Law, Power, and Justice

www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/12/22/us/politics/trump-donors-fundraising-benefits.html

The president’s team has created a highly unusual fund-raising apparatus for causes he favors. The Times analyzed more than half a billion dollars in contributions from 346 donors. Some have received pardons, jobs, access to the president and other valuable gains.

Since President Trump was elected a second time, he and his allies have raised nearly $2 billion for his favored political causes and passion projects. That total, which was confirmed by four people involved in the fund-raising, likely eclipses the amount raised to support his 2024 campaign.

The astounding haul hints at a level of transactionalism for which it is difficult to find obvious comparisons in modern American history. The identities of the donors behind much of the cash are not legally required to be, and have not been, publicly disclosed. In some cases, Mr. Trump’s team has offered donors anonymity.

To shed light on what has been a largely opaque fund-raising apparatus, The New York Times conducted a comprehensive investigation. It relied on previously unreported documents and public campaign finance filings, as well as interviews with dozens of people who are familiar with the solicitations or are involved in the fund-raising. It traced a large portion of the funds raised — more than half a billion dollars’ worth — back to 346 donors who each gave at least $250,000. It also found that more than half of them have benefited, or are involved in an industry that has benefited, from the actions or statements of Mr. Trump, the White House or federal agencies.

It is not possible to prove that any of the donations directly led to favorable treatment from the Trump administration. And the contributions do not personally enrich Mr. Trump, unlike some of his family’s cryptocurrency ventures.

But many of the deep-pocketed individuals and corporations who have given large sums have a lot riding on the administration’s actions, raising questions about conflicts of interest.

One $2.5 million contribution to MAGA Inc. was given by a South Florida woman whose father months later received an unusually lenient dealfrom top Justice Department officials to settle charges that he bribed Puerto Rico’s then-governor in 2020.

Another $2.5 million pledged donation — this one to Mr. Trump’s White House ballroom project — came from Parsons Corporation, an engineering firm that has won government contracts for years, including under Mr. Trump, and is jockeying for some of the more than $1 trillion in contracts that could be awarded to build a missile defense system proposed by the president called the “Golden Dome.” Also giving $2.5 million to the ballroom project was 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.

A couple who donated $1 million to Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee and $500,000 to MAGA Inc., as well as an undisclosed amount to the ballroom fund, saw Mr. Trump nominate their son to be U.S. ambassador to Finland.

And a company that was accused last year by the Justice Department of colluding over ticket pricesdonated $250,000 to Mr. Trump’s inauguration. The president pardoned the company’s co-founder in a separate case this month.

In other cases, The Times was able to quantify large donations for which the amounts were previously unknown. Those included gifts from the technology firm Palantir, which donated $10 million to the ballroom project and $5 million to America250. Additionally, the Palantir co-founder Alex Karp donated $1 million each to the inauguration and to MAGA Inc. In Mr. Trump’s second term, Palantir has secured federal contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars, including to develop software to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement deport people. But a Palantir official said in a previously unpublished response to an inquiry from Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, that the company did not seek and was not offered any special consideration for its donation to the ballroom project.

While a foundation funded by Miriam Adelson, a casino magnate, mostly supports Jewish and Israeli causes, it pledged to donate $25 million to the ballroom project, according to two people familiar with the donation. In a speech at a White House Hanukkah party last week, Mr. Trump praised Dr. Adelson, a physician by training, for donating tens of millions of dollars to help his campaigns and using her access to lobby for greater U.S. backing for Israel. Calling her to the lectern, Mr. Trump said, “When somebody can give you $250 million, I think that we should give her the opportunity to say hello.” The two embraced and bantered about how Dr. Adelson would be willing to donate $250 million more to help Mr. Trump seek an unconstitutional third term.

Extremity Care, a company that makes a pricey form of bandages known as skin substitutes, donated $5 million to MAGA Inc. An executive from the company then attended a donor dinner in March at Mar-a-Lago where he lobbied Mr. Trump, whose administration announced the next month that it would delay a Biden-era plan to limit Medicare’s coverage of the bandages. Extremity Care or one of its affiliates subsequently donated $2.5 million to the ballroom.

And Mr. Trump has entered into deals with a number of drug makers, including several that donated to groups he supports, to lower prices in exchange for avoiding punitive measures including threatened tariffs.

In two instances, Mr. Trump pardoned people whose companies or families made donations.

In January, amid scrutiny from the Justice Department’s antitrust division, which had identified — but not charged — the venue management company Oak View Group in a lawsuit against Ticketmaster’s parent company, Oak View donated $250,000 to Mr. Trump’s inauguration.

The donation did not eliminate legal exposure for Oak View’s co-founder and then-chief executive, Timothy J. Leiweke. Months later, the antitrust division charged him in an unrelated case. He stepped down as head of Oak View, and the company agreed to pay $15 million in penalties. Mr. Leiweke pleaded not guilty. But this month, before the case went to trial, Mr. Trump pardoned him.

David B. Gerger, a lawyer for Mr. Leiweke, rejected a question about whether the donation was intended to avoid legal trouble.

“Any such innuendo — whether coming from ill will or just ignorance — is false,” he said in a statement.

In another case, the former health care entrepreneur Elizabeth Fago, after donating $1 million to MAGA Inc., attended a donor dinner with the president. Mr. Trump pardoned her son, Paul Walczak, less than three weeks later, sparing him from having to pay nearly $4.4 million in restitution and from reporting to prison for an 18-month sentence for employment tax crimes.

Another donor with an interest in the outcome of a criminal case was Isabela Herrera, who donated $2.5 million to MAGA Inc. late last year. At the time, her father, Julio Herrera Velutini, a Venezuelan-Italian banker, was being prosecuted by the Justice Department for trying to bribe the governor of Puerto Rico.

Mr. Herrera hired a former personal lawyer for Mr. Trump, who alleged that the case was an example of the political weaponization of the criminal justice system. Top Justice Department officials appeared to agree, authorizing a misdemeanor plea deal to settle the case and overruling career prosecutors who had pushed for a harsher sentence.

Mr. Herrera could still face a year in prison at sentencing, which is scheduled for next month.

Ms. Herrera and a lawyer for Mr. Herrera declined to comment.

A Justice Department spokeswoman said “the decision to settle this case was made through the proper channels and was not influenced by any donation to MAGA Inc.”

But John D. Keller, who oversaw the Justice Department division that handled the case, said in an interview that the difference between the deal and the more than 20 years Mr. Herrera could have faced if convicted of the original charges was “striking.” Mr. Keller, who resigned in protest when he was directed by Mr. Trump’s appointees to drop another politically fraught prosecution, said the Herrera case “appears to be another example of political considerations dictating the outcome in an individual criminal case.”

A broader relaxation of federal scrutiny has benefited cryptocurrency companies and other corporate interests that have showered donations on Mr. Trump’s groups.

The Securities and Exchange Commission largely abandoned its hard-line approach to crypto trading platforms, ending lawsuits against Coinbase, Kraken and Ripple after the companies each donated $1 million or more to Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee, and ending an investigation into Robinhood after it donated $2 million to the committee. Coinbase and Ripple also donated to the ballroom, while Coinbase gave to America250.

A spokesman for the S.E.C. said that “politics have had nothing to do with S.E.C. actions” on the cases. “Decisions on these cases turn on long held publicly expressed legal and policy views,” he added.