By Alyssa Aquino

Law360 (September 2, 2020, 5:39 PM EDT) -- A House oversight panel has broadened its investigation into the spate of pandemic-related government deal-making, with a Democratic lawmaker saying the probe will focus on all coronavirus contracts negotiated by White House trade adviser Peter Navarro.

Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, chair of the House Oversight Economic and Consumer Policy Subcommittee, announced the widening of the probe on Tuesday, one day after the Trump administration scrapped a $646 million deal to obtain 43,000 ventilators from Philips Respironics, a unit of Royal Philips.

The agreement had been panned by the panel in a July 31 report, which concluded that Navarro — who led negotiations for the White House — had been "inept" and "incompetent" during talks. Based on Navarro's contract mismanagement, the administration overpaid $500 million for Philips' ventilators, the panel said.

"Under the management of Peter Navarro, senior adviser to President Trump, the administration was taken advantage of by Philips Respironics when negotiating the price of life-saving ventilators," Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., said in a statement.

Philips had only delivered 12,300 ventilators of the full order for 43,000 when the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services cancelled the deal, the company said Monday.

The subcommittee is pushing Philips to repay the remainder of the contract money, Krishnamoorthi said. "We will also be requesting documentation from all the contracts that Peter Navarro has negotiated regarding COVID-19 response."

An HHS spokesperson told Law360 on Wednesday that the department has opened its own investigation into the Philips contract.

"Efforts by [HHS] to address whether Philips complied with the Defense Production Act and the contract terms began prior to the House Oversight Committee releasing its report in July," the spokesperson said in a statement.

On April 15, lawmakers opened an investigation into the Trump administration's coronavirus contracting activity. The probe was spurred by the government's decision to ink a new $646 million agreement with Philips, instead of invoking the Defense Production Act to expand — and speed up — an already existing ventilator order.

The previous deal, which was struck in 2014, required Philips to produce 10,000 units of a relatively cheap ventilator for the nation's stockpile. The delivery date was initially set for June 2019 but was pushed back to June 2021 under a series of extensions, the last of which was provided by the Trump administration in March 2020, right after virus outbreaks were reported in the U.S.

The new deal covered Philips' Trilogy EV300 ventilator, which costs $15,000 per unit, instead of the company's low-cost Trilogy Evo Universal ventilator, which was requested in the 2014 arrangement and carried a $3,820 price tag. Both models are "functionally identical," the lawmakers said in the July report.

During talks with Philips, the White House's negotiators "appeared gullible" and caved to Philips on "all significant matters," the panel concluded. "The documents show that the administration accepted Philips' first offer without even trying to negotiate a lower price," according to the report.

Navarro was the White House's top negotiator, the lawmakers said, after examining administration emails and communications. Other members of the team included Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and senior adviser; and Kushner's former college roommate and current head of the U.S. International Development Finance Corp., Adam Boehler.

Frans van Houten, CEO of Royal Philips, rebutted the panel's findings at the time, saying the company "believe[s] that not all the information that we provided has been reflected in the report."

Representatives for the White House didn't respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

--Additional reporting by Daniel Wilson. Editing by Aaron Pelc.

Update: This story has been updated with a comment from HHS.

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