WASHINGTON — Companies hoping for favorable outcomes from the Trump administration have pledged to give at least $63 million to Donald Trump’s future presidential library, according to a new analysis from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
Beyond that, other promised gifts and in-kind donations from special interest groups bring the total value of gifts pouring into Trump’s future library to at least half a billion dollars.
“The timing of these donations – coming while Trump sits in office and makes critical decisions that may impact the same donors – raises serious ethical concerns about potential bribery and Influence-peddling,” reads Warren’s report, first obtained by HuffPost. “Many of the gifts came in the form of settlements to Trump-filed lawsuits.”
The Massachusetts senator is only spotlighting the known gifts and money being pledged for Trump’s library; it’s possible there are other companies promising donations that aren’t yet public. But her report marks the first time that all of the known money and gifts flowing into the president’s future library are laid out in one place.
There are virtually no restrictions on donations to presidential libraries. U.S. presidents have been setting up libraries for themselves since the 1930s to honor their legacies once they’re out of office and to let the public learn about what they did.
What sets Trump apart from his predecessors, as Warren notes, is the magnitude of questionable donations he’s been taking while in office.
Paramount, for one, is donating $16 million to Trump’s future presidential library as part of a settlement over a “60 Minutes” segment. Lawyers had dismissed Trump’s lawsuit as baseless, but Paramount agreed to this settlement as it’s been trying to complete a multibillion-dollar merger with the Hollywood studio Skydance, a deal that requires the Trump administration’s sign-off.
Meta is donating $22 million to Trump’s library. Trump previously sued the company for banning his Facebook and Instagram accounts after he incited an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. But since Trump won reelection in 2024, the company’s owner, Mark Zuckerberg, has been blatantly sucking up to him. Zuckerberg gave $1 million to Trump’s inauguration and even attended the ceremony, sitting with some of Trump’s Cabinet members. Zuckerberg has also rolled back content moderation rules on his company’s platforms.
ABC News is donating $15 million to Trump’s library after settling a defamation suit with him. Several media lawyers believed ABC News had a strong case, but the media company settled in late 2024, just before Trump’s second term began. ABC News obviously wants access to his administration for its reporting, and its parent company, Disney, has a lot of business interests that may require review by the Trump administration.
Even X, the social media platform owned by Trump’s ex-buddy Elon Musk, is giving $10 million to his future library. Like Zuckerberg, Musk settled a lawsuit with Trump after previously banning him from the platform over the Jan. 6 insurrection. His companies Tesla and SpaceX have tens of billions of dollars in federal contracts that Trump could end.
Beyond all the corporate settlements pouring in from media entities, companies like Instant Pot and Lenox Corporation have pledged to donate all proceeds from their Trump-themed merchandise to the president’s future library.
There’s even a foreign government promising gifts: The Qatari government is donating a $400 million jet that will later be transferred to Trump’s library. Why would Qatar care about a U.S. president’s future library? Maybe because it’s hoping the Trump administration will preserve the U.S. military base in the country, which Qatar has spent billions developing.
You can read Warren’s full report here.
“We could be seeing giant companies like Paramount and Meta and foreign countries like Qatar pay Trump off in plain sight,” the senator said in a statement to HuffPost. “Government should work for the American people, not just whichever giant company or foreign government can dump the most money into the president’s future library.”