Trump faces MASSIVE LEGAL EXPOSURE for Ballroom FROM HELL

I want to talk about the legality of Donald Trump building a ballroom that he claims is going to cost $200 million by the White House, a 90,000 square foot ballroom. Now, Donald Trump had previously said that he would be the one paying for it when a reporter asked him, and this I'm showing you a Fox News report right now, when they said, how many donors are going to be contributing to the ballroom that you say you're going to be building on the East Wing when you tear down

the current East Wing and build a ballroom. Donald Trump says none. It's probably just gonna be me as Donald Trump's gonna pay for it out of his own pocket and that's what he's been saying over and over and over again that he would be the one paying for it and now of course that's been proven to be false because let's face it, he's a complete fraud about everything.

But first let's play this clip right here.

Play it.

How many donors do you think it's going to take to get to 200 million? Maybe one, me. But you would set that check yourself?

I would, yeah.

Great. Trump's reporting right here in CBS News reporting scoop. Contribute money to the White House ballroom and in exchange, donors may be able to choose having their names etched inside the White House forever. At least that's one option being discussed. No final decisions. Multiple companies have pledged to donate $5 million or more. Nearly $200 million pledged so far, and the fundraising is ongoing.

Trump has had personal discussions with business execs about chipping in. Ballroom pitched at dinner with tech execs. More scoopy details here, and then they give the longer article. As our editor-in-chief, Ron Filipkowski, writes, for a month, Trump said he was personally paying for the ballroom. Now we learn he's been shaking down corporations to pay for it.

Who wants something from the government in return?

Another corrupt scam between Trump and CEOs that he lied about.

I doubt he pays a penny. I agree. I don't think he's going to pay a single dollar. It's my opinion. You have a photo of what the ballroom is going to look like kind of a grotesque structure right there. I've done reporting how they ripped down trees that were planted as far back as when Chester Arthur

and Andrew Jackson were there in Washington, DC, just ripping these historical trees, I thought were quite beautiful when I visited the White House before. But from a legal perspective, it is my belief that a litigation needs to be filed.

At the very least, litigation needs to be filed to press pause and determine what the hell is happening here. There needs to be transparency. If they're going to be building things, then arguably already—not arguably, I believe—there would have to have been architectural plans that were provided. Who paid for those architectural plans

already, who's been paying for the destruction of these trees, who's been paying for any of this work that's already taken place. And then if corporations are going to be paying, what's that process like, they should be subject to Freedom of Information Act requests. So we understand the quid pro quo that's taking place. Who's controlling this process?

What is the bidding process? How are companies positioning themselves to have this right? Do we want corporations to have their names etched on the people's house, the way when you go into a baseball stadium or a football stadium, you see sponsors. Is this the White House brought to you by Amazon or Apple or Palantir or a company like that?

Now, in most normal situations, legally there would be a few things triggered. If it was foreign money coming in, there's the emoluments clause of the constitution that would prevent kind of foreign companies, although, you know, at this point,

most of these large corporations are multinational in scope anyway, but for preventing foreign companies from providing these things of value to the Trump regime. But to me, this should be the province of Congress because the house belongs to the people

for Congress to appropriate funds and that there is a vote by the people if we want the White House, which doesn't belong to Donald Trump, it doesn't. He's a temporary resident there. It belongs to we the people to have it desecrated.

And if Congress is now going to give up its funding ability and its power of the purse to private corporations, now what slippery slope does this set for basically just about anything? I mean, if Donald Trump wanted to build a highway or a road or a private police force or whatever, can he just say, I'm going to have my private donors pay for that? I want Amazon to fund the Donald Trump Secret Service. I want Palantir to fund the Donald Trump motorcade. I want, I mean, is that where this is heading? So at the very least, I believe a lawsuit is needed right now to stay this, to stop it, to then bring transparency. What's the process? Then once we understand the process, we can see what legal violations, if any, have taken place. Emolument violations, quid pro quos, potential bribery. I don't know,

but I think we need to know. This is, to me, an urgent issue. Anyone who's not taking this seriously, I think, is doing so at their own peril because the ballroom is a symbol of the authoritarian regime. You usually don't build ballrooms or do home improvements if you plan on leaving pretty soon. Let's bring in Harry Lippman from the TalkingFeds YouTube, TalkingFeds.com.

I think this is a big deal. And frankly, I'm pissed that nobody has filed a lawsuit. Now, they could be wondering who has standing to sue in something like this. Could there be general taxpayer standing a la the issues that arose in the student loan type cases

that we saw? Once you get past standing, then what would the injunction be targeted? But it doesn't sit right to me. There's a lot of red flags here. What do you make of it, Harry?

It's jaw dropping, right? I mean, can you imagine what an ingenious idea to try to close up the federal budget? Of course, that's not what he's doing. But maybe like, you know, we could put a tasteful little McDonald's on the bottom of the American flag or J.D. Vance's office could have, you know, brought to you by the finest water. You know, it is first and foremost, and I don't mean to contradict your sense of what

the F here, this is serious, but it's and foremost, it is what like a bad joke, the naming rights to the White House. It's also for the reasons you say, has to be unlawful, how the law would precisely express the principle that this is the people's house for at most Congress to make decisions about, not an individual occupant. You could talk about, but that

that it would, you couldn't. I do want to say as a lawyer I think you've put your finger on it in terms of what's happening, that is the kind of violation, like an emoluments clause violation, which could lead to impeachment of a different kind of president, that harms us all equally.

And it does harm us all, right? You go into the White House, oh my God, it's such an embarrassment for the country and the people who are there. And of course the sense that even if, and it never works this way with him,

but even if there were strict accounting and to the penny, you could show it went somewhere. It's clearly redounding to his personal advantage in such a Trumpian, Donald the Magnificent way, like the New York Times defamation suit where he's still arguing about what a great builder, etc., that he was. So non-legal, it's jaw-dropping and repugnant.

Legal, it's got to be wrong, but yeah, I'm sure when somebody first tries it and rolls up their sleeves, you know, you'm sure when somebody first tries it and rolls up their sleeves, you know, you can't bring a case to find out what's wrong under the law. You got to make the allegations up front. And that would be the issue, the viable theory that explains what is obvious and intuitive to most people, which is you don't get naming rights to, you know, maybe the maybe the monuments, the FDR Qualcomm Memorial and stuff.

I mean, I shouldn't joke, but it's so completely patent and manifest that this is an improper use of government power. I think it's totally cheeky, probably improper on its own merits to build the damn thing in the first place, you know, and make it his own personal garish style. But this, the notion of naming rights, whose rights is this? I know one person whose rights it is not to determine who gets flags

there and that's the temporary occupant of a government office. So it's both spit-take, you know, spit take, ridiculous, funny, but also deeply offensive and also almost certainly illegal, but you know, might be one of those. A lot's going on, people are, different lawyers are doing different things and who is the person who for legal purposes is aggrieved? I believe that that could not be an ultimate impediment in the

in the lawsuit. But even if the court were to say, well Congress must decide, is the majority of Congress really gonna say, you know, I'll stop laughing now. We've seen things that are more funny and more sobering. But that's the deal. Gotta be illegal and if it in terms of the legal process, who would have standing? And you can see that being a challenge, right? Because we're all equally offended

by this Donald Trump maneuver. Yeah, look, you know, Gulf of America versus Gulf of Mexico. Yeah, in theory, sometimes these things seem laughable and, you know, what are we going to file a lawsuit about it? But the reality is, is that this is how fascism creeps. And it starts with that. It starts with

this. Now, the idea that a temporary, you know, a tenant renter, not he's not an owner of the White House. I mean, imagine if I someone, you were renting an apartment from somebody and then you started changing the whole way, the apartment basically. Harry Littman annex.

Oh, you're going to love it.

I got naming rights.

Yeah.

I mean, it doesn't belong to him, but belongs to us.

That's right.

And to me, what he's doing, I can see why you're outraged. I really can't.

You know, it's the equivalent of.

If I physically went there and it happened. You know, it's a dog peeing on a fire hydrant. It's marking territory that doesn't belong to him and it belongs to us. And so to me, I put this out there knowing we have a huge platform. I'm not the litigator I once was. So it's not gonna come from me,

but I'm going to amplify my legal theories. And my hope is that someone out there hears this, recognizes the theories, implements it, and I'm sharing you my legal opinions. Harry Litman from the TalkingFeds YouTube, TalkingFeds Substack.

Everybody, make sure you subscribe to all of Harry Litman's platforms. Harry, thanks as always.

Thank you, Ben.

Everybody hit subscribe here. Let's get to six million.

You guys are big,

but I don't know if you're ready for naming rights yet.

Soon.

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