A Secret Contract to Build a Ballroom

May 4, 2026

uJonathan Edwards and Dan Diamd report in The Washington Post about the secret contract governing the private donations that are funding the President’s $400 million (so far) ballroom project. It’s good reporting. They tell us what’s in the contract. The highlights are that the public does not get to learn who the identity of the donors and that the document excludes the President, White House officials and fourteen executives departments that the President oversees from a review process designed to uncover conflicts of interest. We learned this much only because Public Citizen sued, and a court ordered that the contract be made public.

The Post provides the additional information that the contract was executed two weeks before demolition began on the White House’s East Wing. That demolition was planned for two months but those plans were not made public.

I suspect that this is a pay-to-play scenario. Private entities, both foreign and domestic, contribute to the President’s pet projects. In return, they get favorable treatment or government contracts, and the government doesn’t even bother trying to hide it. Here are some slightly edited excerpts from a recent post on Tangle, a news site that tries to present views from across our political divide:

By December of 2025, [Trump and his family] had profited roughly $1 billion from proceeds while holding $3 billion in unsold cryptocurrency tokens, amassing a fortune larger than their entire real estate portfolio. At the same time the president was pushing his family’s new crypto venture, he was cutting crypto regulation, touting the potential of private digital currencies to help the U.S. economy, and promising to unleash the industry he and his family were simultaneously profiting from.
Justin Sun, a crypto billionaire who was being investigated by the SEC for fraud … bought $75 million of [the Trump family’s] WLFI — the World Liberty Financial coin — and then became an adviser at the company. Shortly after that investment, the SEC backed off its investigation and settled with him for $10 million, a small fraction of the expected penalties he was set to pay (on top of potential prison time).
Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance, was pardoned by President Trump shortly after Zhao helped boost WLFI’s prominence by allowing the currency to be traded on the crypto exchange Binance, which Zhao started. After the pardon, Zhao became one of the Trumps’ business partners, boosting the family’s crypto empire while skating serious charges that he allowed money to flow to terrorists, cyber criminals, and child abusers on his platform.
Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the brother of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) president and one of the most powerful politicians in the Middle East . . . stewards an empire of wealth worth roughly $1.5 trillion, and a firm closely tied to him secretly signed a deal for a 49% stake in WLFI worth $500 million — including $187 million paid upfront to Trump family entities just days before Trump’s inauguration. Shortly after Trump took office, the administration undid a national security block that would have prevented the UAE from getting up to 500,000 advanced Nvidia AI chips.
The crypto industry as a whole was a top donor to Trump’s 2025 inauguration fund, and the SEC then dropped or paused over a dozen cases against crypto firms, or simply handed them huge access to government-directed crypto entities. . . . Coinbase donated $1 million; its lawsuit was dropped. Ripple ($4.9 million) and Solana ($1 million) had their tokens added to the national Digital Asset Stockpile.
Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, is now representing the U.S. in the Middle East as a negotiator . . . . He also operates Affinity Partners, a private equity firm that received $2 billion from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund in 2022.
The Saudis were also hosting their international golf tournament at Trump’s Doral and Bedminster properties while Trump was approving a nearly $142 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia, ignoring concerns from his own Pentagon about selling them F-35 fighter jets. . . . Even more, the Trump organization is partnering with the Saudis on Trump Tower Jeddah and other Saudi real estate developments.
Then there’s Qatar, which offered Trump a $400 million luxury airplane to be used as Air Force One while simultaneously making investments in his crypto venture — all culminating in favorable U.S. arms sales worth $1.96 billion in March of 2026.
Eric Trump, went on Fox News and graciously received congratulations about his own company receiving a $24 million Pentagon contract.
Trump sons had taken a stake in the Kazakh mining company that just won a $1.6 billion contract from the Trump administration.
[T]he U.S. Air Force [has agreed] to buy an undisclosed number of interceptor drones from a company backed by President Trump’s sons.
Donald Trump Jr. [is] investing in and advising the gambling and prediction market companies Kalshi and Polymarket.
Trump took roughly $50 million for his inauguration fund from organizations facing federal enforcement action, including Bank of America, Capital One, JPMorgan, and Toyota. Each of those companies was facing federal investigations that were either paused or frozen in the wake of the donations. Apple donated $1 million to the fund, then Trump exempted Apple products (manufactured in China) from tariffs — a decision that likely saved the company billions of dollars.
Jeff Bezos, owner of The Washington Post and founder of Amazon, agreed to finance a promotional film about Melania Trump’s life that netted her an estimated $28 million. This, along with the Post’s editorial board taking on a more conservative bent, appears to have yielded some results — now Trump is openly musing about rebooting The Apprentice on Amazon, with Don Jr. as the star.

The Washington Post also provides the actual contract, which makes for interesting reading. This agreement is a version of a standard National Park Service (NPS) agreement. The NPS has reasons to rely on private donations. It has no reason to keep those donations anonymous; hence the revisions.