Kristi Noem Secretly Took Mystery Donation From Dark-Money Group
A ProPublica report Monday reveals that Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem received and failed to publicly disclose an $80,000 payment from a dark-money group.
ProPublica reports that in June 2023, Noem, then the governor of South Dakota, set up an LLC in Delaware. Within four minutes, a dark-money group (i.e., a group that doesn’t disclose its sources of funding) was created, called the American Resolve Policy Fund. The group reported having no employees in 2023, and its activities are “unclear,” according to ProPublica.
In 2023, American Resolve reportedly raised just over a million dollars, and spent only about a fifth of that, including an $80,000 payment to Noem’s LLC, allegedly for having fundraised $800,000. When she was appointed by Trump, Noem then failed to publicly disclose the payment on the public financial disclosure form required of high-level government officials.
“If donors to these nonprofits [dark-money groups] are not just holding the keys to an elected official’s political future but also literally providing them with their income, that’s new and disturbing,” Daniel Weiner, former Federal Election Commission attorney and current campaign finance program director at the Brennan Center, told ProPublica.
Lee Schoenbeck, a South Dakota politician and attorney, added that the payment may have violated state law barring the governor from receiving “for any of their official services any other compensation, emoluments, or perquisites than the salaries provided by law.”
“There’s no way the governor is supposed to have a private side business that the public doesn’t know about,” Schoenbeck told ProPublica. “It would clearly not be appropriate.”
Noem’s attorney assured ProPublica that Noem had “fully complied with the letter and the spirit of the law,” and underwent proper scrutiny from the Office of Government Ethics. The attorney also said Noem had “fully disclosed all of her income on public documents that are readily available,” but failed to respond to ProPublica with evidence supporting this in light of the unreported $80,000 payment.
The revelation adds to a record of eyebrow-raising spending habits on the part of Noem—to say nothing of the Trump administration writ large. Noem faced scrutiny for carrying around hefty wads of cash, as well as for conspicuously sporting a $50,000 gold Rolex during a March trip to a prison in El Salvador. That same month, the Associated Press, despite Noem’s best efforts, exposed that taxpayers had footed the bill for her personal travel expenses as governor, including for a trip to go on a bear hunt in Canada and receive dental work in Houston.