Trump’s White House Ballroom Vanity Project Was Built on a Secret $500 Million No-Bid Contract

Trump has insisted, repeatedly and publicly, that his East Wing ballroom project wouldn’t cost taxpayers a single cent. It turns out that the White House quietly steered the half-billion-dollar construction deal to a favored contractor through an office specifically exempt from the competitive-bidding rules that normally protect taxpayers from getting overcharged.

What’s more, Trump personally haggled over line items!

The Washington Post has the scoop, but it’s paywalled. This Daily Beast write-up relies on the Post’s reporting:

Officials steered the $500 million agreement with Clark Construction through the Executive Residence, an arm of the Executive Office of the President that ordinarily buys furniture and art, covers entertainment, and handles repairs at the mansion. … That office sits outside federal rules that require agencies to seek competing offers and to lay out spending publicly. Structuring the deal this way allowed Trump to dodge scrutiny of the arrangement and avoid exposing it to competition.

Trump, 80, got personally involved in the haggling, records show. On March 4—days after launching his war with Iran—he talked down what a Clark subsidiary would charge for concrete, trimming $2.3 million from an opening figure above $47 million. ...

A White House official told the Post the deal ran through the Executive Residence because that office “will be the primary support of the facility,” adding the Executive Office of the President “consistently executes contracts following the law.” ... Joshua Fisher, who directs the White House Office of Administration, said that bids were skipped because disclosing the project’s needs would “compromise national security,” echoing the president’s repeated efforts to cast the rebuild as a defense concern.

“I would certainly expect them to compete a project of this size and complexity,” [said] Anthony Costa, a former General Services Administration official who handled federal real estate work across four administrations.

Skipping competitive bidding is how governments overpay for things. That’s precisely why the rule exists. Doing it in secret, through an office designed to be exempt from scrutiny, for a vanity project the president promised the public they wouldn’t have to pay for themselves, has all the hallmarks of Trump’s particular blend of self-aggrandizement and self-dealing.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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