Donald Trump’s White House ballroom will cost taxpayers money, according to The Washington Post

The cost of the controversial project of the American president, Donald Trump to build a grand ballroom in the white house would amount to about 600 million dollars with more than half covered with public money, despite the president’s insistence that it will only be financed with private donations, as revealed on Tuesday by The Washington Post.

The documents show that the use of taxpayer money was planned from the early phases of the project and that officials sought to link the project to security needs to justify that financing under tax laws.

The work on the ballroom, which involved Trump unilaterally deciding to demolish the East Wing of the White House, was partially paralyzed after a federal judge’s ruling last March that considered that the US president does not have the authority to move forward with construction without specific authorization from Congress.

The court order was temporarily stayed by a federal appeals court, which is expected to determine this month whether the judge’s decision was correct.