Yet another data point on the whole grift/graft aspect of (particularly) the second Trump administration. While Trump was endlessly bragging about how much war he was going to wage, while simultaneously bragging about how much war he was going to end, his Israel-enabled Iran War refused to submit to his vacillating bluster.
After claiming to be the best thing that had ever happened to Americans since… I don’t know… colonialism? Slavery? Jim Crow?, Trump insisted he’d beat the pesky Iranians, steal all of Venezuela’s oil, tariff the fuck out of nations that don’t even have any exports, and nationalize a bunch of stuff to deliver Americans the low, low prices they wanted.
While some of this has happened (especially the oil theft and the nationalization), the falling prices have yet to materialize. And, of course, they won’t. So, as gas prices shot up, Trump did what no president has ever done: announced some weird combination of patriotism and gasoline, which would be appearing (in very limited areas) under the name of the “Freedom Fuel Network.”
To be sure, the participating gas stations did (at least for awhile) provide much cheaper gas than their competitors. How they were able to do this remained a mystery, as did anything that might explain why these gas stations were Trump’s chosen few. The immediate assumption was corruption — that Trump was siphoning off some sort of subsidy in exchange for political donations or perhaps raking in a percentage of the sales via one of his many trust funds.
Journalists were soon able to sniff out a connection between the mysterious low-priced fuel and Donald Trump, as well as something that seems to be a common denominator between Trump and any beneficiary of his largesse.
Neither the White House nor the network’s owners would explain exactly how the stations were able to sell fuel far cheaper than their competitors. The White House told reporters that Freedom Fuel was simply a private company lowering its margins for patriotic reasons and declined to disclose the people behind it — who turned out to be a former New Jersey mayor and NFL special teams coach for the Baltimore Ravens, a GOP donor.
POLITICO’s reporting also linked six of the stations via business records to a New Jersey fuel businessperson named Shamikh Kazmi who, along with his brother Syed Kazmi, have been involved in several lawsuits.
Trump’s lawsuit involvement tends to be a two-way street. Not only is he a vexatious litigant, but he also regularly does stuff that prompts lawsuits. The Kazmi brothers experience with lawsuits runs one way: they’re always the defendants.
The operator behind at least six of the mysterious Freedom Fuel discount gas stations had faced a stream of nearly 200 penalties in New Jersey before President Donald Trump touted the network last month, according to state records POLITICO reviewed.
The penalties pertaining to safety and environmental violations laid out in New Jersey public records raise questions about how much the administration knew about the network that the White House promoted and Trump praised in social media posts and official press releases.
It doesn’t matter whether Trump knew or whether he knew but didn’t care. The end result is the same thing: Trump getting in bed with questionable people who have a long history of illegal activity. These penalties incurred by the Kazmi brothers were anything but minor. One station was forbidden from purchasing gas due to an unregistered tank in need of repairs. Two other stations in the “Freedom Fuel Network” were hit with similar legal action due to lack of registration. Another station was hit with a fine for ignoring a delivery ban that had already been imposed by regulators.
Nonetheless, the Freedom Fuel Network continues to (somehow!) exist, and has recently expanded into Detroit, Michigan. But if you’re wondering how these stations can continue to sell gas at below-market prices, here’s a rather unsurprising answer:
The lawsuit was filed by the Georgia-based Mansfield Energy against KRSM, a company based in New Jersey, and its president, Syed Kazmi. From May 21 to July 7, KRSM picked up 1.1 million gallons of fuel worth nearly $4 million from a fuel supply terminal in Pennsylvania, the suit claims.
Then, KRSM sold that fuel to gas stations that were part of the Freedom Fuel Network, which was able to sell gas at lower prices than its competitors did, the lawsuit claims.
Yep, if you lower your cost to near-zero, you can charge whatever you want and still turn a profit… at least for a little while. The lawsuit [PDF] claims this non-payment is part of what Makes America Great makes it possible for Freedom Fuel to undercut its competitors. While it’s true that some of this “free” gas went to other stations with FFN branding, it still ended up in the hands of the Kazmi brothers, whose past doesn’t exactly make a great case for “this is all just a misunderstanding” counter-arguments.
At this point, it’s tough to tell how far this lawsuit will proceed or what sort of discovery might be in the offing. But those of us interested in finding out what makes this personally profitable for Donald J. Trump will definitely be rooting for protracted litigation. There’s no way Trump isn’t making something off of this because if he wasn’t, he never would have said anything about it. The president isn’t supposed to be picking winners and losers in the market… at least not via highly visible social media posts. Any real president would know to keep this shady shit on the DL, rather than publicly attempt to take second-hand credit for engaging in barely disguised graft.
If the allegations turn out to be true, it will be the Trumpiest of Trump-brand populism: the equivalent of buying votes by not paying vendors for gas. What a time to be alive.
[Quick postscript on this: discovery requests are in and the plaintiff is demanding the court allow it to find out how millions just disappeared from a KRSM account it had previously moved to have frozen during litigation. This looks shady as fuck:
As set forth in the pending motion for contempt of this Court’s August 27, 2026 Order, Plaintiff’s M&T Bank account is now underfunded by approximately $2.25 million, while KRSM financial statements admitted into the record on August 27 represented KRSM had over $30,000.00 in cash assets.
Indeed. {popcorn noises}]