Congressman Says Trump Shell Company ‘Siphoned Off At Least $100 Million of Public Money’ From Commission Planning U.S. 250th Events in public funds relating to U.S. semiquincentennial celebrations
Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee released an explosive report alleging that a shell company created by President Donald Trump’s White House took at least $100 million in public funds relating to U.S. semiquincentennial celebrations.
The committee’s Democrats, led by Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA), the ranking member, issued a 55-page report on Thursday accusing Freedom 250 of “corruption and self-enrichment” via methods that may constitute criminal fraud. That group, a limited liability company, was responsible for the UFC fights at the White House last month, the ongoing and sparsely attended Great American State Fair, and the upcoming July 4 fireworks display.
The report noted that in 2016, Congress had already created a nonpartisan commission called America250 to run events for the 25oth birthday of the U.S.
Huffman appeared on Thursday’s All In on MS NOW, where Chris Hayes gave some background before Huffman explained how Freedom 250 is operating:
HAYES: I want people to understand this. There’s this kind of really insidious bait and switch. So, there’s America250, which was statutorily created. Here’s an announcement from August 1st, 2024, that announces President Bush and Obama, first ladies as honorary national co-chairs. And then [Trump White House officials] come in, and you say in the report they “first attempted to bend America250,” which was like the real commission that was going to do this, “to its purposes, demanding spectacles focused on promoting [President] Trump rather than the country while forcing partisan content, campaign-style fundraisers and favored contractors. When America250 would not yield, the White House created a replacement, Freedom 250. LLC.” So they have created a parallel organization they control that’s now basically running the celebration?
HUFFMAN: Absolutely. They sidelined America250. They siphoned off at least $100 million of public money into this shell company. They housed it within a trusted charity that has been working with the Department of the Interior for 50 years, the National Park Foundation. That was to confuse people, but also–
HAYES: Ohhhhh.
HUFFMAN: –to give them the benefit of total secrecy so that they could proceed to award themselves huge, no-bid contracts, to have all of this radical, partisan, and religious programming as part of Freedom 250 and, of course, to enrich Donald Trump himself in several cases.
HAYES: This is a crazy detail from your report. So, according to sources familiar with the matter, prospective donors and sponsors, right? People, you’re raising money. You’re saying, “Oh, I want to give. I love America and I want to celebrate the 250th anniversary.” They’ve “been told by the administration they do not have a ‘green light’ to donate to America250… donors who intended to donate to America250 were instead given wire instructions with Freedom 250’s banking information, including its routing number and account number. Meaning, you’re strongly suggesting that donors who wanted to donate to the actual commission, the actual organization, were given the routing number of the parallel Trump-controlled one without their knowledge?
HUFFMAN: We have this from whistleblowers, and we are going to continue following through on this investigation. It’s an open investigation, but if that proves up, it has all the hallmarks of wire fraud.
Freedom 250 is using a company called Event Strategies to help plan the festivities. The company is run by former Trump campaign officials.
Hayes then read a statement from a Freedom 250 spokesperson, who called the report “a partisan smear” and alleged that America250 had “nothing to show for its 19 years of planning and spending.”
“Is that true?” Hayes asked.
“Not at all,” Huffman replied. “Under the chairwoman, things were really moving forward in a unified way. And that’s why when the Trump team tried to strongarm four Republican commissioners into dropping off the commission so that they could do their hostile takeover, the commissioners refused to go. And the whole hostile takeover kind of blew up in their face. So that’s when they went to plan B, they set up this shell company, and they started doing all of this siphoning of funding and setting up of all of these other operations. It was incredibly craven.”