American billionaire Charles Ergen gave Trump ballroom $25m

American billionaire Charles Ergen, the co-founder and chairman of satellite and wireless group EchoStar Corp., committed $25 million toward President Donald Trump’s new White House ballroom, according to internal donor records, matching the largest gifts from Nvidia Corp., Apple Inc. and the Adelson family, led by Miriam Adelson.

Ergen’s gift had not previously been disclosed. The records show he committed $12.5 million in December 2025 and another $12.5 million in February, and that he asked for the first donation to remain anonymous. Ergen and EchoStar declined to comment.

The documents, an internal spreadsheet used to track contributions, list the source, date and amount of all 67 donations above $10,000 recorded as of late September. They show $333 million in pledges from private donors. Other internal records show at least $77 million came from donors who asked not to be named.

The Adelson family

The Adelson family, one of the Republican Party’s largest donor dynasties, also committed $25 million, according to the records. Miriam Adelson, an Israeli-American physician, is the widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and heads the family that holds a controlling stake in casino operator Las Vegas Sands Corp. She also became the majority owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks in 2023 and was among the biggest financial backers of Trump’s 2024 campaign.

The Adelson Family Foundation appeared on a list of 37 ballroom donors the White House released in October 2025, shortly after demolition of the old East Wing began. That list gave no amounts. The new records put the family among the four largest contributors.

An FCC probe and a spectrum sale

Ergen, who co-founded the satellite television company Dish Network, faced a federal investigation into his company during Trump’s second term that ended after a series of spectrum sales.

In May 2025, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr told Ergen the agency had opened an investigation into EchoStar, which now owns Dish, and threatened spectrum licenses central to its business. EchoStar later said in a filing that Trump had “subsequently encouraged the parties involved to reach an amicable resolution.”

In August 2025, EchoStar agreed to sell spectrum licenses to AT&T Inc. for about $23 billion. Weeks later it agreed to sell another block of airwaves to Elon Musk’s SpaceX for about $17 billion in cash and stock. Carr closed the FCC investigation on Sept. 8, 2025, in a letter to Ergen. The FCC and the Justice Department approved the AT&T sale in May 2026.

The records do not establish any connection between Ergen’s donations and the government’s handling of EchoStar.

Where the money goes

Donations to the ballroom are routed through the Trust for the National Mall, a Washington nonprofit that helps maintain the National Mall and White House grounds. Nonprofits generally do not have to disclose their donors. The money is then passed to the government and into a White House account controlled by the president. A 12-page agreement between the government and the trust requires it to “maintain the anonymity of Project donors to the extent provided by law.”

Companies that held federal contracts during Trump’s second term accounted for about half of the total raised. Other donors on the list include Alphabet Inc.’s Google, which gave $22 million as part of a settlement of Trump’s lawsuit against YouTube, the Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Foundation with more than $20 million, and Lockheed Martin Corp., Microsoft Corp. and Palantir Technologies Inc. with $10 million each. Trump himself does not appear on the list, although he said last year the project was “being paid for a hundred percent by me and some friends of mine.”

The $333 million falls short of the $400 million Trump has said he intends to raise. The broader East Wing project, which includes the ballroom, office space and an underground military facility, was projected in March to cost as much as $600 million, and the White House has used taxpayer money to cover some construction costs.

White House spokesman Davis Ingle declined to discuss individual gifts. He described the donors as “a wide array of great American companies and generous individuals” contributing “to make the People’s House better for generations to come.” He said the administration would “relentlessly pursue those responsible for this cowardly leak while continuing to protect all those who give.”