APPLETON, Minn. — New records obtained by KARE 11 show the company that owned a vacant private prison in Appleton, Minnesota offered to sell it to the state in 2025 for $75 million.

One year later, the Trump administration agreed to use taxpayer funds to buy the same abandoned prison from CoreCivic, Inc., for $495.6 million.

The price difference, $420 million, is more than taxpayers are estimated to have lost in Minnesota’s much-publicized Feeding Our Future fraud scandal.

In the tiny western Minnesota town of Appleton, population less than 1,400, sits the site of what’s been described as the most expensive property purchase in Minnesota history: a 34-year-old vacant prison, shuttered for 16 years.

Federal records show CoreCivic donated half a million dollars to the Trump-Vance inaugural committee. Its CEO also made significant personal contributions to Trump-affiliated political committees

The Minnesota prison was just one of a series of sales CoreCivic made to the federal government this year. On the same day CoreCivic announced the Minnesota sale, the company also sold its facility in Kansas for $238 million. A month earlier, records show CoreCivic sold two prisons in California for a combined $1.5 billion. The total bill for taxpayers for the four prisons: more than $2.2 billion. In addition to profiting from the prison sales, CoreCivic has federal contracts which pay the company to operate the facilities. At the Minnesota facility alone, CoreCivic estimates that it will earn approximately $75 million a year once the prison reaches full capacity.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5916465&forum_id=2#50215811)