive compensation or stock buybacks. So, I have called for vigorous oversight of how this money is spent.” (Cunningham interview with CBS17, 4/14/15)