A Trump-touted construction firm's border wall contract was under investigation. Then it got another one.

A North Dakota construction firm somehow ended up with the largest ever contract to build the border wall even though its first contract is still under a Defense Department investigation.

Fisher Sand and Gravel secured a $1.3 billion contract to build a technically challenging 42-mile stretch of the President Trump's U.S.-Mexico border wall through Arizona, The Arizona Daily Star first reported. Trump had talked up Fisher after the company's CEO formed ties with Trump's advisers and praised the president on TV, and now lawmakers are starting to ask questions.

Fisher CEO Tommy Fisher had paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to lobby Republican lawmakers into talking up his company to Trump, and his pressure eventually stuck. Trump would often push the Army Corps of Engineers to consult with Fisher for all its border needs, The Washington Post reports. Democrats' concerns of improper White House influence on the border wall contract process eventually pushed the Department of Defense's inspector general to launch an audit of Fisher's first contract, and that probe is still ongoing.

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The news of the second contract prompted at least Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-N.Y.) to tweet that "border wall construction should be halted until this investigation is over."

House Homeland Security Committee Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) meanwhile told the Post it "speaks volumes to the administration's lack of transparency that they didn't announce this award — the largest ever," and called on the Trump administration to "pause construction and contracting decisions" until the investigation and the coronavirus pandemic have ended.