Demolition of a conception of the East Wing of the White House, during operation connected the caller ballroom hold of the White House successful Washington, DC, US, connected Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2025.
Aaron Schartz | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Tech elephantine Alphabet is contributing $22 cardinal to assistance physique the White House ballroom nether a ineligible settlement reached with President Donald Trump past period implicit his being banned from the company's YouTube level aft the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot by his supporters.
Images showing the demolition of portion of the White House's East Wing to hole for gathering the ballroom plans triggered nationalist choler this week.
The demolition work has raised questions astir who is footing the measure for the planned $250 million, 90,000 square-foot building.
The Google genitor Alphabet's publication successful the signifier of the settlement, which was recorded successful Oakland, California, national court, represents astir 10% of the estimated operation costs.
The colony notes that the $22 cardinal volition beryllium contributed connected Trump's behalf "to the Trust for the National Mall, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt entity dedicated to restoring, preserving, and elevating the National Mall, to enactment the operation of the White House State Ballroom."
Trump, who successful July promised that the East Wing's operation would not beryllium touched to physique the ballroom, has promised that American taxpayers volition not wage for the ballroom.
Trump has said that helium and backstage donors volition screen the costs.
But it is inactive unclear who each the different contributors are and however overmuch they person agreed to wage for the ballroom's construction.
A demolition unit takes isolated the facade of the East Wing of the White House, wherever U.S. President Donald Trump's projected ballroom is being built, successful Washington, D.C., October 21, 2025.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
In July, Trump promised operation of the ballroom "won't interfere with the existent building."
"It'll beryllium adjacent it but not touching it, and pays full respect to the existing building, which I'm the biggest instrumentality of," Trump said of the East Wing astatine the time.
The Treasury Department banned its unit from sharing photos of the East Wing, saying this would airs a imaginable information risk. The section is located adjacent to the White House with a wide presumption of the demolition work.
The White House has dismissed the choler arsenic "manufactured outrage."
Comcast, the existent genitor institution of CNBC, was connected a database of apical donors to the ballroom. It is not wide however overmuch Comcast is contributing. CNBC volition rotation disconnected from Comcast earlier the extremity of this twelvemonth nether a caller genitor institution Versant.
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