Dark Money Is Flowing Into Trump’s Legacy Projects
Funneling millions to the Trump administration through undisclosed donations, a slew of corporations and lobbyists are potentially violating disclosure laws to help bankroll the president’s ballroom and other pet projects.

At least 35 corporations have helped bankroll Donald Trump’s pet projects, including his White House State Ballroom. (Aaron Schwartz / CNP / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Palantir, Meta, Paramount Skydance, and more than two dozen other corporations might have broken the law when they funneled millions to the Trump administration through undisclosed donations to the revamped White House ballroom, Donald Trump’s future presidential library, and other Trumpworld legacy projects, according to a new legal complaint.
“The scale of these potential violations is unprecedented,” warned the nonpartisan watchdog Campaign Legal Center in its complaint to the US Attorney for DC, alleging that at least thirty-five firms helped bankroll President Trump’s pet projects without properly disclosing such lobbying.
Those legacy projects are Trump’s $400 million White House State Ballroom project, the Freedom 250 group leading the president’s 250th United States birthday celebrations, the renamed Trump Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and the future Trump Presidential Library.
The Lobbying Disclosure Act — passed under President Bill Clinton and amended under President George W. Bush — requires individual lobbyists and their employers to disclose donations to entities “established, financed, maintained, or controlled” by covered executive branch officials, which includes the president. The law specifically outlines presidential library foundations as entities to which lobbyists and their employers must report donations.
The Lobbying Disclosure Act is enforced by the US Attorney for DC, an office currently held by former Fox News personality Jeanine Pirro. Those who “knowingly fail to comply” with the law are subject to civil fines maxing out at $200,000, while those who “knowingly and corruptly [fail] to comply” face up to five years in prison.
In the case of the revamped East Wing and ballroom, only one corporation reported its donation to the fund on lobbying disclosure files. Yet twenty-six other firms have been identified as donors by media reports or the White House itself. Those include corporations with lucrative contracts or high-stakes legal matters before the Trump administration in the last year.
That includes Micron, which last year shut down its consumer-facing computer chip business after accepting more than $6.1 billion in data center semiconductor contracts from the Trump administration; Union Pacific Railroad, which is seeking merger approval for its plan to create the company’s first single-line transcontinental megarailroad; and Palantir, the Silicon Valley surveillance giant that recently scored a historic ten-year, $10 billion Pentagon contract (as well as one for bossware at the Agriculture Department.)
“The hidden influence being exerted on the current Trump administration by lobbyists — who are also not making the required disclosures — is unprecedented,” said Kedric Payne, vice president, general counsel, and senior director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center.
It’s not just corporations: Ballard Partners, the MAGA-allied lobbying firm that formerly employed White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and former Attorney General Pam Bondi, also reportedly donated to the White House State Ballroom project without disclosing the gift.
The Freedom 250 fund offers its donors an “invitation to a private Freedom 250 thank you reception hosted by President Donald J. Trump, with a historic photo opportunity.” The nonprofit has named several corporate sponsors, including ExxonMobil, John Deere, Oracle, and Mastercard, none of which disclosed their support on lobbying disclosures.
According to media reports, the Trump Kennedy Center has been a hotbed of donations from corporations “seeking to strengthen their ties with the president.” That reportedly includes undisclosed donations from both Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta and Jeff Bezos’s Amazon.
Meta also agreed to pay $22 million toward Trump’s presidential library as part of a settlement over Trump’s 2021 suspension from Facebook and Instagram, but the company did not include the donation in its lobbying forms.
Paramount Skydance (now run by David Ellison, the son of Republican megadonor Larry Ellison) and X (purchased by Elon Musk) also agreed to make millions in contributions to the Trump presidential library as part of settlements with the president over actions taken during the Biden administration. Neither company reported the donations on lobbying disclosure forms.