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ProPublica investigation reveals Trump envoy Nick Adams' charity paid him and his mother 53% of revenue

ProPublica reported on July 28, 2026 that the Foundation for Liberty and American Greatness (FLAG), a civics-education nonprofit founded by Trump special envoy Nick Adams, paid Adams and his mother Angelika Adamopoulos a combined $587,279 in 2024 — 53% of the charity's annual revenue — despite little documented evidence of the civics programming it claims to deliver in schools. FLAG's federal filings show the charity conducted none of the independent compensation reviews normally used to guard against self-dealing, and its fundraising sweepstakes has advertised a $1,000,000 prize with no record of ever being paid out.

Jurisdiction
Federal
Location
Tarpon Springs, Florida

Abuses documented

Actors

  • Nick Adams (Special Presidential Envoy for American Tourism, Exceptionalism and Values; Founder, FLAG)
  • Angelika Adamopoulos (Secretary, FLAG)

On July 28, 2026, ProPublica reported that the Foundation for Liberty and American Greatness (FLAG), a civics-education nonprofit founded by Trump special envoy Nick Adams, paid Adams and his mother Angelika Adamopoulos a combined $587,279 in 2024 — 53% of the charity's total revenue that year — according to the organization's federal tax filings. Adamopoulos, who serves as FLAG's secretary, was paid $201,861 in compensation and benefits; in the same filing, FLAG told the IRS that no officer or director shared a family relationship with another officer or director, despite Adams and Adamopoulos being mother and son. Adams did not respond to ProPublica's questions about FLAG's finances.

FLAG's own filings show the arrangement lacked basic safeguards against self-dealing: from 2017 through 2024, the charity answered no every year when the IRS asked whether executive compensation was reviewed by independent parties or benchmarked against comparable organizations. Nonprofit law experts told ProPublica that the absence of independent review can itself constitute an "excess benefit transaction" exposing the charity to tax penalties, and noted that Adams' salary — which rose from zero in FLAG's first three years to $411,209, roughly 30% of revenue, by 2023, before his mother's compensation was added in 2024 — warranted scrutiny given the size and trajectory of the increases.

Despite FLAG's claim to have reached 2 million children with civics education since its 2016 founding, ProPublica found little documentation of the classroom visits and programming the charity says it provides, beyond photographs from 2016 and early 2017. Most of FLAG's revenue comes from a direct-mail sweepstakes offering donors a chance to win $1,000,000 — a prize that does not appear in nine years of the charity's federal tax filings, and for which ProPublica could not locate a required state sweepstakes registration in any state. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who sits on FLAG's advisory council, publicly praised the organization at a September ceremony at the National Archives as a "singular achievement in American education"; a Pentagon spokesperson declined to answer questions about FLAG's finances but reiterated Hegseth's support for the organization.

Why we recorded this

Officials who hold public trust are expected to disclose financial arrangements that could compromise that trust, especially when they lend a government platform to a private organization from which they personally profit. A federal envoy's charity paid him and his mother 53% of its annual revenue while producing little documented evidence of the civics education it claims to deliver, and the charity's own tax filings show none of the independent compensation review that normally guards against board-level self-dealing. This archive records when public officials use nonprofit vehicles bearing their name and public credibility to direct charitable revenue to themselves and immediate family, eroding the disclosure norms that let the public judge whose interests an official's activities actually serve.

Sources

  1. This MAGA Influencer Runs a Charity to Teach Kids Civics. Much of the Money Goes to Him Instead. — ProPublica primary accessed July 29, 2026
  2. MAGA influencer who raised millions to teach kids civics instead paid himself: review — Raw Story secondary accessed July 29, 2026
  3. Foundation for Liberty and American Greatness | Tarpon Springs, FL — Cause IQ secondary accessed July 30, 2026

See also