Trump Tries to Keep Ballroom Donor Contract Under Shield of Anonymity — But Why?

The grand ballroom planned by President Donald Trump to grace the White House grounds has been nothing but controversial since the beginning. Ever since he announced plans to demolish the East Wing of the residence and replace it with an outsized ballroom with all the gold fixings, people have been aghast.

They've also been curious about who exactly is bankrolling this vanity project.

Since the start, Trump has claimed that there was a donor covering costs of construction. He has gone so far as to hide the donor contract under a shroud of anonymity, raising even more questions and ringing a few alarm bells. Here's what we know about who might be paying for the ballroom and why Trump is so determined to keep it under wraps.

The mystery surrounding the funding for the ballroom project has raised more than a few eyebrows ever since Trump first announced the plans.

A 14-page contract was signed two weeks before bulldozers showed up to knock down the East Wing. What was in that contract remained secret until advocacy group Public Citizen made a request for transparency via lawsuit.

Wendy Liu, Public Citizen’s lead attorney on the lawsuit, told USA Today, "The Trump Administration’s failure to disclose this contract was flatly unlawful. The American people are entitled to transparency over this multi-million-dollar project, and this win gets us a bit closer to knowing the truth."

It's unclear who many of the donors are, but among those known are Amazon, Meta, Lockheed Martin, Palantir and Google, all of whom have contracts with the government under Trump.

Jon Golinger, an advocate working with Public Citizen, said of the contract, "This document reveals that anonymous donations are the heart of this agreement. The questions this raises are, of the hundreds of millions being funneled in secret, who are these anonymous donors, and what are they hiding? The American people deserve answers, and we’ll keep fighting until they get them."

The question as to "why" Trump wants to keep the donors under wraps is anyone's guess. It could be as simple as the donors requested to be kept secret out of fear of public retribution. Or there could be some more complex motive, which advocates worry could mean corporations and individuals are currying favor with the administration via donation.

Of course, this only matters if the ballroom actually gets built.

In March, a judge halted construction on the new ballroom after a lawsuit challenged Trump's authority to alter the White House grounds without an approval process.

Per the Guardian, that judge eventually allowed the administration to continue construction on below-ground facilities due to national security concerns. It is expected that a sprawling security bunker will reside under the ballroom. But for the time being, they're still deciding on the above-ground facilities.

Which means that anything could happen with the ballroom's future.