Despite repeatedly promising that his White House ballroom project would be funded entirely by private donations, President Donald Trump‘s administration has quietly redirected $352 million in federal funds, a money which is originally set aside for the Secret Service towards the his controversial construction project.
What the record shows
According to The Guardian, the funds were drawn from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Trump’s signature tax legislation passed last summer on Republican-only votes. The law stipulates the money may only be spent on Secret Service personnel, training facilities, technology and related costs and not construction.
About $340.8 million of the funding was placed into an account labeled “Procurement, Construction, and Improvements” on June 12, according to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) database, with another $10.75 million approved the same day under an “Operations and Support” account, per The Guardian.
This came after Congress explicitly refused to provide $1 billion in funds for the “East Wing Modernization Project”, which is Trump’s administration’s official name for a 90,000-sq-ft ballroom being built on the site of the White House’s demolished East Wing.
According to The Washington Post, internal records from Clark Construction, the firm leading the project, show plans calling for $155 million from Secret Service funds, $149 million from the White House Military Office, and $3 million from the executive residence which is all public money, alongside private contributions. And total costs could reach $600 million.
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What Trump said and what the numbers say
Trump’s own words have shifted significantly as costs have ballooned. When the ballroom was announced in July 2025 at an estimated cost of $200 million, Trump described it as “a private thing.”
By late March, with estimates doubling to $400 million, Trump insisted: “This is taxpayer-free. We have no taxpayer putting up 10 cents.”
The transfer of Secret Service funds, which is equal to more than 10 percent of the agency’s annual budget in recent years comes as Trump has repeatedly claimed the project will cost $400 million and be funded entirely by private donors, according to The Washington Post. The March budget estimates obtained by The Post show that $155 million for the project was expected to come from the Secret Service alone, with most of the remaining public funding projected to come from the White House Military Office.
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The private fundraising side has drawn its own scrutiny. Watchdogs including the Campaign Legal Center have warned that donations from major corporations such as Meta, Coinbase, and Lockheed Martin, all of which have significant interests before the US federal government create a substantial risk of corruption, per The Guardian.
Senior legislators have raised alarms. Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina, told Notus: “That’s a big problem. That sounds like a different way to fund the East Wing project. On its face it doesn’t sound right.” Democratic Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii told the same outlet: “I don’t know whether it’s the ballroom, but it sounds like the ballroom.”
