Pending Freedom Fights 250 Lawsuit ‘Not an Attack on MMA, but on Corruption”

Freedom Fights 250 is just days away, but according to this former federal prosecutor, it shouldn’t be happening at all.

Brendan Ballou is a former special counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice, Antitrust Division, from 2020 to 2025. Ballou left the DOJ because he believed the department was becoming more and more politicized, and as a result felt he could be “most effective outside” of government. After leaving the government, Ballou started the Public Integrity Project to “raise the legal and reputational cost of corruption in America.”

The Public Integrity Project filed a suit in federal court in Washington, D.C., requesting the judge to block the Freedom Fights 250 event on June 14th. The Plaintiffs are two Virginia residents, Air Force veteran Paul Romano and political activist Susan Douglas, whom the Public Integrity Project is representing. The suit argues that multiple federal laws and regulations were violated, going as far to describe the whole event as “deeply corrupt”.

To make sense of all of this, we spoke exclusively with Brendan Ballou on Thursday afternoon. The main thing he wanted to communicate was that this lawsuit is “not an attack on MMA, but an attack on corruption”:

“There have been sporting events at the White House before, and there will be in the future. The problem is the corruption that is motivating this. You have TKO that is selling these $1.5 million sponsorship packages, the advertisements that they’re playing for Crypto.com, Monster, and a whole bunch of other folks. The individual stock that Trump owns and then obviously the exclusive streaming rights that Paramount has allied with the President. This is just a monetization of national monuments that I think most people would agree isn’t what we want our national monuments to be, no matter what your politics are.”

On Tuesday, Dana White reacted to the lawsuit during a media scrum, stating, “We were expecting a lawsuit. We expected everything coming into this event. We thought it would be sooner. We knew it was going to come. We didn’t know who or how, but we knew it was coming.”

If the injunction is denied, Ballou is planning on remaining steadfast in his fight against corruption: “I think there’s going to be follow-up on the Claw specifically, and just because you can’t prevent corruption doesn’t mean that corruption can’t be addressed on the other side. So, if people or companies are unfairly or illegally profiting from public property, that’s something we want to keep looking at.”

Just before we spoke with Ballou, Judge Mehta stated that he will not require a hearing on this case. Instead, he will rule based on the papers. This is, of course, the quickest way that a case like this can be ruled on. A ruling could come as soon as tonight, or even on Friday.

On Friday, the Freedom Fights 250 pre-fight press conference is set to take place on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The next day, the ceremonial weigh-ins are slated to be held on the Ellipse, just outside the White House grounds. All of this leads to Sunday for a mixed martial arts event the likes of which we may never see again.

Or, at all.