As President Trump prepares for the final two years of his presidency, he is expected to devote more attention to his presidential library, which has become a growing destination for money from companies and allies, according to current and former advisers who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
“He undoubtedly recognizes that the library development season opens now, and he will go for it,” said a senior administration official. A second administration official said that in this lame-duck period Mr. Trump will focus on “all things he can control, which means: Building.”
With Democrats taking control of Congress in January after a sweeping victory in the November elections, lawmakers have pledged investigations into the library’s finances.
“The donors bankrolling his personal vanity project will have to answer to a new majority in Congress,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, told CBS News.
In March, Mr. Trump shared renderings of a 47-story tower on a donated plot in downtown Miami. It showed golden escalators, a full-size Air Force One and a giant statue of him raising his fist, as he did after surviving an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024. But then he told reporters he does not “believe in building libraries or museums” and that the building is “most likely going to be a hotel,” a departure from the traditional library his foundation described to the IRS last year.
The Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Foundation, a nonprofit, registered in Florida and run by Mr. Trump’s son Eric and son-in-law Michael Boulos, will fund the project. The foundation says it expects to raise $950 million by the end of 2027, including $600 million in 2027 alone, according to its October 2025 IRS application, obtained by CBS News. That far outpaces what Mr. Trump’s predecessors had raised at this stage.
Tens of millions of dollars have already come from media and tech companies that settled lawsuits with him. The nonprofit is also collecting donations through a payment processing company that has Donald Trump Jr. on its board, according to a fundraising portal page. And Mr. Trump has said the luxury Boeing 747 that Qatar gave the U.S. last year — now in use as Air Force One — would go to the library, though Eric Trump and the White House have since said that plan is not final.
Some of the most recent money has come from people trying to stay in Mr. Trump’s good graces. After the president threatened to cut ties with his top political advisers Chris LaCivita and James Blair over their consulting work for a pro-Russian party in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the two men donated their fees from that work to the library, The New York Post reported.
A week later, The New York Times reported that Mr. Trump had told aides and allies that his former personal lawyer, Alina Habba Mildon, should donate part of a contract worth more than $50 million to his library or another Trump-related entity. Habba Mildon’s contract was with a company tied to the family of a Venezuelan businessman Mr. Trump pardoned in January, the outlet reported.
Asked by CBS News whether she planned to donate some of her fees to the library, Habba Mildon responded to the text message with a “haha” reaction. (She removed the reaction seconds later and declined to comment.)
A former Trump adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the library is now where the fundraising action is, with the midterms over and donors already tapped for the America 250 celebrations and the White House ballroom. MAGA Inc., a super PAC run by Mr. Trump’s allies, started September with more than $400 million to spend on Republicans in the midterms. Its filing due in December will show how much left it has in cash on hand.
“The library is one of the last few places he can squeeze people for money,” the former adviser said. “That’s what a businessman does. He just creates opportunities.”
Fresh scrutiny of the library is expected after Democrats swept the House and the Senate on Tuesday. Starting in January, Democrats will have the power to subpoena records and compel testimony. Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, issued a two-word warning on X to the administration after the election results: “Lawyer up.”
“Giant corporations and foreign governments should not be able to buy influence in Washington with donations to the president’s library,” Warren told CBS News, adding that she will be investigating the library “and any wrongdoing will be held accountable.”
The library has already drawn scrutiny over Mr. Trump’s stated plan to display the gifted jet. The plane’s memorandum of understanding, signed in 2025 by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Qatar’s Minister of State for Defense Affairs Soud bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, called it an “unconditional donation.” But when questions were raised about the U.S. accepting and using the Qatari plane as Air Force One, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi concluded that the gift could be conditioned on transferring the plane to the library foundation by Jan. 1, 2029, about three weeks before Mr. Trump leaves office.
In August, Eric Trump told NBC News that displaying the plane was “not the plan at the moment,” saying a retired Air Force One would be shown instead.
A Qatari official, speaking to CBS News on the condition of anonymity, said what happens to the plane after Mr. Trump leaves office is not Qatar’s concern. “This is something the Americans need to deal with,” the official said.
The White House referred questions about the library and whether any final decisions have been made about the plane or a hotel to the foundation, which did not respond to requests for comment.
“The Trump Presidential Library will be one of the most magnificent buildings in the world and a living testament to the indelible impact President Trump has made on America and its people,” Davis Ingle, a spokesman for the White House, said in a statement.
Tens of millions from companies Mr. Trump sued
There have been two iterations of the library’s nonprofit funding structure. The first, the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Fund, was incorporated in Florida in December 2024, days after ABC News agreed to pay $15 million toward the library to settle a defamation suit over anchor George Stephanopoulos’ inaccurate on-air claim that Mr. Trump had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll. A jury found him liable for sexual abuse.
Other settlements followed. Meta agreed to pay $22 million toward the library over the suspension of Mr. Trump’s accounts after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Elon Musk’s X paid $10 million to settle a similar suit by Mr. Trump and other plaintiffs. And Paramount paid $16 million over the editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris. Paramount reached the settlement before its merger with Skydance Media. The combined company, Skydance, is CBS News’ parent company.
By then, the current foundation had been incorporated in Florida in May 2025, listing Eric Trump, Boulos and James Kiley, an attorney who has represented Mr. Trump, as trustees. The original fund was dissolved that September after failing to file a required annual report. Jacob Roth, an attorney who incorporated the first fund, declined to comment.
In March, Sens. Warren, Richard Blumenthal, and Rep. Melanie Stansbury asked the four companies for details of their payments. ABC said its $15 million was still in an escrow account held by a law firm representing Mr. Trump, where it had been since December 2024, awaiting release to the foundation. Paramount said it had paid $16 million but did not say to whom. Meta said $22 million had been “designated” for the library but did not say whether or where it was paid, and X, citing confidentiality, did not say how much of its $10 million settlement went there.
Mr. Trump’s financial disclosure, filed in June, lists $56.5 million in settlement money from ABC, Meta and Paramount as paid to the foundation. It lists $8 million from X as paid to Mr. Trump himself, without saying whether some funds reached the foundation. The foundation’s October 2025 filing with Florida charity regulators, which it labeled a proposed budget, projected $50 million in revenue and about $6 million in spending.
Meta and ABC declined to comment. X did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Skydance referred CBS News to the company’s July 2025 statement announcing the settlement, which said the $16 million included the plaintiffs’ legal fees and costs and that the remainder would go to Mr. Trump’s future presidential library, with nothing paid to him personally.
The settlements are not the only large gifts. SoftBank, the Japanese investment giant, told Congress in July that it gave the foundation $50 million in January to support a library exhibit highlighting U.S.-Japan relations. Two months later, Mr. Trump’s Energy Department announced it would lease federal land at a former uranium enrichment plant in Ohio to an affiliate of SB Energy, a SoftBank subsidiary, for a data center campus that the company says will be the world’s largest for artificial intelligence.
A spokesperson for the Energy Department said the agency signed its lease agreement with the company on Feb. 26, about a month after SoftBank’s donation to the library foundation. They added that a local development group first proposed the project in October 2024, before SoftBank acquired the lease rights in the fall of 2025. SoftBank did not respond to a request for comment.
A library or a hotel?
The library foundation’s filings offer few other details about how it operates. When it registered as a charity in Florida, the foundation said its officers did not expect to be paid. But in its application to the IRS, the foundation said it would pay its leaders. It projected spending $400,000 on compensation in 2025, rising to $1.2 million in 2027. The foundation’s bylaws say trustees can’t be paid, but other roles can come with compensation. Eric Trump is both a trustee and the foundation’s president.
The foundation told CBS News it expects to file financial disclosures covering fiscal 2025 by Nov. 15. It did not respond to a question about whether Eric Trump will be paid.
Fundraising for the library is led by Meredith O’Rourke, who has worked with Mr. Trump since 2016.
The foundation also raises money through PSQ Impact, a donation platform run by PublicSquare, a company whose board includes Donald Trump Jr. The foundation’s donation page says contributions will “help preserve important archives, promote civic education, and inspire generations to come.” Trump Jr. began receiving $42,000 a month in consulting fees from PublicSquare in August 2024, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
A spokesperson for Trump Jr. said he was not aware of the fundraising page and had no involvement in it. PublicSquare did not respond to questions about how much has been raised through the donation page or what fee, if any, it is charging for processing.
“This is just one example of many where the Trumps are set to possibly profit off something connected to Donald Trump’s presidency,” said Zach Everson, a researcher for the progressive consumer rights advocacy group Public Citizen.
It remains unclear what form the library will ultimately take. Mr. Trump’s suggestion that it could become a hotel is cited in a lawsuit filed in May by Miami residents, a local nonprofit and a Miami Dade College student. They argue that Florida’s gift of the 2.63-acre parcel, a former college parking lot, violates a U.S. constitutional provision that bars states from giving the president financial benefits.
The land was appraised at more than $67 million, but the suit cites real estate experts who say its true market value is over $300 million. The plaintiffs note that the state’s terms require only that the site include “components of a Presidential library, museum, and/or center” within five years, and do not preclude a hotel.
Other presidential libraries have been built on donated public land. Chicago leased parkland for Mr. Obama’s center for $10, and Little Rock used eminent domain to assemble the site for Mr. Clinton’s. But Florida conveyed its parcel outright.
The Justice Department has argued that Mr. Trump is immune from the suit. In September, U.S. District Judge Rodolfo Ruiz II, a Trump appointee, halted discovery, writing that the defendants’ arguments for dismissal, including presidential immunity, “may prove to be successful.” He has not yet ruled on motions to dismiss the case, and a ruling may not come until March, according to Gerald E. Greenberg, a lawyer for the plaintiffs.
If the suit is dismissed, Greenberg said the plaintiffs are likely to appeal.
“This case is really about one of the core anti-corruption provisions,” Greenberg told CBS News, saying the founders “understood the dangers of people currying favor with the sovereign by giving him gifts.”
“It is extremely disturbing to think of our skyline and our downtown being blighted by this monument to corruption,” he added.
