SoftBank donated $50 million to Trump’s library months before federal data center deal
The Verge Emma Roth
SoftBank gave Trump's presidential library $50 million in January. Two months later, it scored a huge federal land lease for a data center in Ohio.
Based on reporting by The Verge, Emma Roth — read the original for the full story.
Summary, retelling and take written by AI under human oversight; images are AI-generated illustrations. How we work · Report an error
Money moved first, then the deal followed. SoftBank confirmed it donated $50 million to Trump's presidential library fund in January, a detail that only surfaced because three Democratic lawmakers demanded an explanation. By March, SoftBank's SB Energy subsidiary had announced a public-private partnership to build what it calls the world's largest AI data center, on federal land at the Department of Energy's Portsmouth, Ohio site. The project also includes a gas-fired power plant with at least 9.2 gigawatts of capacity sitting nearby.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator Richard Blumenthal, and Representative Melanie Stansbury sent SoftBank a letter in June asking whether the timing amounted to something closer to bribery than coincidence. Warren didn't soften her language afterward, telling The Verge it strains belief that a massive lease deal appeared just two months after the donation landed, and that Trump keeps prioritizing handshake arrangements with CEOs over the public interest.
What makes this donation different from SoftBank's past giving is the sequence. The company has previously funded the presidential libraries of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, but only after those men left office and after the library foundations were formally up and running. This time, SoftBank cut the check while Trump was still in office and before any physical library existed.
There's also a paperwork wrinkle. The original nonprofit meant to collect these funds, the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Fund, was dissolved by Florida last September for failing to file an annual report. SoftBank says its $50 million actually went to a different entity, the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Foundation, Inc., where Eric Trump sits as a trustee according to Citizens for Ethics. SoftBank maintains, as it did with Reagan and Bush, that the money is simply meant to help build and run the library.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
Calling this a coincidence requires ignoring how lobbying actually works these days: nobody hands a sitting president's family foundation $50 million and expects nothing back, and nobody in Washington should pretend otherwise. The real scandal isn't just the timing, it's that the payment went to a foundation with the president's own son on its board instead of an established, arm's-length institution the way SoftBank's earlier donations did. Congress can send all the letters it wants, but until there's an actual rule against funding a sitting president's personal legacy project while doing federal business with him, companies will keep finding creative places to route the money.
Read more about this at: The Verge
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