President Donald Trump speaks to the media in front of construction of his proposed White House ballroom on May 19. Photo /Getty Images
More than half of the publicly identified donors to US President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom project have won new or expanded federal contracts worth more than US$50 billion ($85 billion) during the past six months, according to a report released by a government watchdog group.
Fourteen of the 27 known corporate donors to the US$400 million ($681.5 million) project, which would replace the East Wing that Trump demolished in October, have seen their government business grow in that window, according to the report from Public Citizen, a nonprofit.
Most of those same companies are also facing federal enforcement actions over alleged wrongdoing or have had such actions suspended by the Trump administration since the start of Trump’s second term, the nonprofit found.
The donors have sprawling interests that touch nearly every aspect of American life, including defence contracting, technology and energy. Trump has repeatedly touted the gifts as a boon to taxpayers, but critics of the project say the administration’s refusal to release a full list of donors creates the potential for corruption.
Jon Golinger, a public policy advocate at Public Citizen and an author of the report, said: “These giant corporations aren’t funding the Trump ballroom fiasco out of the goodness of their hearts. They have massive interests before the Government, and they hope to curry favour with, and receive favourable treatment from, the Trump administration.”
The analysis builds on a report from the group last fall that found the known donors held US$279b ($475b) in government contracts over the previous five years and had spent US$1.6b ($2.7b) on political contributions and lobbying during that time.
The new report focuses on contracts awarded in most of the seven months since the East Wing’s demolition, which Trump’s critics have argued created new urgency around potential conflicts of interest.
Of the known donors, Lockheed Martin seems to be the biggest winner. The defence giant received roughly US$43.8b ($74.6b) in new or expanded contract funding since last fall, according to the report.
Booz Allen Hamilton followed, with more than US$4.2b ($7.1b), and Palantir, with just over US$1b (S1.7b). Other donors that received new or increased contracts included Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Caterpillar and T-Mobile.
Altogether, more than two-thirds of corporate ballroom donors – 19 of 27 – have received government contracts in the past five and a half years, totaling US$338b ($575.9b), the report says.
Sixteen of the 27 donors are facing federal enforcement actions or have had such actions suspended by the Trump administration, the report found, including major antitrust reviews involving Amazon, Apple, Meta and Nvidia; labour rights cases involving Google, Lockheed and Meta; and securities matters involving Coinbase and Ripple, whose cases have been dropped or scaled back under Trump.
The White House pushed back on the report’s pay-to-play framing.
White House spokesman Davis Ingle said in a statement: “The same critics who are alleging fake conflicts of interests, would also complain if American taxpayers were footing the bill for these long-overdue renovations. The donors for the White House ballroom project represent a wide array of great American companies and generous individuals, all of whom are contributing to make the People’s House better for generations to come.”
The report arrives as the ballroom project continues to face legal and political turbulence. A federal judge has ruled that construction must halt until Congress authorises the project, but a three-judge federal appeals panel allowed construction to continue while the case proceeds. The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit is scheduled to hear the case later today.
Last month, Senate Republicans tried to have Congress allocate US$1b ($1.7b) for what it called the “East Wing Modernisation Project”, which collapsed amid public backlash.
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