Battling Trump’s Pay-to-Play White House Ballroom Scheme
President Trump collected hundreds of millions of dollars from corporations and billionaires for his White House Ballroom Project through a circuitous corruption scheme involving a tax-exempt charity and two government agencies.
A Public Citizen report found that over two dozen corporate donors backing the ballroom project benefited from nearly $43 billion in contracts last year and $279 billion over the last five years, raising major concerns about corruption and pay-to-play.
Through a lawsuit, protests, deep-dive research, dedicated advocacy, and a drumbeat of persistent public pressure, Public Citizen has led the charge to expose Trump’s Ballroom Project as the corrupt vanity project it is. We’ll never stop fighting to save the People’s House from being used as a prop in Trump’s ballroom shakedown scheme.
Exposing Conflicts-Of-Interest
When high-level government officials have financial connections, professional links, or personal ties to corporate contractors, lobbyists, or favor-seekers, it creates a cloud of questions about who those officials are really working for. Us or Themselves?
Public Citizen was the first to reveal that White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Attorney General Pam Bondi had extensive records as corporate lobbyists for a litany of controversial clients that then could – and in fact did – lobby the agencies they led.
When documents revealed that a high-ranking Department of Homeland Security official’s spouse ran a company benefiting from a government contract with her office, Public Citizen exposed the conflict and led the charge to force the official to resign.
Shining Sunlight on Dark Money
Secretive SuperPACs construct elaborate schemes to hide the true identities of their funders from voters until after Election Day. This prevents voters from knowing who’s really behind these campaign ads, making it difficult to evaluate the credibility of an election ad’s claims.
Public Citizen has led the charge to shine a spotlight on the funders behind shady SuperPACs. Our groundbreaking report “Unmasking Musk: Inside the Scheme to Hide Elon Musk’s $20 Million Spending on ‘RBG PAC’ Campaign Ads From Voters Until After The Election” unraveled the scheme to conceal Musk’s funding of the so-called “RBG PAC” from voters until after the 2024 election. This secretive SuperPAC engaged in an elaborate scheme to exploit a loophole in federal campaign finance law to hide $20 million in funding from Musk until after the election so it could use Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s name and image in a digital ad campaign to persuade women voters in four swing states to believe that Trump’s and Ginsburg’s opposing positions on abortion, a key issue in the 2024 election, were “alike.”
Now, Public Citizen is working to persuade Congress to enact a national “Sunlight On Dark Money Law” modeled on successful state laws that require on-ad labeling with the names of the top three funders of secretive SuperPACs. Voters deserve to know who’s really behind these ads so they are empowered to assess the merits of the ads claims for themselves.