Article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
“Under Donald Trump, there’s a two-tiered justice system,” said one watchdog leader. “Big Tech plays by a different set of rules because they bought their way in.”
A newly revealed list of companies and billionaire CEOs who donated millions of dollars to President Donald Trump’s ballroom construction project shows that Big Tech, according to one government watchdog, “bankrolled it fully expecting a return on their investment.”
The list, first reported by The Washington Post, doesn’t just show the $25 million donations from tech giant Apple, the pro-Israel Adelson Family Foundation, and microchip firm Nvidia—the latter of which requested anonymity.
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It also reveals previously undisclosed donors who have benefited from a presidential pardon as well as government contracts and at least one closed federal investigation.
The 57 donors whose names were published by the Post had committed to contributing at least $100,000 to the ballroom construction project, which is proceeding for now following a Supreme Court ruling in August.
The list shows a total of $333 million contributed from private donors, but does not include Trump’s name, though the president has said the demolition of the White House’s East Wing and the construction of the ballroom would be “paid for a hundred percent by me and some friends of mine.”
It also falls short of the $600 million projected price tag; according to the Post, taxpayer funds have been used to partially fund the project, along with donations from companies with business before the government.
Nvidia’s $25 million donation came three months after the company reached a deal with the Trump administration to sell advanced microchips to China.
A $25 million donation from Charles Ergen, co-founder and chairman of the telecommunications company Dish Network, came shortly after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) dropped an investigation into the failure of EchoStar, which owns Dish Network, to upgrade its cellphone network.
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr had threatened last May to revoke government licenses from EchoStar, and a month later, Ergen met with Carr and Trump in a closed-door meeting where his political donations were discussed, Bloomberg reported.
Ergen then negotiated a deal to sell some of the licenses to AT&T. Carr dropped the investigation the following month, and months later, with the sale pending, the executive donated $12.5 million to Trump’s ballroom construction. A second $12.5 million contribution came soon after, according to the list published by the Post.
“Big Tech giants didn’t just chip in for Trump’s ballroom,” said Sacha Haworth of the Tech Oversight Project, a watchdog group. “The same companies funding Trump’s vanity project lined up for tax breaks, chip deals, federal contracts, and a blind eye to lawbreaking. Under Donald Trump, there’s a two-tiered justice system. Big Tech plays by a different set of rules because they bought their way in.”
The Post also detailed a $2.5 million contribution from Isabela Herrera, the daughter of international banker Julio Herrera Velutini, whom the US Department of Justice indicted on bribery charges in 2022.
Herrera Velutini’s charges were reduced to a misdemeanor months after his daughter donated millions of dollars to Trump’s MAGA Inc. political action committee, and a month later, she committed to a $2.5 million donation for the ballroom. Soon after, Herrera Velutini was pardoned.
The transactions detailed by the Post amount to “blatant corruption,” said progressive news outlet The Tennessee Holler.
Cryptocurrency investors Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss donated more than $5 million in bitcoin—a portion of the more than $18 million the industry contributed to the ballroom. Trump has pushed for loose regulations for the industry.
Other top donors include Google, Lockheed Martin, Amazon, and Palantir.
Government watchdog Public Citizen said a new tax filing from the Trust for the National Mall, a nonprofit charity that manages the donations for the ballroom, shows that $169.7 million came from just 10 big donors.
“One year after the people’s house was abruptly bulldozed for a gold-plated ballroom that most Americans will never be allowed inside, we are uncovering who paid the most to fund it,” said Jon Golinger, democracy advocate for Public Citizen. “The question these ballroom megadonors all now need to answer is—why?”
Haworth said that “when Democrats take back gavels in January, they need to investigate Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon, OpenAI, and others for potentially breaking the law to buy get-out-of-jail-free passes and sweetheart deals in exchange for their donation.”
Article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson, September 7, 2001