Why Sec. Noem’s Failure to Disclose an $80,000 Payment From a Conservative Dark Money Group Matters

“We have no idea where the money truly came from or the conflicts of interest it might have created."

You may have heard that Kristi Noem, the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), killed her dog, wore a $50,000 Rolex while touring the infamous Salvadoran CECOT mega-prison, and falsely claimed in her book that she’d met North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.

Well, last week The Dakota Scout, an independent, locally owned paper based in Sioux Falls, first reported that End Citizens United filed an ethics complaint against Noem with the Public Integrity Section of the Department of Justice and the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. The complaint calls for an investigation into whether the former Governor of South Dakota violated campaign finance laws when she accepted a $80,000 personal payment from a dark money group, American Resolve Policy Fund, while she was governor and then, once Noem was nominated to lead the DHS, failed to disclose the payment as required.

According to ProPublica, Noem received the payment, via a company she’d set up in Delaware, for helping to fundraise hundreds of thousands of dollars for American Resolve Policy Fund, a dark money group that says its goal is “fighting to preserve America for the next generation.” The group’s donors are unknown. “We have no idea where the money truly came from or the conflicts of interest it might have created,” Tiffany Muller, president of End Citizens United, told the Scout. When Noem received the $80,000, her annual state salary was $130,000, so the payment represented a significant increase in earnings.

“If donors to these nonprofits 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, who directs the Elections and Government program at the Brennan Center, told ProPublica.

Noem might have decided not to disclose her payment from the dark money group so that senators couldn’t question her about it during her confirmation hearings. Conflicts of interest are only going to get harder to track and scrutinize. As Muller told me, “Watchdogs are being decimated. This administration is about two main things: running grifts that line their pockets and shutting down government watchdogs that will hold them accountable.”

We’ve all seen the numerous ways President Trump has diminished government officials’ ability to hold bad political actors to account. Trump has defanged two of the agencies tasked with investigating domestic fraud: he removed the director of the Office of Government Ethics within days of his second inauguration and has since gutted the Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Office. End Citizens United files dozens of campaign finance violation complaints per cycle, including with those offices, and will continue to do so. As Muller explained, “At this time when watchdogs of all kinds are being fired, agencies are being dismantled, when there is no cop on the beat, it’s even more important that we create a record of what politicians are doing and raise public awareness of corruption.”

Another important watchdog that the Trump administration is dismantling: Local journalism outlets. Last week, Congress voted to cut almost $1 billion in funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, whose PBS and NPR stations rely on federal funding and report on local officials (and so much more). This major cut to local journalism comes when outlets like The Dakota Scout and its investigative reporters are already facing an uphill battle, as advertising revenues for journalism have collapsed and private equity has diminished or shuttered many news organizations. A new report published this month by Muck Rack and Rebuild Local News says the number of journalists per capita has decreased by seventy-five percent in the last twenty years. That’s a colossal problem for tracking corruption.

So is attacking journalists for doing their jobs. In March, Noem and her personal lawyer threatened to sue The Scout, after it reported that Noem had charged over $650,000 to her taxpayer-funded credit cards while she was governor. Like many grifts in this era of American grifts, the details of the reporting are both caricaturish and astonishing: taxpayer-funded plane tickets to Paris so Noem could speak at the rightwing World Freedom Initiative conference; a taxpayer-funded bear-hunting trip to Canada; a taxpayer-funded trip to Texas for dental work.

Noem denied the paper’s reporting, saying she’d only put $2,000 on her taxpayer-funded card; the Scout said its journalists obtained the credit card records by suing the state auditor when its office wouldn’t comply with a public records request. We only know about Noem’s credit card bills because local reporters were paying attention over many years — and had the tenacity to fight a denied public records request. Not just anyone sues a state office for the governor’s credit card statements.

So here’s something we can hold on to, a sign that we have some traits of a free and democratic society yet: The South Dakota Scout is still reporting and publishing about Kristi Noem, despite the lawsuit and even though Noem directs a federal agency that is sending people to foreign prisons without due process.

In the weeks just before the 2024 election, when the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times decided not to endorse a presidential candidate, and in the first frantic days after Trump’s inauguration, when the executive orders were coming nonstop, I wondered whether anyone would ever protest again, whether advocates and journalists would keep speaking and writing to tell the truth. We can’t take for granted the people who are.

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Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore