ME AND SOME FRIENDS OF MINE
Quick question for you. When the man who said he’d pay for the party isn’t on the guest list, who’s actually throwing it? Ask the spreadsheet.
“A hundred percent by me”
Last year, days after demolition began on the old East Wing, Donald Trump said his new White House ballroom was “being paid for a hundred percent by me and some friends of mine.” On Thursday, The Washington Post published the friends.
The Post obtained an internal spreadsheet used to track the fundraising. It lists the source, date and amount of all 67 donations above $10,000 recorded as of late September: $333 million from private donors, with at least $77 million from donors who asked to stay anonymous. The White House had named 37 donors last October without giving amounts.
One name is missing. Trump himself is not on the list.
ME AND SOME FRIENDS OF MINE: the friends showed up. So did their business before the government.
President Donald Trump’s official 2025 portrait. He said the ballroom was paid for “a hundred percent by me and some friends of mine.” The leaked donor list does not include him. Credit: Daniel Torok, The White House, public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Who the friends are
Nvidia and Apple each committed $25 million, the top amount. So did the Adelson family and Dish Network co-founder Charles Ergen. Amazon, Caterpillar, Comcast, Microsoft and T-Mobile are on the list. Crypto companies and investors, now enjoying looser rules, promised more than $18 million, led by the Winklevoss twins’ bitcoin worth $5,050,018. Trump’s ambassador to the Netherlands, Joseph Popolo Jr., and his wife gave $1 million two months after his confirmation. SBA chief Kelly Loeffler and her husband promised $5 million. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s son Brandon gave stock worth more than $2.5 million.
Companies or executives with federal contracts during Trump’s second term account for about half of the total, the Post found. To be precise about what the Post did and didn’t prove: its reporting does not establish a connection between the gifts and favorable government action. Donors who commented denied any link. But the timelines are worth reading slowly:
- Nvidia became a top donor in October 2025, nearly three months after its deal with Trump to sell advanced chips to China. It asked that its $25 million stay anonymous. Nvidia told CNBC its support for the U.S. is “independent of any business interests.”
- Ergen’s EchoStar was under FCC investigation in 2025. After a meeting with Trump and FCC Chair Brendan Carr, the company says Trump “encouraged the parties involved to reach an amicable resolution.” Carr dropped the probe. In December, with a license sale still awaiting approval, Ergen committed $12.5 million, anonymously, and another $12.5 million in February. The FCC and Justice Department approved the sale in May.
- Salesforce made two $1 million commitments; in between, the Army awarded it a contract worth up to $5.6 billion. The Pentagon’s own announcement said bids were solicited online “with only one received.” The Pentagon says political connections play “absolutely no role.”
- The daughter of banker Julio Herrera Velutini, indicted on bribery charges in 2022, committed $2.5 million weeks after his charges were reduced to a misdemeanor. Trump pardoned him in January.
Demolition of the White House East Wing, Oct. 22, 2025, to make way for the ballroom. The Post reports the East Wing project’s projected cost rose to $600 million and that taxpayer dollars have covered some of it. Credit: Hassan Albadawi, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
The leak is the scandal now
The money moves through the Trust for the National Mall, a nonprofit that generally doesn’t have to disclose donors, then into a White House account the president directly controls. A 12-page agreement requires the Trust to “maintain the anonymity of Project donors” unless the White House’s Executive Residence staff authorize it in writing. The pledge form was for the “Donald J. Trump Ballroom,” and its main contact was Meredith O’Rourke, the top fundraiser for Trump’s 2024 campaign.
White House spokesman Davis Ingle called the donors “great American companies and generous individuals,” said critics would complain if taxpayers paid instead, and promised to “relentlessly pursue those responsible for this cowardly leak.” Taxpayers are already paying for some of it, per the Post’s records. The $333 million also falls short of Trump’s $400 million goal and well short of the $600 million projected cost.
If it’s the People’s House, the people get the guest list.
The red costume: drain the swamp, gild the ballroom
“Drain the swamp” was supposed to mean fewer favors for people with business before the government. A ballroom with the president’s name on the pledge form, donors with pending deals, anonymity written into the contract and a manhunt for whoever leaked the list is the swamp with a dance floor. We have tracked the family-business version before in Not Personally Profiting and the crypto cash in The swamp takes crypto. Cabinet names on this list have public records on The Cabinet at hypocrisydemocracy.net.
“Generous individuals” don’t usually need a contract clause to stay generous in private.
The blue costume: donor ethics, newly discovered
Democratic lawmakers have called the ballroom fundraising secretive and potentially transactional, and the administration has rebuffed their demands for details, per the Post. Fair. Now read the 2015 file. The Clinton Foundation accepted millions from seven foreign governments while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, including a $500,000 gift from Algeria that broke the foundation’s ethics agreement with the Obama administration, The Washington Post reported. The foundation said it posted the gift publicly and sent the money to Haiti relief, per CNN. Different scale, more disclosure. Same instinct: a cause with a famous name, donors with interests before the government, and a party telling you not to connect the dots.
The donor class doesn’t have a party. It has a calendar. Before her $2.5 million ballroom pledge, the Herrera daughter’s only prior political donation was $20 to Pete Buttigieg, according to a Campaign Legal Center complaint cited by the Post. Several companies on this list also run PACs that give to both parties; follow that money on PACTracker and the Money Trail.
Hillary Clinton’s official secretary of state portrait. In 2015 the Clinton Foundation acknowledged a 2010 Algerian government gift that skipped a required State Department ethics review. Credit: U.S. Department of State, public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Both costumes
Here’s the adult version.
Trump promised to pay and let his friends chip in. The list shows the friends paid and he didn’t. The Post shows timelines, not proof of a trade, and the donors deny any link. Democrats are right to want the names, and they would be more convincing if they had wanted them as badly in 2015.
Own the boring standard: any gift to a White House project gets disclosed with name, amount and date, no anonymity for donors with business pending before the government, and the rule applies to the next Democratic president too.
Ask your reps one question: will they write that disclosure law now, while it would bind the other side, and keep it when it binds theirs?
Receipts
- The Washington Post (O’Connell, Blaskey, Schaffer), Oct. 15, 2026. Donor spreadsheet; 67 gifts over $10,000; $333 million; at least $77 million anonymous; Trump absent; about half from federal contractors; Nvidia, Ergen, Salesforce, Herrera timelines; Trust anonymity clause; Ingle statement; $600 million projection. Full text read via The Seattle Times syndication.
- CNBC, Oct. 15, 2026. Nvidia and Cisco confirm donations; Cisco and ServiceNow confirm $5 million each; Nvidia statement.
- The Washington Post, Feb. 25, 2015. Seven foreign governments gave to the Clinton Foundation during Clinton’s State tenure; one gift broke the ethics agreement.
- CNN, Feb. 26, 2015. Foundation acknowledges the $500,000 Algeria gift skipped review; says it was posted publicly and went to Haiti aid.
- Earlier Hypocrisy Democracy: Not Personally Profiting; The swamp takes crypto. Reader tools: The Cabinet; PACTracker; Money Trail.
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Originally published on Substack.
