Rep. Gerald Connolly, a ranking member of the U.S. House Oversight Committee, has begun investigating whether expense management startup RAMP is receiving preferential treatment for $25 million in government contracts.

Connolly wrote to Stephen Ehikian, acting administrator of the General Services Authority (GSA), requesting information and documents related to the GSA's reported plans, demanding a contract to grant RAMP for the pilot program. ProPublica first reported the news about the investigation.

Connolly’s biggest concern is that RAMP is said to have “zero federal contract experience” and its investors include many Trump allies and supporters. These investors include Peter Thiel's founder foundation; Keith Rabois of Khosla Ventures; Thrive Capital, founded by Josh Kushner, brother of Trump's son-in-law Jared; Joe Lonsdale of vocal Trump supporter 8VC and Jeb Bush, brother of former Republican President George W. Bush. According to a letter from Connolly, Rubs raised more than $1 million for Donald Trump's 2024 campaign.

Connolly asks for several things GSA, including a detailed list of all meetings between any GSA officer and any RAMP representative and all communications between any GSA officer, contractor or subcontractor and any RAMP representative.

The government's internal fee card program, called SmartPay, is a $700 billion program. Currently, Citibank and Bank of America, the two largest credit card suppliers in the United States, are the official banks of the current SmartPay contract.

In April, RAMP's communications director Lindsay McKinley confirmed to TechCrunch that the startup "has carried out a standard procurement process for the SmartPay pilot program based on the strength of our solutions."

She claimed that the startup ramp said in a public post on February 18 on X shared by the government’s Department of Efficiency, “The U.S. government currently has about 4.6 million active credit cards/accounts, with a transaction volume of about $90 million, at about $24 of about $4 million in spending.”

RAMP claims that a former client introduced RAMP to GSA a few days later.

However, Connolly claimed that ramps reportedly began contacting entities in the payment industry to process the special bank identification numbers required before the contract-related information (RFI), publicly announced.

He also claimed that GSA employees recently said ramps were a "favorite" to win the business.

Ramp has no comment on Connolly's investigation.

In March, the ramp doubled its valuation to $150 million in Chinese stock sales. Since its inception in 2019, the startup has raised more than $1 billion in equity financing and $700 million in committed debt financing.