Apple, Meta, Microsoft and other donors to Trump's White House ballroom project have federal contracts: Report
These companies have faced federal enforcement actions, had their businesses impacted by tariff policy or seen existing enforcement actions suspended by the Trump administration.
Donald Trump's White House renovation has again come to the spotlight with a recent report claiming that the President's famed ballroom construction project is being funded by corporate donors, a majority of whom have received federal contracts in recent years.
According to a Bloomberg report citing a study by Public Citizen, 16 of the 24 donors who have agreed to pay for Trump's ballroom construction project have received government contracts amounting to $279 billion in total over the past five years.
Trump's ballroom: Who are the donors?
The list of donors include some of the biggest tech companies in the US — Apple, Microsoft and Meta, the report said.
These companies have faced federal enforcement actions, had their businesses impacted by tariff policy or seen existing enforcement actions suspended by the Trump administration.
Several of the companies also have business interests like pending approvals of mergers and acquisitions before the Trump government. These include Comcast, which is mulling a bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, as well as Union Pacific, which is looking to merge with Norfolk Southern.
The list also includes donors who have received government contracts recently, with the majority of those awards going to Lockheed Martin. Over the past five years, the company has been awarded $191 billion in federal contracts during that period, according to Public Citizen founder and liberal activist Ralph Nader.
“These giant corporations aren’t funding the Trump ballroom debacle out of a sense of civic pride,” Public Citizen Co-President Robert Weissman said in a statement.
“They have massive interests before the federal government and they undoubtedly hope to curry favor with, and receive favorable treatment from, the Trump administration,” he added.
Other major donors of the project include Coinbase Inc., Ripple Labs Inc. and Tether Holdings Ltd., as well as longtime Trump donors including billionaires Steve Schwarzman and Miriam Adelson, according to the White House.
Donald Trump's White House revamp
Donald Trump has torn down the entire section of the East Wing of the White House to give way to a new, luxurious ballroom he has been planning to construct.
The White House reconstruction has triggered an uproar among Democratic groups in the US with many leaders pointing out the preservation of the building and ethical grounds of the move.
Last week in a letter to the White House, a group of Senate Democrats called for “a complete accounting of all donations to the White House ballroom construction project, including the conditions under which contributions were made”.
The letter, written by Senator Adam Schiff of California and others has said that the White House ballroom project risked “blatant corruption as these companies and their stakeholders seek to position themselves in the government’s good graces.”
Trump's $300 million project will see the construction of a 90,000-square foot ballroom in what used to be the East Wing of the White House.