DENVER — An interim report from the minority staff of the House Natural Resources Committee’s Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee documents how the White House sidelined the bipartisan America250 commission and built Freedom 250 to raise and spend money on the president’s 250th anniversary events without the disclosure rules Congress wrote for the semiquincentennial. The report includes evidence that Freedom 250 diverted taxpayer dollars and private donors away from America250, sold tiered access to the president, solicited foreign money in America’s name, and handed its data and contracts to the president’s campaign operatives.
The report concludes the arrangement is a replicable blueprint for converting public trust into private benefit. It documents how the Trump administration created a financial black box for the president’s birthday. Donors who intended to give to the official, bipartisan America250 were handed Freedom 250’s bank account and routing numbers instead, and companies with business before the government were offered photo ops with the president. The report raises the possibility of wire fraud, foreign solicitation, and Hatch Act violations.
The Center for Western Priorities released the following statement from Executive Director Aaron Weiss:
“Interior Secretary Doug Burgum sits on the board that controls Freedom 250, his own Park Service requested that it be created, and his department pressured employees to wear its pins and stamp its logo on their official government email, yet he told Congress he does not know who authorized any of it. If it wasn’t him, he needs to name that decision-maker, release the donor lists and contracts Freedom 250 is still hiding, and explain why federal grants to this operation run through 2028, long after the semiquincentennial ends. Congress, the courts, and state attorneys general should treat this interim report as a roadmap, because the foreign money, the undisclosed contracts, and the fate of every dollar Freedom 250 raised remain hidden from the public.”