White House, Trump Should Release Million Dollar-a-Plate Candlelight Dinner Guest List
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The White House and President Donald Trump should release the guest list of the Million Dollar-a-Plate candlelight dinner held at his Florida estate on March 1, Public Citizen said today. Attendees could be government favor-seekers such as federal contractors or the CEOs of companies previously under investigation until the Trump administration stopped enforcement.
A Trump supporter posted a photo online showing Trump talking with dinner guests.
“This exorbitant level of payment for presidential access raises serious concerns about the possibility of corruption by candlelight,” said Jon Golinger, democracy advocate for Public Citizen. “The American people have a right to know who was there and whether the Million Dollar Dinner menu for fat cats included a deep dish of juicy government contracts, a side of tasty tax breaks, or a sweet dessert of ending investigations and enforcement actions against their companies.”
The White House Calendar of Trump’s public schedule states that on Saturday, March 1, 2025 at 7 p.m.: “The President attends the MAGA INC. Candlelight Finance Dinner” at Mar-a Lago at an event closed to the press. News reports this week revealed the Million Dollar dinner invitation from MAGA Inc. said: “You are invited to a candlelight dinner featuring special guest President Donald J. Trump . . . Additional details provided upon RSVP. RSVPs will be accommodated on a first come, first serve basis. Space is very limited. $1,000,000 per person.”
MAGA Inc., or Make America Great Again Inc., is a SuperPAC that spent nearly half a billion dollars backing Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, according to data compiled by OpenSecrets. It is seeking to raise millions more to push Trump’s agenda, according to press reports.
“This pay-to-play dinner was only possible because of Citizens United and shows how desperately we need to fix it,” Golinger added. “This dinner demolishes the fiction of independent expenditures that the Supreme Court relied on 15 years ago to justify its Citizens United decision, which abolished reasonable limits on campaign spending.”