White House
The majority of the corporate donors to President Donald Trump’s ballroom are facing or have recently faced federal enforcement actions, according to a report by a watchdog group.
The ballroom has been a pet project for the president, who boasted in September that it would be “absolutely magnificent construction” and “one of the best anywhere in the world,” but it has sparked significant controversy, chiefly Trump’s broken promise that the construction “won’t interfere with the current building” and would be “near [the East Wing] but not touching it.”
Photos and video from last month showed construction crews had gone well beyond “interfering” with the East Wing; the façade was demolished and then an additional major section. Eventually, the East Wing was demolished in its entirety.
The president has touted the funding by private donors, but the specifics remain murky and the endeavor has raised ethical questions about conflicts of interest.
On Monday, The Washington Post reviewed a report by Public Citizen, the consumer advocacy nonprofit founded by Ralph Nader, detailing the monumental financial stakes for these large
The report covered “three dozen corporate and individual donors the Trump administration has disclosed, plus three more that have since been publicly identified,” wrote the Post’s Jonathan Edwards, a group of companies that “have sprawling interests that touch nearly every aspect of American life, including tariffs, technology, taxation, online privacy and manufacturing.”
During the past five years, these donors have received $279 billion in contracts with the federal government, according to Public Citizen’s data, and the majority of them have found themselves recently facing federal investigations “tied to alleged wrongdoing that includes engaging in unfair labor practices, deceiving consumers and harming the environment”:
Fourteen of the two dozen publicly named corporate donors face federal enforcement actions or have had such actions suspended by Trump administration officials since the start of his second term, the report states. They include Amazon, which the Justice Department accused of fraudulently concealing worker injuries, and Apple, which benefited in September when the National Labor Relations Board withdrew its claims that the company had violated workers rights, the report states.
The actual full list of donors is not publicly known, the Post noted, with CBS News identifying three corporate donors that were not on the list disclosed by the White House and others potentially still unidentified to cover the skyrocketing cost of the ballroom. Over the past few months the estimated figure has leapt from $200 million to $300 million.
“These giant corporations aren’t
“But this is more than everyday corporate influence seeking,” Weissman added. “Paying tribute is a mark of authoritarianism and in making these payments, these corporations are aiding Trump’s authoritarian project. They should withdraw their contributions.”