Senate Democrats are asking the nonprofit group that is managing donations to the White House ballroom to explain how much money has been raised and whether donors have been promised any special access or influence in exchange for supporting the estimated $400 million project, a top priority of President Donald Trump.
“You owe Congress and the public answers about your role in managing funds for President Trump’s ballroom,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) and colleagues wrote in a letter Tuesday to the Trust for the National Mall that was shared with The Washington Post. The lawmakers gave the group two weeks to respond.
Democrats say limited public disclosure has made it impossible to assess whether safeguards are in place to prevent donors from gaining access or influence through the project. The concerns are heightened, they argue, by Trump’s personal involvement in both the project’s design and fundraising.
The White House has said private donors will entirely cover the ballroom addition’s cost but has declined to share basic details about the value of those gifts, or whether donors were offered meetings, access or other consideration in return. Publicly identified donors, such as Amazon, Google and Lockheed Martin, collectively have billions of dollars in contracts before the administration. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
The Trust for the National Mall, which has managed past fundraising campaigns to restore the Washington Monument and other projects, has largely referred questions to the White House and the National Park Service since its role in the ballroom project was announced last year. The group also is expected to retain a small percentage — about 2.5 percent — of donations to the ballroom project for its own use, Democrats wrote. The Trust did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Administration officials have said the Trust could receive hundreds of millions of dollars in donations tied to the ballroom project, placing the group at the center of a fundraising effort unlike any it has previously managed.
Trump administration officials have shared few details about the project, the most significant change to the White House grounds in decades, including the building’s final design. The lack of disclosure has also drawn legal scrutiny. Historic preservationists last month sued the Trump administration, arguing that the ballroom construction is illegal because the project did not undergo required review by two federal panels and Congress did not appropriate funding. The White House has denied the allegations. A hearing in the case is tentatively scheduled for Jan. 29 in U.S. District Court in Washington.
Trump administration officials made their first public presentation on the ballroom Thursday, justifying their rapid teardown of the White House’s East Wing annex last fall as a financial decision.
“The cost analysis proved that demolition and reconstruction provided the lowest total cost ownership and most effective long-term strategy,” Joshua Fisher, a senior White House official who is helping manage the project, said at a meeting of the National Capital Planning Commission, a review board set to weigh in on the ballroom’s design.
Trump has also steadily increased the project’s planned seating capacity and estimated cost since announcing the ballroom in July. Officials now say the ballroom will seat about 1,000 people.
“I started off with a building half of the seats … and then it just kept growing and growing, and the money kept pouring in and pouring in,” the president told the New York Times last week, adding that he would make the ballroom “bigger” if he could.
Shalom Baranes, the architect Trump tapped to lead the project, told the National Capital Planning Commission last week that the ballroom would not grow further.
In their letter to the Trust for the National Mall, Warren and her colleagues asked the group to explain whether it has internal controls or has undertaken other steps to ensure that donors are not given preferential treatment by the Trump administration.
“This leaves open the question of whether the Trust is being misused to facilitate special-interest access and influence,” the senators wrote. They also asked whether Meredith O’Rourke, a longtime Trump fundraiser who has been coordinating donations, is employed by the Trust or otherwise affiliated with the group. O’Rourke did not immediately respond to questions about her role with the Trust.
Warren’s office also shared letters the senator received from companies that have donated to the project, which offered varied explanations for how they expected their gift to be used. Comcast, for instance, said its donation “included no specific limitations or conditions,” while Microsoft said its gift would go toward construction. Trump has also said several companies have pledged to cover specific aspects of the project, such as Carrier offering to cover an estimated $17 million in air conditioning and heating costs.
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