Dems Ask for Probe Into Trump Team’s Handling of Anniversary Data

This summer, the Trump administration celebrated the country’s 250th anniversary with a series of splashy events that it insisted were nonpartisan. Tens of thousands of Americans signed up online to grab free tickets for gatherings like the Great American State Fair, the July 4 fireworks show in Washington, and the Patriot Games in Ohio. When they registered to attend those festivities, online forms requested their phone numbers, email address, and ZIP codes.

But few attendees likely realized that they were handing over their personal information to a private vendor that also works for Trump-linked political organizations. Campaign Nucleus—one of several firms owned by former Trump campaign official Brad Parscale—provided the forms used to register for high-profile semiquincentennial events this year.

Campaign Nucleus is one of various vendors with close ties to Trump’s campaign apparatus that was hired by Freedom 250, the group set up last year to help Trump control planning for the anniversary. Rushing to stage the kinds of high-profile events Trump wanted, the operatives running Freedom 250, who are themselves veterans of Trump campaigns, doled out large contracts to fellow MAGA insiders for event planning, public relations, and digital support. As Mother Jones has detailed, much of this was on American taxpayers’ dime.

Citing the cozy ties between annivesarry planners and GOP campaign efforts, House Democrats in a letter Tuesday asked the Government Accountability Office—the investigative arm of Congress—to examine whether pro-Trump political operatives have used data generated from the anniversary events to help Republicans in the upcoming election.

“President Trump and his allies are in a position to use information on American voters, harvested with taxpayer money and government resources, in an attempt to tip the scales in the upcoming midterm elections,” Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) and Rep. Joseph Morelle (D.-N.Y.), the top Democrats on the House Natural Resources and House Adminstration committees, respectively, wrote in a letter Tuesday asking the GAO to investigate.

USA Today reported in July that Americans seeking tickets to the Great American State Fair had to fill out forms that required them to submit their emails and phone numbers. Registrants also encountered a link to 45.donaldjtrump.com, a site that solicited donations to the pro-Trump political action committee Never Surrender.

Freedom250 has said this link was included in error. But the Democrats’ letter said the committee found that an account used to sign up for the fair continued to receive emails seeking donations for Never Surrender for weeks.

Huffman and Morelle said these solicitations represent “a stunning misuse of Freedom 250 resources.” Freedom 250 has received at least $86 million in federal funds intended for nonpartisan anniversary celebrations.

The emails mean “that either Freedom 250 is so closely tied to the Trump campaign that it is using the campaign PAC’s email for its own regular business purposes, or that Freedom 250’s mailing list has already been shared with the Trump campaign and the campaign is utilizing it for outreach,” the Democrats argued. “In either scenario, it is clear that Freedom 250 and the Trump campaign are co-mingling their activities and using Freedom 250’s collected data to point registrants to a campaign PAC’s website.”

“A national contact list assembled at taxpayer expense, enriched with geolocation and behavioral data and scored for persuadability, is an asset of extraordinary value to a party heading into a midterm election,” the lawmakers said.

Freedom 250 is a limited liability company set up under the National Park Foundation, a nonprofit that is itself run by the Interior Department. This unusual structure has so far enabled the group to mostly avoid congressional scrutiny, including over its data policies. “It is unclear what safeguards exist to prevent data collected by Freedom 250 from migrating to Freedom 250’s political allies,” the lawmakers wrote.

Parscale’s companies did not respond to inquiries from Mother Jones about how they handle personal information provided by Americans who signed up for Freedom 250 events. A Freedom 250 spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.