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'Blatant Corruption': Donors Pouring $330 Million Into Trump Ballroom—and Reaping Benefits—Exposed
"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."
Oct 15, 2026
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.
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.
Companies with massive stakes in decisions before President Trump and his administration gave many millions to the White House ballroom project, which the President has made clear is important to him. So are you confident he'll make those decisions based only on what's good for the American people?
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— Noah Bookbinder (@noahbookbinder.bsky.social) October 15, 2026 at 10:43 AM
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."
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Tech Giant Nvidia Announces Largest Stock Buyback in US History as AI Profits Surge
Nvidia, led by the eighth-richest person in the world, boosted its existing buyback program by $150 billion, bringing the total to $235 billion.
Sep 28, 2026
The tech behemoth and chipmaker Nvidia on Monday announced the largest-ever stock buyback increase in US corporate history as its profits continue to explode due to massive spending on artificial intelligence data centers, which have drawn increasingly intense grassroots opposition nationwide.
Nvidia said its board "has authorized an additional $150 billion under the company’s existing share repurchase program, increasing the total remaining amount authorized to $235 billion." Jensen Huang, Nvidia's CEO and the eighth-richest person in the world, said his company's "growth is being driven by a once-in-a-generation platform shift to AI and accelerated computing," adding that Nvidia's "cash generation gives us the capacity to invest in the technologies that advance this transformation and return capital to shareholders."
Stock buybacks reduce the number of a company's shares outstanding on the public market and boosts earnings per share, typically resulting in a stock price increase and a wealth boost for shareholders and executives who receive stock-based compensation. Nvidia's stock price jumped by around 3% following Monday's announcement.
Critics argue that corporate spending on share repurchases amounts to stock price manipulation that diverts resources from more productive uses of capital, such as increasing worker pay and research and development. Buybacks, which were effectively illegal until 1982, have surged to record levels in recent years, fueled by massive tax cuts that President Donald Trump signed into law during his first White House term.
“The huge tax cuts corporations received from the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law–which were supposed to be used to increase employee pay and business investment—have instead been wasted on trillions of dollars of stock buybacks,” David Kass, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness, said in June. “Stock buybacks widen economic inequality by making already wealthy shareholders even richer."
The Financial Times noted that Nvidia's buyback increase "beats Apple’s record $110 billion, set in 2024, for the largest in US corporate history."
Nvidia is one of the chief beneficiaries of the AI data center boom that has sparked protests and sustained, bipartisan opposition across the US.
"Nvidia’s chips are the centerpiece of giant AI data centers, and demand for those chips has become a barometer of the AI boom," The New York Times reported last month. "Other technology companies have been buying tens of billions of dollars’ worth of those chips, making Nvidia the most valuable public company in the world, with a market capitalization of about $5 trillion."
Nvidia's profits more than doubled in the second quarter of 2026 compared to the previous year, surging to nearly $60 billion.
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