Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has been accused of taking an $80,000 cut of the money she raised for a nonprofit that promotes her political career and agenda, and then failing to report the income on her federal disclosure form.
In 2023, while Noem served as the governor of South Dakota, the nonprofit American Resolve Policy Fund—which is affiliated with Noem’s American Resolve PAC—paid Noem a 10 percent commission on the $800,000 she brought in for the nonprofit that year, according to ProPublica.
The money represented a significant boost to her roughly $130,000 government salary, but Noem failed to include it on the federal disclosure form she filed when President Donald Trump tapped her to join his Cabinet, according to ProPublica. The outlet discovered the payments on American Resolve’s tax filings.
Sources told the outlet that it was normal for politicians to raise money for nonprofits and PACs—but not for the politician to keep some of the money for themselves.
“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, director of the Brennan Center’s campaign finance work, told ProPublica.
Noem’s lawyer, Trevor Stanley, told ProPublica in a statement: “Then-Governor Noem fully complied with the letter and the spirit of the law,” and said she “fully disclosed all of her income on public documents that are readily available.”
Stanley did not respond to ProPublica’s follow-up questions about whether the Office of Government Ethics was aware of the $80,000 payment. He also declined to provide evidence that Noem had reported all of her income, given that the payment was left off the disclosure form, ProPublica said.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Stanley and American Resolve for comment.
In June 2023, Noem registered an LLC in Delaware called Ashwood Strategies dedicated to her personal business activities, including the $140,000 advance she received for her book, No Going Back. Four minutes later, the nonprofit American Resolve Policy Fund was also incorporated in Delaware, according to ProPublica.
American Resolve reported that it had no employees but raised $1.1 million in 2023.
Of that, it only spent $220,000 total in 2023: $80,000 went to Noem, about $84,000 went to an unspecified travel budget, $21,000 went to another professional fundraiser, and the rest went to administrative expenses, ProPublica reported.
It’s not clear what it did with the rest of the money it raised. Its profile on X had just 101 followers as of Monday and seemed entirely dedicated to promoting Noem. The Homeland Security secretary has been dressing up as a federal agent and “leading” deportation raids.
In March, the organization also bought Facebook ads attacking a South Dakota news outlet that had reported on Noem’s use of government credit cards, ProPublica reported. Noem’s lawyer declined to tell ProPublica if the group had paid Noem any money after 2023, the most recent year for which its tax filing was available.
The American Resolve PAC, meanwhile, promotes Noem’s political career and “puts Kristi and her team on the ground in key races across America,” according to its website.
Before joining Trump’s Cabinet, Noem spent nearly two decades serving in the U.S. House of Representatives and the South Dakota state government, where she earned about $130,000 per year as governor, ProPublica reported.
Her relatively modest public service salaries apparently haven’t stopped her from loading up on luxury goods, though. In March, she appeared in a promo video in the notorious Salvadoran prison CECOT wearing what appeared to be a $60,000 Rolex Daytona watch.
A month later, a robber managed to swipe her Gucci purse from a restaurant in Washington, D.C., making off with $3,000 in cash. Police arrested a suspect who later said he’d had no idea who Noem was, and that he had targeted her because her bag looked expensive.
Noem has also been criticized for spending more than $640,000 in taxpayer money on travel expenses during the six years she served as South Dakota’s governor, according to an Associated Press analysis.
The expenses included a six-day trip to Paris where she gave a political talk, a trip to Canada for a bear hunt, a book tour that included a stop in New York, and a visit to Houston, Texas, where she got dental work done, the AP reported.
At the time, a spokesperson for Noem denied that she had misused public funds.
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