House Democrats are alleging "massive Trump fraud" in a new probe that accuses the White House of staging a "hostile takeover" of America's 250th birthday celebration, according to one journalist.
In a Thursday broadcast, investigative journalist Scott MacFarlane interviewed House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA), who released an interim report titled "From Vanity to Insanity: How the White House Cheated the American People Out of Their 250th Birthday."
"If I had to use one word, it would be corruption and deception," Huffman said.
The report accuses the White House of first trying to bend America250 — the nonpartisan birthday commission Congress created in 2016 — to its purposes, then creating Freedom 250 LLC, a limited liability company MacFarlane called "a shadow organization," to infiltrate the celebrations with what the report calls President Donald Trump's "extreme partisan agenda."
"They tried to stack it. They tried to strong-arm it," Huffman said. "America250 was promised $100 million from Congress; that amount was reduced down to less than $25 million by what they did. It was a shell game."
The report alleges that donors who thought they were giving to America250 were instead given Freedom 250's banking information, routing their money to Trump's substitute organization without their knowledge.
"The donors may well have been defrauded in a way that could constitute wire fraud," Huffman explained.
Wire fraud is a federal crime involving the use of electronic communications to carry out a deceptive scheme for financial gain.
MacFarlane noted that at least one canceled musical act described the concert booking as a "bait and switch" — they thought they were signing up for a nonpartisan event.
"He tried to make this 250th about himself, and I think he failed miserably," Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-VA) insisted.
Senate Democrats had already launched a separate probe into Freedom 250's funding in February, led by Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who accused the organization of running a "pay-to-play" scheme selling access to Trump.