Trump’s ballroom fundraising is an ethical disaster

Months after President Donald Trump’s massive White House ballroom project began, we only know a handful of the donors funding it. There has never been a full list made available of exactly who’s helping to cover the estimated $400 million price tag and how much each donor has pledged. But a newly revealed contract explains why it has been so hard to pierce the veil of secrecy the White House has maintained.

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The donors forking over the cash for the ballroom, including corporate titans such as Amazon, Google and Comcast, are not giving that money directly to the federal government. Instead, they are contributing to a nonprofit group, the Trust for the National Mall, which is passing the hat on behalf of Trump and the National Parks Service. A Freedom of Information Act request from Public Citizen resulted in the nonprofit group obtaining a copy of the contract between the White House, NPS and the Trust for the National Mall, governing how the collaboration works. Public Citizen then provided the document to The Washington Post, which published it Tuesday.

At the risk of being blunt, the contract covering the ballroom donations is extremely shady. Like the rest of the project, the deal was signed quickly and quietly, less than two weeks before wrecking crews began tearing down the East Wing in October. And as the Post noted, there are details within the terms that jump out immediately as red flags:

“The contract resembles templates used by the Park Service for more routine fundraising partnerships — with several notable differences: Provisions peppered throughout the agreement prevent the signatories from revealing the identities of anonymous donors, and a review process for detecting conflicts of interest with the Park Service and Interior Department makes no mention of doing the same for the president, other White House officials or the 14 other executive departments he oversees.”

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The boilerplate provisions about the need to follow applicable laws are much less specific and stringent than the ones protecting donors from being identified — likely a reflection of the White House’s priorities. Taken together, the contract functions as a blanket nondisclosure agreement for anonymous donors that only the White House can approve breaking. And it makes it so that donors who would seek to curry favor with Trump can shovel cash toward his pet project with no fear of exposure.

The clearest loophole for potential corruption is the section that tasks the White House’s with identifying “ potential donors for the Project” and referring those donors to the Trust for the National Mall, “including whether the potential donor wishes to donate anonymously.” The provisions requiring a review of whether donations would entail a conflict of interest only cover the Trust for the National Mall and NPS. The White House and any other federal agency, like, say, the Department of Justice, are exempt. A company that wants Environmental Protection Agency regulations overturned, say, could easily be cleared to throw money at the Trump administration in hopes of boosting the chances of success.