The ballroom’s donor list includes corporations and billionaires likely looking to curry favor with the president

The White House is the people's house

 

Noah Bookbinder, CREW HQ 

 

From:info@citizensforethics.org

To:Joseph 

Wed, Oct 29 2025 at 3:34 PM

Joseph, I went on MSNBC to discuss the White House ballroom and the ethics concerns the project raises. The ballroom’s donor list includes corporations and billionaires likely looking to curry favor with the president—companies like Amazon and Lockheed Martin with massive government contracts to protect and Comcast, which wants approval for its merger. And because donations flow through a nonprofit paying for the project—one that doesn’t have to disclose its donors—no one has to say who gave or how much. That means the American people don’t know how much is being spent to try to influence the president or what they’re trying to get. This ballroom is a physical representation of the rampant corruption that has escalated over Trump's two terms. Our team at CREW is fighting to expose Trump’s unprecedented corruption and ensure our government is working for the people, not billionaires and corporations who spend millions to curry favor with the president. If that’s a fight you believe in, please donate today to support CREW → DONATE → The donor list for the ballroom reads like a cross-section of the most powerful interests in America. On one end, there are corporate giants — Amazon, Apple, Google and Meta — all with significant stakes in federal regulation and government contracts. Then there are the billionaires: Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman, oil magnate Harold Hamm, Israeli-American investor Isaac Perlmutter, private equity financier Konstantin Sokolov and Manchester United owner Edward Glazer. Mixed in are Trump administration officials, including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and former Small Business Administrator Kelly Loeffler. And increasingly, the crypto industry is buying its way in as well, with Coinbase, Ripple, Tether and the Winklevoss twins all appearing on the list. Many of these same ultra-wealthy donors were also invited to dine with the president at the White House last week—compounding the sense that the people supporting this project have access to the president and the potential to influence him. A lot of these companies and billionaires have particular things they want from the administration and they are clearly getting the signal that if they put up enough money for something the president values, maybe they’ll get something they want from the federal government in return. Joseph, the White House is "the people's house." But now, corporate interests are paying millions to fund the construction of a gilded ballroom to curry favor with Trump. This raises enormous ethical concerns.