White House Invitees Are Asked About Donations to Trump’s Ballroom

Senator Richard Blumenthal is requesting information from an architect hired to oversee the ballroom design and people invited to a donor dinner with the president.

Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut wants to know who is funding President Trump’s White House ballroom project, how much it is going to cost and what it is going to look like.

Mr. Blumenthal, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, sent a raft of letters on Monday seeking information from people who were reportedly invited to a White House dinner for donors to the ballroom project.

He also sent a letter requesting design plans and cost estimates from an architect who was hired recently to oversee the project after Mr. Trump had clashed with the original designer over the size and scope of the ballroom on a short timeline.

As the cost and scale of the project have expanded, so too have concerns about preserving a historically significant building and potential conflicts of interest related to Mr. Trump’s ability to use the levers of government to help the people and corporations who are financing the project.

When he announced the ballroom in July, Mr. Trump estimated that it would cost $200 million and would be able to host events for about 650 people, while claiming that it would not touch the existing structure and boasting that it would be paid for by private donors.

In October, he demolished the East Wing of the building entirely to make way for a 90,000-square-foot ballroom that could seat more than 1,000 people and that he said would cost $300 million.

And last week, he announced that the price tag had risen again, this time to $400 million.

The Trump administration, facing a lawsuit to block the project, last week told a federal judge that it would submit plans for review by the end of the month to two oversight bodies established by Congress, the National Capital Planning Commission and the Commission of Fine Arts. The judge allowed the work to continue.

But in his letter to the architect, Mr. Blumenthal referred to “growing concerns” about the project and asserted that “the American people are entitled to all the relevant facts about the most substantial renovation of the White House in recent history.”

The senator asked the new architect, Shalom Baranes, how he was selected for the project and whether he had submitted plans for approval to the White House, the National Capital Planning Commission or the Commission of Fine Arts.

Mr. Baranes and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The New York Times.

Mr. Blumenthal also sent letters to a number of people who had reportedly been invited to a dinner at the White House in October with Mr. Trump to thank donors to the project.

After the dinner, the White House in October released a list of 37 companies and individuals who it said had donated to the ballroom effort, but the list did not include the amounts of their donations and it omitted some donors entirely.

The Times had previously reported that those invited to the dinner had given or pledged $2.5 million or more to the ballroom project through the Trust for the National Mall, the nonprofit group that is processing the donations. But, The Times reported, the White House had offered donors the option of keeping their identities from the public.

In his letter seeking information from people who were invited to the dinner, Mr. Blumenthal asked whether they had donated and said there were grounds to wonder “what promises may have been or may yet be made in exchange for what presumably will be substantial contributions.”

He noted that “many of the donors have deep financial, business or other personal interests before the administration.”

The Times, in an investigation published on Monday, detailed dozens of instances in which donors to the ballroom and other projects supported by Mr. Trump benefited from actions by the president and his administration.

The investigation also revealed several previously unreported donations to the ballroom, including one from Parsons Corporation, a defense contractor.

Another came from David Baszucki, the chief executive of Roblox, a popular online video game company that has applauded a Trump executive order and other initiatives involving children’s use of artificial intelligence.

Mr. Baszucki gave $5 million to the ballroom project, he told Mr. Blumenthal in a recent meeting, according to a letter sent by the Senator to the chief executive on Monday.

In the letter, Mr. Blumenthal asked: “Was the amount of your contribution suggested to you by the president, Trump administration officials or other individuals representing or otherwise affiliated with the president or his family?”

Roblox did not respond to a request for comment about the letter on Monday.

In a statement to The Times last month, a company spokesman said that Mr. Baszucki “attended the dinner and is honored to be a part of this historic investment in the future of our nation’s capital.”

Another person to whom Mr. Blumenthal sent a letter, John P. Coale, was tapped last month by the president as U.S. special envoy for Belarus.

Mr. Coale, a lawyer, previously represented Mr. Trump in lawsuits against social media platforms, including YouTube, that had banned him in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by his supporters on the Capitol. YouTube donated $22 million to the Trust for the National Mall for the ballroom project to settle the lawsuit.

“I was invited because I got the $22 million,” Mr. Coale said in an interview with The Times of his attendance at the dinner with his wife, the television news anchor Greta Van Susteren. “The place had a lot of donors. It was a pretty big dinner.”

While Mr. Coale brushed aside as “partisan crap” any suggestion that donors to the ballroom might be currying favor with Mr. Trump, he said he would respond to Mr. Blumenthal’s letter.

John Solomon, a conservative journalist, was also sent a letter by Mr. Blumenthal. Mr. Solomon said in an interview that he had not been invited to the dinner and did not attend it.

Others to whom Mr. Blumenthal sent letters on Monday, including Parsons Corporation, did not respond to requests for comment.

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