Randy Brown -- Baltimore Ravens senior special teams coach and former three-term Republican mayor of Evesham Township, New Jersey -- signed Freedom Fuel Network's certificate of formation in Delaware on June 23, 2026, alongside Yoni Gontownik, a former Mercuria commodities executive and GOP fundraiser tied to NORPAC. Within two weeks, roughly 25 stations opened across Pennsylvania and New Jersey, selling gas at $3.47 a gallon -- a price set to reference Trump as the 47th president.
On July 1, 2026, Trump posted on Truth Social urging other retailers to follow Freedom Fuel's lead "because they love the U.S.A." Six days later, the White House posted its own promotional video from a Philadelphia-area station in Upper Dublin Township. This is not a company that found its own audience. This is a company the administration chose to amplify.
Who's Actually Behind It
The White House never named who was behind Freedom Fuel. Reporting since has. AP's review of Delaware business filings found stations linked to Syed and Shamikh Kazmi -- New Jersey fuel-retail brothers -- account for 14 of the network's original 25 stations: eight that Shamikh leases directly from Blue Owl Capital, which owns roughly a third of all Freedom Fuel real estate, plus six more tied to the brothers through address and fuel-supply records. Politico separately reported "at least six" New Jersey stations managed by Shamikh -- not established as a different set of six, and not confirmed as the identical ones either. Either way, the Kazmis are not a footnote in this ownership structure. They are, on the numbers available, the majority of it.
The Lawsuit Trump's Praise Was Sitting On Top Of
Syed Kazmi is president of KRSM Inc., based in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. On Aug. 19, 2026, Mansfield Oil sued KRSM and Kazmi in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, alleging KRSM drew roughly 1.12 million gallons -- about $4 million worth -- from a Mansfield account at an Energy Transfer/Sunoco terminal in Twin Oaks, PA, between May 21 and July 7, 2026, without paying for it. That window overlaps almost exactly with Freedom Fuel's launch and Trump's own promotion of the chain. On Aug. 28, Judge Gerald Austin McHugh ordered KRSM and Kazmi to maintain at least $2.75 million in a bank account pending the litigation -- an asset-preservation order, not the "frozen assets" headline some coverage suggested. KRSM disputes the underlying claim as a pricing dispute rather than theft. No default judgment has been entered as of this writing, whatever earlier reporting may have implied.
This is not the Kazmis' first time in this particular kind of trouble. In August 2021, after a different fuel supplier cut them off, the brothers exploited a security lapse to take more than 230,000 gallons from that supplier's depot over ten days. A federal New Jersey judge ordered them in February 2026 -- five months before Trump's Truth Social post -- to pay that supplier $600,000. Separately, a suit alleging "dishonest, unethical, immoral" conduct in operating a Lawrenceville 7-Eleven franchise produced a $380,000 judgment against Syed Kazmi's KRSM in 2024.
A $600,000 judgment for taking fuel without paying for it was five months old, and a matter of public record, when the president told Americans to buy from this network because its owners "love the U.S.A."
Two Denials, One Set of Filings
The Hill reported two separate denials of any KRSM or Kazmi connection to Freedom Fuel: an anonymous source "familiar with the business," and, separately, a White House official -- both saying the administration had "zero contact or dealings with KRSM or Kazmi." Those denials sit directly across the table from AP's own review of the ownership filings. One of those two things is not accurate, and it isn't AP's filings that are freely available to check twice.
As of Sept. 3, 2026, Freedom Fuel was expanding to Detroit -- despite the pending Mansfield suit and the asset-preservation order sitting on top of one of its two central operators.
What's Actually Being Asked
Nobody here has proven that Randy Brown or Yoni Gontownik, the network's registered founders, knew anything about their co-owners' fuel-payment history. That's a real, open, and so far unanswered question -- not a settled fact. What is documented is simpler: a company whose majority ownership traces to operators with an active federal fraud lawsuit and a five-month-old six-figure judgment for the same underlying conduct got a presidential endorsement and a White House video, and nobody in a position to check appears to have checked.