Fusion GPS Received Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars in PPP Loans

Records show Bean LLC, the shell parent company for Fusion GPS, which was co-founded by former Wall Street Journal reporters Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, received a loan amount between $350,000 and $1 million, according to ProPublica’s database. The Washington, D.C.-based opposition research firm’s loan was approved on April 14, the money was provided through Trustar Bank, and Fusion GPS claimed it would help retain 15 jobs.

The SBA states that any business “that derives over 50 percent of its gross annual revenue from political or lobbying” activity would be “ineligible” from the coronavirus pandemic loan program. But the New York Times reported that a host of Republican and Democratic lobbying firms, ad makers, and opposition shops received PPP loans totaling in the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. Among the groups that received the loans were left-wing Media Matters for America, which got between $1 million and $2 million, and the conservative Americans for Tax Reform, which got between $150,000 and $350,000.