Trump’s golden ballroom scandal EXPLODES after leaked records reveal $333 million in private donations and millions in secret money.
One of the most egregious examples of corruption in Donald Trump’s administration just got the documentation that it deserves.
After illegally tearing down the East Wing of the White House, Trump proclaimed that the grand, gilded ballroom that he wants to build to replace it would be paid “a hundred percent” by himself with “some friends of mine.”
Now, a leaked donor list says something quite different.
The Washington Post obtained an internal spreadsheet tracking every donation above $10,000 to the ballroom, which totals $333 million from private donors. At least $77 million came from donors who asked to stay anonymous. Trump himself is nowhere on the list. Nvidia, Apple, the Adelson family and Dish Network chairman Charles Ergen each gave $25 million. About half the money came from companies or executives with federal contracts under Trump.
The Post says it did not establish a link between the donations and favorable government actions, and donors who responded denied any connection. But the timing of the donations provides plenty of fodder for accusations of nefarious quid pro quo favors.
Nvidia gave $25 million, and asked for anonymity, nearly three months after striking a deal with Trump to sell advanced chips to China despite national security concerns.
Ergen’s company, EchoStar, was under FCC investigation when Chair Brendan Carr threatened to yank its licenses. After a meeting with Trump and Carr, Ergen negotiated a license sale to AT&T. Carr dropped the investigation. Ergen then committed $12.5 million in December and another $12.5 million in February, and asked that the source stay anonymous. In May, the FCC and Justice Department approved the sale.
A Rocket Companies subsidiary committed $10 million three weeks after a federal agency approved its acquisition of mortgage lender Mr. Cooper. Rocket says the two are unrelated.
Salesforce gave $1 million twice, and its CEO gave another $1 million. In between, the Army awarded the company a contract worth up to $5.6 billion, and the Pentagon admitted that it only received one bid
Then there’s the pardon. The daughter of banker Julio Herrera Velutini, who was indicted on bribery charges, committed $2.5 million to the ballroom a month after his charges were reduced to a misdemeanor. Trump pardoned him in January.
Suspiciously, the money isn’t going through normal campaign finance or government donation channels. Instead, it flows through a nonprofit and into a White House account the president directly controls, under an agreement requiring the donors’ anonymity.
Democrats who demanded details were rebuffed. The project is still short of Trump’s $400 million goal, its cost has ballooned to a projected $600 million, and taxpayers are being left on the hook for the balance needed to complete the totally unnecessary project
The White House refused to discuss these individual donations and the subsequent favorable treatment of the donors. It did, however, promise to “relentlessly pursue those responsible for this cowardly leak.”
There was not a word about the appearance of impropriety in the donations. Instead, all the White House could do is attack the people who brought transparency to another one of Trump’s massive grifts on the American public.
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