Big Tech Urged to Donate to Trump’s East Wing Ballroom Project

The giant hole in the White House left by construction crews this week could be a metaphor for something bigger, one lawmaker said: the erosion of public trust.

The East Wing of the White House was demolished Monday to make way for President Donald Trump’s new 90,000-square-foot ballroom. The president says the project will cost more than $300 million, funded by corporate donations.

Mississippi Rep. Bennie G. Thompson is now demanding answers from these companies.

“It looks like you’re tearing down an abandoned building and you see the citadel of democracy being bulldozed,” Thompson told Business Insider.

In a letter sent Friday, Thompson demanded that more than 20 companies share information, including how much they donated and whether they were promised anything in return.

“Today there is a gaping hole on the White House side, and no one at the White House has been honest with the American people about construction plans or costs,” said a letter to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. “You owe the Americans an explanation.”

Thompson said the Trump administration circumvented the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. Presidents who want to renovate the White House typically submit plans to a commission and hold forums for historians, citizens and experts to give feedback on the project’s results, he said.

“This obviously did not occur before demolition began,” Thompson said in the letter. Construction began while the federal government remained closed.

Thompson gave the companies until Nov. 7 to respond to his questions, which also include a request for a list of all current federal contracts they hold.

“I think for most of the information we’re asking for, they would have asked the same questions before agreeing to give money,” he told Business Insider.

The White House this week released the list of donors contributing to the project.

It includes Amazon, Apple, Google, Coinbase, Comcast Corporation, Lockheed Martin, Meta, Microsoft, Palantir and several other notable companies. Some of these companies also made donations to Trump’s 2024 inauguration fund, including $1 million in contributions from Meta and Amazon.

YouTube’s parent company, Alphabet, contributed more than $20 million to the ballroom project as part of a legal settlement following the suspension of Trump’s account, according to court filings. The donation was made in Trump’s name to the Trust for the National Mall, a nonprofit entity dedicated to the restoration and preservation of the National Mall.

Trump initially said the ballroom project would not affect the current building.

“It will be close, but not touching, and it will totally respect the existing building, which I am the biggest fan of,” he told reporters in July.

A construction crew, however, began demolishing the East Wing on Monday, two days before Trump told reporters that the cost of the project had increased to $300 million, up from the previously estimated $200 million.

Thompson said his office has not yet received a response to the letter, but hopes to receive it in the coming week.

“I don’t know of any other symbol of this great democracy than the White House, so if you’re going to put money into any project for that symbol, then the process has to be public,” Thompson told Business Insider.

Read the letter in full below: