President Donald Trump’s library foundation expects to raise about $50 million this year, according to a regulatory filing in Florida — a total that would far outpace what other recent presidents pulled in during their first year of fundraising for such complexes.
The Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Foundation, led by Trump’s son Eric, gave that figure in a proposed budget filed with charity regulators in Florida. It was the first time that the foundation disclosed any public estimate of what it planned to raise or spend.
The amount that the foundation said it expected to raise is slightly less than the total that three media companies had already promised to donate to it to settle lawsuits filed by the president; ABC News pledged $15 million, CBS News pledged about $16 million and Meta pledged about $22 million, for a total of about $53 million.
By contrast, former President Barack Obama’s library foundation raised only $5 million in its first year of fundraising, and former President George W. Bush’s foundation raised $2.8 million. In both of those cases, the libraries’ fundraising ramped up sharply when the presidents left office. Former President Joe Biden has also established a presidential library foundation, but has not disclosed any details about its fundraising.
The filing in Florida also provided the first details about how the Trump foundation intends to spend its money.
In its proposed budget, the foundation said it expected to pay $130,000 this year for conferences and meetings, and $400,000 to officers including Eric Trump; Michael Boulos, the husband of Donald Trump’s daughter Tiffany; and two attorneys who have done prior work for the president’s businesses. In a separate filing with Florida charity regulators, however, the foundation said that none of those four officers expected to be paid.
The foundation gave almost no details about its biggest expense: a $6.2 million budget item that accounted for about 90% of its planned spending for this year. The foundation described that spending only as “other.” It did not respond to questions from The New York Times about the proposed budget or the discrepancy in payments to its officers.
Trump’s foundation was legally established in May. Like other presidents’ library foundations, it has been approved for tax-exempt status by the IRS. That means that any donors to the foundation could be eligible for a charitable deduction on their taxes.
The foundation listed its headquarters as a Trump golf course in Jupiter, Florida. Eric Trump has said the organization plans to build Donald Trump’s library in downtown Miami, on a plot of prime land potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Florida’s Republican-led government, which owns the land, has sought to transfer it to the Trump library foundation for free. The transfer has been held up by a state judge on procedural grounds.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
