The biggest check to Donald Trump’s 2025 inaugural committee came from the meat processing company Pilgrim’s Pride, the same company that pleaded guilty to conspiring to fix chicken prices in 2021.
The company, which boasts that it produces almost one in every six chickens in the U.S., donated $5 million to Trump’s inauguration. In 2021, Pilgrim’s Pride reached a plea agreement with the Department of Justice’s antitrust division over a conspiracy to rig chicken prices, and agreed to pay a $107 million fine.
Two Brazilian billionaire brothers hold a majority stake in Pilgrim’s. Their related investment company also pleaded guilty in 2020 to charges over bribing government officials and was forced to pay out $256 million under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Trump in February paused enforcement of the act.
Pilgrim’s Pride gave the single-largest donation to the Trump Vance Inaugural Committee, which received more than $239 million in total in the lead-up to Trump’s swearing in. It was more than double Trump’s record-setting inauguration haul in 2017, according to a Federal Election Commissioner filing late Sunday.
Trump still hasn’t disclosed the other donors to his transition effort, which is a separate fund that is typically restricted to $5,000 donations and required to be made public if the president accepts government services. Trump didn’t accept those services, so there was no legal limit to the amount of money he could accept secretly. Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, said last year that the donor list would be made public, but they have not released it.
Brothers Wesley Batista and Joesley Batista — who hold an 82% stake in the chicken company — and their affiliated companies J&F Investimentos S.A. and JBS S.A. were investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission for “illicit payments made in Brazil from 2009 to 2015 pursuant to which, among other things, JBS S.A.received support from a government official to obtain financing,” which helped facilitate their acquisition of Pilgrim’s Pride in 2009. (Pilgrim’s Pride’s leadership says they were unaware of what the brother’s were doing, according to recent investor disclosures.)
JBS S.A.had to pay out almost $27 million in fines, and each of the brothers paid civil penalties of $500,000.
“Engaging in bribery to finance their expansion into the U.S. markets and then continuing to engage in bribery while occupying senior board positions at Pilgrim’s reflects a profound failure to exercise good corporate governance,” SEC regulator Charles Cain wrote in 2020.
The brothers’ related firm J&F Investimentos also reached a plea deal with the Department of Justice in 2020 and agreed to plead guilty to “one count of conspiracy to violate the anti-bribery provisions of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act,” according to information in Pilgrim’s Pride’s investor reports this month that was included in connection to the brothers’ reelection to Pilgrim’s parent companys’ board of directors.
Trump in February paused enforcement of that law for 180 days, writing that enforcing the anti-corruption law against “routine business practices in other nations not only wastes limited prosecutorial resources that could be dedicated to preserving American freedoms, but actively harms American economic competitiveness.”
Pilgrim’s Pride did not respond to NOTUS’ request for comment about why they donated such a large amount to Trump’s inaugural committee. The White House referred NOTUS to a spokesperson for the inaugural committee who did not respond to a request for comment.
“It should not be possible for moneyed interests to buy their way into better treatment by the United States government,” Max Stier, president of the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, told NOTUS. Pilgrim’s Pride’s donation, “has all the hallmarks of just that problem,” he said.
—
Claire Heddles is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.