Huffman, Dexter Demand Records from Corporate Sponsors of Freedom 250

Letters to 23 sponsors and partners follow interim report finding the White House turned the nation’s 250th birthday into a fundraising operation for the President

Washington, D.C. – Today, House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) and Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Ranking Member Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.) sent letters to 23 corporate sponsors and partners of Freedom 250, LLC, demanding documents and communications related to their donations to the entity at the center of the White House’s takeover of the nation’s 250th celebration.

In the letters, the lawmakers point to the Committee’s July interim report, From Vanity to Insanity: How the White House Cheated the American People out of their 250th Birthday, which “found that the White House hijacked the nation’s semiquincentennial celebration, converting a once-in-a-generation national commemoration into an apparatus for raising and spending money in service of the President’s political ideology and vanity projects. Freedom 250, a wholly owned subsidiary lodged within the National Park Foundation, was created as a new entity to facilitate this takeover.”

“As a sponsor or partner, your organization possesses documents and information essential to this investigation,” the lawmakers wrote.

The lawmakers are investigating “whether, how, and to what extent Freedom 250 and those acting in concert with it solicited donations by trading on official access, by misrepresenting the recipient or intended use of funds, or by leveraging donors’ business before the federal government.” They wrote that the inquiry “will inform potential legislation, including to ensure that the hijacking of the semiquincentennial does not become a template for further wrongdoing.”

The letters were sent to corporate sponsors of Freedom250, which include Boeing, Chevron, Deloitte, Exiger, ExxonMobil, January AI, John Deere, Lockheed Martin, Mastercard, Mosaic, Northrop Grumman, Oracle, Palantir, Penske, Phorm Energy, RTX, SAP, Scotts Miracle-Gro, Softbank, TikTok, UFC, United Airlines, and United Health Group.

Read the full request to one of Freedom250’s corporate sponsors here.

Background

The Committee’s July interim report found that when the congressionally chartered, nonpartisan America250 Commission refused to bend to the President’s demands, the White House built a replacement, Freedom 250, LLC, and declared it the central platform for the national celebration. The White House lodged that entity inside the National Park Foundation so it could draw on the credibility and donor relationships of a public charity while operating outside the transparency rules Congress wrote into law for the commission.

The Committee’s July 2 report found that Freedom 250 circulated sponsorship packages starting at $500,000 and climbing above $10 million, backed by the promise of a photo opportunity with President Trump. Its CEO solicited foreign governments and corporations at Davos. Fundraisers appear to have misled donors who meant to give to America250, handing them Freedom 250’s banking information instead, conduct the report found could amount to wire fraud. The report also found that Freedom 250 harvested Americans’ personal data, routing event registration through Campaign Nucleus, the firm founded by Trump campaign operative Brad Parscale, which scores visitors with artificial intelligence to target “persuadable voters.”

The report concluded that Freedom 250 has created a blueprint for corruption, not a one-time abuse, pointing to the Department of Agriculture, where the administration steered companies with business before the government to donate through a conservation charity into a fund the Secretary controls.

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