Donald Trump raised nearly $240 million for his inauguration — more than double the previous record, new filings show

By Fredreka Schouten, David Wright and Alex Leeds Matthews, CNN

(CNN) — President Donald Trump’s inaugural committee collected a staggering $239 million for the festivities surrounding his swearing-in this year — with some of the nation’s wealthiest people and biggest companies writing large checks as they sought to ingratiate themselves with the Republican ahead of his return to the White House.

The total haul reported Sunday by the committee swamped the then-record $107 million Trump raised for his first inauguration in 2017 and is four times the nearly $62 million collected by his immediate predecessor, Joe Biden, for his pared-down swearing-in during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2021.

The single-largest donor to Trump’s committee was Colorado-based poultry company Pilgrim’s Pride, which contributed $5 million, Sunday’s night’s filing with the Federal Election Commission shows. Cryptocurrency firm Ripple Labs gave nearly $4.9 million, while another crypto interest, trading app Robinhood, donated $2 million.

The report shows that some of the most generous givers have secured roles in the Trump administration, including Arkansas financier Warren Stephens, Trump’s pick to serve as US ambassador to the United Kingdom. He donated $4 million, according to the filing. Jared Isaacman, a billionaire businessman awaiting Senate confirmation to head NASA, gave $2 million — as did Melissa Argyros, Trump’s pick as US envoy to Latvia.

Linda McMahon, who serves as Trump’s education secretary, donated $1 million. His Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, donated $250,000.

Inaugural committees are barred from accepting foreign contributions, but there are no legal limits on the size of donations that these nonprofit committees can receive. In the run-up to the event, major corporations announced they were showering the committee with seven-figure checks. And the heads of some of this year’s big inaugural corporate donors — including Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — scored prime seats at Trump’s January 20 swearing-in inside the Capitol Rotunda. Each company donated $1 million to the committee.

“It’s not actually a good thing to see that number go up,” Max Stier, the president and CEO of the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, said of the increasingly eye-popping sums associated with inaugurations. “It’s an indication of a mechanism for moneyed interest to direct cash to a newly elected president to curry favor.”

The Trump Vance Inaugural Committee reported taking in nearly $245.3 million and refunding a little more than $6 million in donations. In all, about 60% of the committee’s money came from more than 130 seven-figure donations, underscoring the outsize role of deep-pocketed interests in underwriting the glitzy events that swirl around inaugurations.

Sunday marked 90 days since the inauguration, the legal deadline for the inaugural committee to disclose its donations of $200 or more to federal regulators. But its report to the Federal Election Commission offers only a partial picture because it does not have to detail how it spent the money or what it intends to do with any leftover contributions.

An inaugural committee spokesperson did not respond to an inquiry Sunday about the spending and the size of leftover contributions.

A person close to Trump’s fundraising previously indicated that excess donations are expected to be directed toward Trump’s presidential library, which he has begun to collect sums for. For instance, the terms of a defamation settlement that Trump reached late last year with ABC News directed $15 million to a “presidential foundation and museum.”

Other notable figures who made personal $1 million donations to the Trump committee included OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, hedge fund honcho Paul Singer and Miriam Adelson, a longtime Trump political benefactor and the widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.

Some of the inaugural donors revealed Sunday have interests before the government, including crypto businesses that have sought relief from Biden-era regulation of their industry and firms such as US Steel, which is waiting action by the Trump administration on potential acquisition by the Japanese company Nippon Steel. It gave a little more than $100,000.

The chipmaker Nvidia, hit with export restrictions to China amid an escalating trade war, gave $1 million.

Steve Kerrigan, who oversaw both of President Barack Obama’s inaugural committees and helped produced Biden’s 2021 event, told CNN the kind of money Trump has raised far exceeds what’s needed to underwrite inaugural events.

Records show the committee for Obama’s first inauguration collected roughly $54 million — money that Kerrigan said adequately covered the costs of “the biggest planned political event in US history.”

Obama’s first inaugural included 10 official balls, an expanded parade and a star-studded concert at the Lincoln Memorial. Trump’s second inauguration featured three official balls. Other Trump events included an inauguration-eve rally at an arena in Washington and a celebration, complete with fireworks, at his golf club in Sterling, Virginia.

Kerrigan and watchdog groups, such as liberal-leaning Public Citizen, have called for federal legislation to put some guardrails on fundraising and impose greater disclosure for inaugural spending.

“I know it’s not a public fund, but the public have a right to know how these dollars are spent,” said Kerrigan, who now chairs the Massachusetts Democratic Party.

A bill introduced this year by Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a Nevada Democrat, would require detailed disclosure of who received payments from inaugural funds, ban the personal use of inaugural donations, and require that any leftover money go to charities recognized by the IRS.

Previous efforts to change the law governing inaugural fund disclosure have failed.

The spending by Trump’s first inaugural committee sparked an investigation by the Washington, DC, attorney general. It resulted in a $750,000 settlement paid by the Trump Organization and the inaugural committee over allegations that the committee had overpaid for event space at the downtown Washington hotel then owned by Trump’s company.

The Trump entities denied wrongdoing and described the settlement as necessary to avoid a costly trial.

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