Freedom 250 was promoted as a separate collection of activities celebrating America, distinct from the official America 250 events. President Donald Trump’s wealthy allies were supposedly paying the bills, which made the sparse attendance and tacky presentation easier to dismiss.

A Freedom of Information Act request now suggests taxpayers were still charged for a significant collection of Freedom 250 expenses. The request came from Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a nonpartisan watchdog group that obtained documents detailing the costs.

The estimated combined price of the Great American State Fair, the Patriot Games, and Fourth of July celebrations on the National Mall was roughly $128 million. Of that amount, $100 million was expected to come from Congress.

That congressional money was presumably associated with the official America 250 celebration, although Trump also took control of those events. Another estimated $14 million in federal grant money covered the cost of the Freedom Truck museums.

Those figures leave a gap of roughly $14 million between the estimated event costs and the identified congressional and grant funding. By the standards of this administration’s spending spectacles, that missing piece might almost look restrained.

The larger mystery involves the private donations that were supposed to finance Freedom 250. The initiative ostensibly received more than $50 million from private donors, yet none of that money appears in the documents obtained by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

That omission raises an obvious question about where the donated money went and why taxpayers were paying so much. The private funding sales pitch looks considerably less comforting when federal money is plainly visible and the promised donations are not.

The records also show $26 million in taxpayer money going to Event Strategies Inc. The company helped stage Trump’s rally immediately before the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, making it another familiar Trumpworld recipient of public money.

The Interior Department also appears to have spent more than planned on the events, despite their bargain bin appearance. In July, the department requested an additional $10 million to “recoup costs associated with support of events celebrating America’s Semiquincentennial.”

The Freedom 250 accounting resembles the funding story surrounding Trump’s planned White House ballroom. That project was initially presented as something that would be financed entirely by donors rather than the public.

Taxpayers nevertheless ended up responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars that Trump diverted from elsewhere in the federal budget. Information disclosed in June indicated that about $300 million of the ballroom’s costs were coming from taxpayers, while its current price remained unclear.

The same familiar script appeared with the plane from Qatar that was supposed to become a new Air Force One. The aircraft was described as a gift, even as Trump planned to take it with him after leaving office for his presidential library.

The public cost of retrofitting that plane also remained uncertain. The price could be $400 million, or it could reach $1 billion, leaving taxpayers without a firm answer about the cost of another supposedly generous gift.

Against those enormous figures, the $20 million in taxpayer money used to run partisan political advertisements can seem comparatively small. After the resulting backlash, Trump said one of his political action committees would cover the advertising costs going forward.

That promise did not include paying taxpayers back for money already spent. As with Freedom 250, the ballroom, and the plane, the arrangement leaves public money exposed while private funding claims do the political sales work.

Congress has the power to stop this use of federal money, but the Republican majority has shown no interest in doing so. For now, taxpayers remain stuck financing Trump’s vanity projects while promised private dollars remain frustratingly difficult to find.