Trump’s Great American State Fair Sponsors Hid Millions in Donations

Freedom 250’s corporate sponsors may have violated the Lobbying Disclosure Act.

Some of America’s biggest corporations shelled out millions of dollars to support Freedom 250, the Trump administration’s public-private partnership that oversaw spending for the country’s semiquincentennial celebration.

It was no secret who was involved: The Freedom 250 website proudly displayed nearly two dozen of its sponsors, including Palantir, Boeing, ExxonMobil, United Health Group, and more.

But most of those corporations—including defense contractors Lockheed Martin, GE Aerospace, and Northrop Grumman—did not disclose the payments on lobbyist contribution reports that were due to Congress by last Friday, according to a NOTUS investigation.

Just three Freedom 250 backers made note of their event contributions in their recent filings, as required by the federal Lobbying Disclosure Act: Chevron, United Airlines, and RTX, according to NOTUS.

The law “is certainly not airtight, and certain entities have found ways to try to exploit this law,” Aaron Scherb, a longtime ethics and democracy advocate, told NOTUS.

“Nonetheless, it requires full disclosure of political spending when companies are trying to curry favor with an administration and elected officials,” Scherb said. “So, companies contributing to Freedom 250 should absolutely be required to disclose their political spending.”

Freedom 250 is a subsidiary of Task Force 250, an entity that Donald Trump signed into existence by executive order days into his second term. It largely replaced the “America250” nonprofit that was created by Congress a decade ago to oversee the semiquincentennial’s funding and development strategies.

Unlike America250, Freedom 250 is technically a limited liability company housed within the National Park Service’s charity arm, the National Park Foundation.

Trump himself is the chair of Freedom 250, while the rest of his Cabinet are listed as members.

“When it comes to other nonprofits, the question is always whether it was created and controlled by Trump,” Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist at the left-leaning nonprofit watchdog Public Citizen, told NOTUS. “But there is little question about Freedom 250.”

President Trump continues to insist that the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was vandalized, even after D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro admitted in court that it was not. 

Speaking to reporters outside of Air Force One in Los Angeles Tuesday night, Trump defended the contractor who handled the pool’s renovation, despite Pirro’s office dropping charges against all of the people accused of vandalizing the pool, including former Olympian David Hearn.  

“I just think he’s totally wrong. They did a beautiful job. There were a couple of little things, but that was not a big deal. And everybody saw the vandalism, all you have to do is look at the tape, if you look at the tape. Plus, we have a witness, or two witnesses that saw the vandalism. So certainly where there was vandalism, there was actually, in my opinion, there was major vandalism, and I told [Pirro] I was not happy,” Trump said. He was noncommittal when asked if Pirro would be staying at her job. 

Trump’s claim of there being video proof doesn’t appear to be true, as it was never mentioned in charging documents. It’s not clear which witness or witnesses he is referring to either, as the Department of Justice’s main witness actually undermined the vandalism case against Hearn. The contractor assigned to clean up the pool, the ironically named Greenwater Services, put hydrogen peroxide into the pool to kill algae, causing Trump’s personally chosen “American flag blue” paint to begin peeling. 

Trump’s comments come after he, Pirro, and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who was in charge of the pool’s renovation, reportedly got into a screaming match in the White House over the vandalism cases. Despite Pirro taking in a box of evidence to prove the vandalism cases were weak, Trump still believes his own version of the story. Then again, Trump never liked admitting when he’s wrong. 

GOP Representative Max Miller was accused of holding a gun to his ex-wife’s head, scalding her with boiling water, and breaking his two-year-old daughter’s collarbone. He also shared pictures of his daughter’s genitals. House Speaker Mike Johnson is still supporting him.

“I haven’t spoken to Max about this in the last few days. Of course, I will,” Johnson told Politico’s Dasha Burns in an interview. “There’s all sorts of domestic events going on with 435 members of Congress all the time, it’s not my business to get engaged in it.”

The House Ethics Committee opened an investigation into the abuse claims against Miller, as well as allegations of drug use. The claims were made by his ex-wife Emily Moreno, daughter of Republican Senator Bernie Moreno.

“I think Max is taking them seriously. I think our colleagues are,” Johnson continued. “But, again, we have to allow this process to play out. It’s just begun.”

It does not look like Miller is taking it seriously. He posted a 20-minute video on Sunday denying all of his ex-wife’s allegations, arguing that her being civil to him after the period of alleged abuse delegitimized them. His own lawyer admitted to accidentally uploading nude pictures of his daughter via Dropbox. Miller claimed that they were part of a Child Protective Services investigation. That same Dropbox contained recordings of Miller saying throwing hot water on Emily was a “playful incident.”

Miller has remained indignant, making multiple media appearances—all of which make his situation look worse. He claimed on CNN Tuesday night that Johnson and the rest of the party were “standing behind” him.

“My constituents know who I am, and they also know who my ex-father-in-law is, and they also know who my ex-wife is.... People aren’t running from me,” Miller told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “Speaker Mike Johnson, everyone else—they’re standing behind me. No one has told me to get off the ballot.”

But even that’s up for debate. While Johnson offered tepid support, Senator Moreno said Miller needed “serious psychological help,” and called on him to step down from Congress and abandon his current reelection campaign. And Trump, who was also initially supportive, called Miller personally to tell him that things weren’t “looking good.”

Even still, Johnson chose to trust the ethics committee process rather than call on Miller to end his train-wreck of a political career.

“It’s, in his own words, a nasty divorce proceeding, and it’s gotten ugly and it’s gotten public,” Johnson said. “But he’s saying the same things privately to members that he is publicly, that he denies all this.... There’s a process. The House Ethics Committee does that. We always withhold judgment on this, whether it’s Republicans or Democrats.”

Miller has five days to drop out if Republicans have any hope of replacing him on the ballot.

Jeanine Pirro’s grand case against Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s Reflecting Pool cover-up was a showdown worthy of reality TV.

Pirro, the daytime cable judge turned U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, rolled into the White House Monday toting boxes of evidence supporting her argument that the pool had not been vandalized. Donald Trump, the Apprentice host turned president, was already fuming.

Days prior, Pirro withdrew charges against three-time Olympic canoeist David Hearn, the highest-profile figure accused of vandalizing Trump’s patch job at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Via court filing, Pirro admitted that her fast-track July indictment against Hearn was actually a dud predicated on baseless accusations pushed by Interior Department officials.

The filing also suggested that Burgum had failed to competently oversee the renovation by Atlantic Industrial Coatings, a Virginia-based firm that Trump chose because they had previously worked on his golf club’s swimming pools. When the pool lining began to crack and peel in large, irregular chunks, Burgum convinced Trump that the damage had been caused by vandals.

And Trump remained unconvinced by Pirro’s analysis. Speaking with reporters behind the Resolute Desk Monday morning, the president accused his family friend and decades-long ally of “folding like an umbrella” and “choking” on the charges, which for weeks provided backbone to his repetitive (and increasingly nonsensical) claims that vandals gashed the memorial pool’s lining.

Pirro arrived at the Oval Office that night in a cherry-red blazer, ready to tear Burgum’s excuses to shreds. Burgum was already there, alongside Trump’s chief of staff “Ice Maiden” Susie Wiles and White House counsel David Warrington, reported The New York Times.

The back-and-forth lasted about an hour, during which Pirro repeatedly raised her voice and directly confronted the interior secretary for misleading the president. She claimed that Burgum’s explanation of the recent damage at the Reflecting Pool was little more than a self-serving cover story to save his own skin.

Burgum was more reserved but did his best to defend himself against Pirro’s accusations, according to sources that spoke with the Times.

Pirro emerged from the meeting with her job intact, but it’s not clear if that will stay true. When asked directly by reporters on Tuesday if he would keep Pirro in her current position, Trump said he hadn’t yet “made a determination.”

First lady Melania Trump’s wildly expensive (and deeply boring) box office bomb is getting a sequel.

During an interview on Real America’s Voice Monday, Marc Beckman, senior adviser to the first lady, announced that Melania was getting her own docuseries with Amazon Prime.

The new project would follow up on Melania, the 2026 film that captured just 20 days of the first lady’s life—and still somehow managed to be the most expensive documentary ever made.

“We open the window, a little bit, into her private life, her marriage, her family. We open a little deeper into her career, as well as her philanthropy, but with the docuseries, it’s a little bit different,” Beckman said. “It’s shot different. It’s a different story. It’s a full new experience for the viewers.”

Sounds “different,” but definitely not different enough.

Amazon spent $40 million for the rights to make the film and an additional $35 million for an aggressive marketing blitz—a price tag that has been criticized as a blatant attempt to cozy up to the president.

It didn’t matter how much money Amazon poured into Melania; practically nobody went to see it. The project bombed spectacularly at the box office, and nearly a dozen people close to the Trump administration skipped out on the world premiere—even the first lady’s own son. The film was also the subject of serious labor issues behind the scenes, and a whopping two-thirds of the film’s staff requested not to be credited at the end.

Melania was produced by the first lady herself and directed by Brett Ratner, the disgraced filmmaker who has been accused of sexual harassment and abuse by six different women. Melania and Ratner both appear in the government’s files on alleged sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

The docuseries would premiere “exclusively” on Amazon Prime “this fall,” according to Beckman.