Trump Presidential Library Fund Paid by Companies He Sued Has Dissolved With No Public Accounting, Lawmakers Allege

Tens of millions of dollars that ABC, Meta, X and Paramount paid to settle Donald Trump's lawsuits, intended for his future presidential library, allegedly ended up in a fund that quietly dissolved in Florida without any public disclosure of where the money went.

Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), together with Representative Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.), sent formal letters on March 11, 2026 to the chief executives of all four companies demanding answers about the terms of their deals and the current location of the pledged funds.

Their inquiry centres on the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Fund, Inc., a Florida-registered nonprofit incorporated on Dec. 20, 2024 specifically to receive settlement donations, which was administratively dissolved by Florida's Department of State in September 2025 after the organisation failed to submit a mandatory annual report.

A successor entity, the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Foundation, Inc., has since reported receiving £39.4 million ($50 million) in contributions, but it has not publicly confirmed whether that sum includes the corporate settlement payments, leaving what the lawmakers describe as a £49.7 million ($63 million) accountability gap at the heart of a sitting president's fundraising apparatus.

Four Lawsuits, Four Settlements and One Vanished Fund

The chain of settlements began on Dec. 13, 2024, when ABC News, owned by Disney, agreed to pay £11.8 million ($15 million) to resolve a defamation claim Trump had brought against the network and its anchor George Stephanopoulos.

The settlement agreement, filed in the Southern District of Florida, specified that the payment would be made as a charitable contribution 'to a Presidential foundation and museum to be established by or for' Trump. Six days later, attorney Jacob Roth, a Florida-based lawyer at the Dhillon Law Group, the firm founded by Trump's then-nominated assistant attorney general for civil rights Harmeet Dhillon, incorporated the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Fund, Inc.

Meta followed. On Jan. 29, 2025, President Trump signed a £19.7 million ($25 million) settlement with Meta in the Oval Office, resolving his lawsuit over the suspension of his Facebook and Instagram accounts after the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot.

Approximately £17.3 million ($22 million) of that total was directed toward his presidential library fund, with the remainder covering legal fees and co-plaintiffs. Meta confirmed the settlement but did not admit wrongdoing.

X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, now owned by Elon Musk, settled a near-identical deplatforming lawsuit for approximately £7.9 million ($10 million) in February 2025. The Associated Press reported that some of the money was expected to go to Trump's legal fees, with the balance directed to his future presidential library.

Trump told Fox News the figure was 'very low' and that he had been 'looking to get much more money than that.' Musk said he 'left it up to the lawyers.' Paramount paid a further £12.6 million ($16 million) to settle Trump's lawsuit over CBS News's 60 Minutes editing of a Kamala Harris interview, with the bulk directed to the library. Paramount was simultaneously seeking Trump administration approval for its proposed merger with Skydance, a fact critics noted openly.

Taken together, using the figures publicly reported at the time of each settlement, the four deals have a combined gross value of approximately £52 million ($66 million), with the library-directed portions totalling at least £49.7 million ($63 million) according to Warren's analysis. Lawmakers say that amount cannot currently be accounted for.

The Dissolution

Florida's Division of Corporations records show the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Fund, Inc. was last active in February 2025, when it filed the sole piece of paperwork it ever submitted. It did not file the mandatory annual report required to maintain active status, and Florida officials administratively dissolved it on Sept. 26, 2025.

OpenSecrets first reported the dissolution in October 2025. On Dec. 29, 2025, Jacob Roth, the attorney who incorporated the fund, filed formal articles of dissolution. Reached by phone by OpenSecrets, Roth declined to comment beyond saying, 'My job is simply to be the registrant.' He agreed to forward questions to unspecified fund officials. The Dhillon Law Group did not respond to multiple press inquiries about the dissolution.

A separate nonprofit, the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Foundation, Inc., had meanwhile been formed in 2025 by a different incorporator. The foundation reported in December 2025 that it had received £39.4 million ($50 million) in contributions.

Its trustee, lawyer James D. Kiley, did not respond to press questions about the source of those funds. The foundation itself also did not respond to inquiries. Federal rules do not require presidential library nonprofits to disclose their donors, meaning that even if all settlement funds flowed into the foundation, rather than the dissolved fund, there would be no mandatory disclosure mechanism to confirm it.

'The Fund is now gone, and the public has no clarity about the current location or purpose of the funds provided by ABC or any other source,' the three lawmakers wrote in their letters, copies of which were published on Warren's Senate website. They have requested that the chief executives of ABC, Meta, X and Paramount provide full written answers by March 23, 2026, including the precise amounts transferred, the recipient of those transfers, and whether the companies were notified that the fund was being dissolved.

Qatar's £315 Million Jet and the Wider Gifts Landscape

The missing-money question does not sit in isolation. In May 2025, Trump announced he would accept a Boeing 747-8 aircraft, valued by government assessments at approximately £315 million ($400 million), from the Qatari government.

Trump said the jet, currently being retrofitted, would be transferred to his presidential library after he leaves office in January 2029. The Pentagon confirmed it had received the aircraft as a gift. Legal scholars and ethics watchdogs raised immediate concerns about the Emoluments Clause and broader anti-corruption law, but the administration maintained the gift was permissible as a donation to the Department of Defense and, subsequently, to the library.

Warren's office calculated that including the corporate settlements, the Qatari jet, revenues from Trump-themed merchandise sales, leftover inauguration donations and other gifts, the total value of assets flowing toward the Trump presidential library enterprise reaches 'roughly half a billion dollars,' all accumulated while the donor-companies and foreign governments remained subject to decisions by the president's own administration.

Warren said in a July 2025 press call, 'Trump files a bogus lawsuit against Paramount-owned CBS. Paramount needs something from Trump. So what happens? Paramount dumps £12.6 million ($16 million) into Trump's library to settle a bogus lawsuit. It looks like bribery right out in the open.'

In a country where presidential libraries operate under virtually no federal disclosure obligations, the question of where £49.7 million ($63 million) in settlement funds actually went may remain, for now, exactly what the lawmakers say it is: entirely unanswered.