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CRIMINAL NO. 8647

MYRANDA POLISCI

BENJAMIN YOHO,

TRICIA McLAUGHLIN,

COREY LEWANDOWSKI,

KRISTI NOEM,

BRYON NOEM,

KASSIDY PETERS,

KYLE PETERS,

STACI GOEDE,

KRISTI BROGHAMMER,

KEVIN BROGHAMMER,

MADISON SHEAHAN,

DAVID FRECKA

JEFF LANDRY

JAY CONOUGHTON

MIKE MCELWAIN

JOHN THUNE

LUKE LINDBERG

MARTY JACKLEY

GREGORY BOVINO

NICHOLAS SHIRLEY

LAURA LOOMER

STEVEN BANNON

JIM JORDAN

Defendants,

THE SCHEME

1.The Enterprise did not operate through a single organization, industry, or level of government. It operated through overlapping political, financial, nonprofit, media, and governmental networks that developed over years and ultimately reached into the federal executive branch.

2.Through those networks, the defendants and their associates converted political influence into governmental authority, governmental authority into financial and institutional benefit, and those benefits back into political power. The scheme relied upon the movement of money, personnel, information, and influence between institutions that often appeared independent but repeatedly shared participants, donors, vendors, consultants, and objectives.

3.What began as a network of relationships eventually became a system. The sections that follow trace its development from state political and donor circles into national advocacy organizations, presidential politics, federal personnel and policy infrastructure, and ultimately the exercise of governmental authority. The methods changed as the Enterprise expanded. The participants repeatedly did not.

Figure below is offered as demonstrative evidence to demonstrate the general architecture of the scheme to move funds to Enterprise participants through contracts, non-profits, political committees and media companies

Figure below offered as demonstrative evidence depictting the four-category framework through which the Enterprise’s grievance messaging was conducted as alleged below.

KNOWLEDGE, INTENT, AND FORESEEABILITY

4. Enterprise participants used audience segmentation, behavioral analytics, engagement data, fundraising metrics, and message testing to measure, develop, and refine political, fundraising, media, and governmental communications designed to generate political support, financial contributions, audience participation, and public acceptance of Enterprise objectives.

5. Enterprise participants continued disseminating materially similar narratives after the factual claims underlying them had been contradicted by courts, investigators, law-enforcement authorities, public evidence, or their original sources. Participants were thereby repeatedly placed on notice that such claims lacked factual support. Their continued use after receiving such notice is alleged as evidence of knowledge and intent.

6. Having measured the effects of these communications and continued deploying them after receiving notice that underlying claims lacked factual support, Enterprise participants refined and repeatedly employed the recurring grievance categories alleged below.

MANNER AND MEANS OF THE ENTERPRISE

Figure below is offered as demonstrative evidence depicting the Enterprise’s Manner and Means

7.During the period covered by this indictment, members of the Enterprise used solicitations, fundraising messages, digital ads, media appearances, mass texts, and coordinated public statements to build political support, attract donors, and gain public approval for their planned actions. In these communications, they depicted certain individuals, communities, institutions, and government actors as threats, criminal organizations, safety risks, or obstacles to governance. They kept using these tactics repeatedly, even when there was no current evidence to support key factual claims, or after those claims had been publicly challenged, retracted, or weakened by new evidence. This behavior is alleged to show knowledge, intent, and deliberate action.

8.Category One — Legitimacy Grievance or communications portraying elections, governmental institutions, public programs, and public officials as illegitimate, corrupt, fraudulent, or engaged in conspiratorial conduct against the recipient’s community. The category functioned to erode trust in existing institutions, increase receptivity to alternative sources of authority, and generate political support, donor participation, and financial contributions benefiting Enterprise objectives.

Figure below is offered as demonstrative evidence of the Enterprise’s legitimacy grievance messaging.

9.Category Two — The second category, Security Grievance, depicted certain ethnic, religious, immigrant, and political groups—such as Minnesotans—as threats to public safety, community stability, or national security. Messages in this category linked specific populations to criminal, terrorist, cartel, gang, trafficking, or other organized threat activities, aiming to build political support, attract financial contributions, and justify enforcement actions, policy proposals, and government interventions sought by Enterprise participants.

Figures below is offered as demonstrative evidence of the Enterprise’s security grievance messaging.

10. Category Three — Purity Grievance. The third category consisted of communications alleging child exploitation, trafficking, ritual abuse, moral corruption, or contamination by identified political, ethnic, religious, or social targets. The method converted political disagreement into perceived moral emergency and moral emergency into political and financial action. Enterprise participants deployed such narratives to solicit contributions, mobilize voters, and accumulate political power, including through PACs associated with KASHYAP PATEL and TIMOTHY BALLARD that participated in joint fundraising committees with DONALD J. TRUMP. The resulting structure permitted purity-grievance messaging to generate contributions benefiting interconnected political committees while simultaneously advancing their shared political objectives.

Figure below is offered as demonstrative evidence of the Enterprise’s purity grievance messaging sent from “Sound of Freedom PAC” prior to Ballard’s appointment dozens of times to recipients.

11.Category Four — Parental Instinct Activation, the fourth category which functioned not as an independent grievance theme, but as a force multiplier attached to the other grievance categories. Through explicit or implied threats to children, families, or parental responsibilities, the mechanism transformed broader political and social narratives into immediate personal concerns, accelerated emotional response, and increased audience engagement, participation, and financial conversion.

12.Upon information and belief, at all times relevant to this Indictment, STEVE BANNON’S America First War Room and other Enterprise participants, utilized WinRed and contact data obtained through other conservative platforms and organizations, including Parler, to construct and coordinate fundraising and political-communications channels outside traditional PAC-specific messaging structures. The resulting architecture permitted communications to reach recipients through overlapping lists, entities, and fundraising channels in a manner that obscured or confused the identity of the originating political organization and the relationships among participating entities.

Figure below is offered as demonstrative evidence that Steve Bannon and Parler participated in the broader WinRed network and financial architecture utilized by the Enterprise.

13. Enterprise participants repeatedly combined grievance, threat, and identity-based narratives across political, fundraising, media, and governmental communications. The recurrence of substantially similar methods across otherwise separate institutions is alleged as evidence of a developed communications methodology rather than isolated political messaging.

14. The methodology operated through amplification. Political and advocacy networks introduced or circulated claims; influencers, media figures, and aligned organizations expanded their reach; and, in certain instances alleged herein, substantially similar narratives subsequently appeared in official governmental communications.

15. The resulting structure was self-reinforcing. Political messaging generated attention, financial support, and public pressure; amplification increased the apparent legitimacy and reach of the underlying narratives; and governmental repetition could transform political claims into assertions carrying the authority of the State.

16. As alleged with particularity below, this methodology was repeatedly deployed against identified individuals and communities and continued after its foreseeable consequences—including threats, harassment, impersonation, and violence—had become publicly apparent.

SECTION 1 — ENTERPRISE NETWORK INTEGRATION AND CONTINUITY: THE OHIO–SOUTH DAKOTA NEXUS

Figure below is offered as demonstrative evidence depicting the Russian and Israeli influence within domestic policy lobby and connections across and Ohio South Dakota Nexus

17. Long before the conduct in question, Enterprise members built interconnected political, donor, staffing, and communications networks in South Dakota and Ohio. Through these, they built relationships, recruited people, expanded their influence, and kept things running smoothly across different government, political, and business activities. South Dakota became a key hub thanks to its friendly tax laws, minimal disclosure rules, asset-protection options, and easy routes to political influence and authority—creating the environment for those networks to expand.

18.From in or about 2004 through in or about 2008, GHISLAINE MAXWELL, a longtime associate and later convicted co-conspirator of Jeffrey Epstein, was affiliated with Avalon Capital Group, Inc., the South Dakota investment vehicle of THEODORE WAITT. A United States Department of Justice law-enforcement report identified Maxwell at Avalon Capital’s North Sioux City, South Dakota address.

[SEE EXHIBIT A]1

19.This Indictment does not allege wrongdoing by WAITT. The foregoing affiliation is pleaded solely to establish that the Siouxland Node was, during the relevant period, connected through documented corporate records to individuals operating within the broader Epstein financial network.

20. In or about November 2008, DAN LEDERMAN was elected to the South Dakota House of Representatives from District 16, encompassing Union County and the Dakota Dunes corridor, and assumed office on or about January 9, 2009. LEDERMAN lived within the same Sioux City–Dakota Dunes geographic corridor (hereinafter the "Siouxland Node") as THEODORE WAITT and Avalon Capital Group, Inc. In or about November 2010, LEDERMAN was elected to the South Dakota Senate, where he served from January 11, 2011 through his resignation on March 30, 2015, and during which tenure he sponsored and advanced legislation rewriting the State's captive insurance statutes — legislation operating in tandem with the permissive legal framework.

21. During and following his legislative tenure, LEDERMAN became affiliated with the Republican Jewish Coalition (“RJC”), a national political organization. Through the RJC, LEDERMAN developed relationships with elected officials, political operatives, consultants, and donors outside South Dakota.

22. The Iowa and South Dakota sides of the Siouxland Node were not merely parallel political networks. By at least 2014, DAN LEDERMAN and SAMUEL H. CLOVIS, JR. had established a documented political relationship. During CLOVIS’s 2014 campaign for the United States Senate from Iowa, LEDERMAN’s Rushmore PAC selected CLOVIS as the featured speaker for the first luncheon of its election-cycle speaker series in Sioux City. In announcing the event, LEDERMAN publicly described CLOVIS as “one of Siouxland’s most prominent conservative leaders.” The event placed an Iowa federal candidate before a political organization operated by a sitting South Dakota state senator and demonstrates that the cross-border political relationship alleged herein existed before either man entered the later Trump political and governmental network.

23. CLOVIS thereafter moved from the Siouxland political network into national presidential politics. After serving as Iowa Director for Rick Perry’s presidential campaign, CLOVIS was recruited in or about August 2015 by defendant COREY LEWANDOWSKI to join the Donald J. Trump presidential campaign as National Co-Chair and Chief Policy Advisor. CLOVIS’s recruitment therefore did not create the Siouxland political network alleged herein; rather, it extended an existing network—within which CLOVIS and LEDERMAN had already operated—directly into the senior leadership of a national presidential campaign.2

24. On or about February 11, 2017, LEDERMAN was elected Chairman of the South Dakota Republican Party, a position he held until January 14, 2023. As Chairman, LEDERMAN occupied a central position in state-party fundraising, candidate access, appointments, and political messaging and regularly interacted with national political committees, organizations, donors, and media networks.

25.His elevation occurred after the preexisting Lederman–Clovis relationship had already extended, through CLOVIS and defendant LEWANDOWSKI, into the Trump campaign, further integrating the Siouxland Node with national Republican political infrastructure.

26.LEWANDOWSKI and other officials associated with Americans for Prosperity, Turning Points USA, and The Heritage Foundation carefully orchestrated connecting with Professors across the country and convinced them to support TRUMP and hold campus events in exchange for appointments to the campaign and in the event of a second Trump presidency.

27.CLOVIS withdrew his support for candidate RICK PERRY and subsequently was given a role on TRUMP’S campaign, and was later appointed to Secretary of Agriculture.

28. On or about November 2, 2017, SAMUEL H. CLOVIS, JR. withdrew his nomination following the unsealing of court documents in the Office of Special Counsel investigation identifying CLOVIS as the Trump-campaign supervisor who, in or about August 2016, encouraged campaign foreign-policy advisor GEORGE PAPADOPOULOS to pursue meetings with Russian government officials.

29.CLOVIS nonetheless remained employed at the United States Department of Agriculture as a senior White House advisor following the withdrawal of his nomination. This Indictment alleges no wrongdoing by CLOVIS. These facts are pleaded to establish that the Siouxland Node functioned not only as state-level financial and political infrastructure, but as a personnel pipeline through which Siouxland-anchored individuals entered national presidential campaigns and the federal executive branch.3

30. Following public disclosure of investigations concerning contacts between Trump-campaign personnel and Russian officials, including the conduct involving CLOVIS alleged above, defendant JOHN THUNE traveled to the Russian Federation in July 2018 as part of a congressional delegation that met with senior Russian officials in advance of the Trump–Putin Helsinki summit. Following the trip, THUNE publicly emphasized continued diplomatic engagement with Russia and characterized the delegation’s discussions as “direct and to-the-point” amid continuing controversy concerning Russian interference in the 2016 election. Those statements occurred within the broader political environment in which DONALD J. TRUMP and aligned political actors repeatedly portrayed investigations concerning Russian interference as exaggerated, politically motivated, or illegitimate—including TRUMP’s characterization of the “Russia thing” as a “hoax”—a recurring legitimacy-grievance framework alleged herein.

31. During the period that followed, Enterprise participants and aligned political actors continued advancing messaging portraying investigations into Russian election interference as politically motivated, exaggerated, or unreliable notwithstanding extensive public reporting, intelligence-community findings, congressional investigations, and federal criminal prosecutions concerning Russian interference activities during the 2016 election cycle.

32. The Ohio–South Dakota relationship extended beyond donor and advocacy networks into elected office, personnel, and political communications. During KRISTI NOEM’s service in the United States House of Representatives, NOEM and Ohio Representative JAMES D. JORDAN served concurrently within the House Republican Conference. Their political relationship continued after NOEM returned to South Dakota.

33. In or about April 2020, IAN FURY, who had spearheaded communications for JORDAN in Washington, D.C., was recruited into NOEM’s operation and relocated from Ohio to Pierre to serve as her Communications Director. FURY thereafter helped develop and administer NOEM’s political and governmental messaging operation. His transfer from JORDAN’s congressional communications apparatus directly into NOEM’s operation in Pierre established a documented personnel and communications bridge between the Ohio and South Dakota Nodes.

34. That relationship remained politically active. In October 2023, NOEM publicly endorsed JORDAN for Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, describing him as her “friend and former colleague” and urging House Republicans to rally behind his candidacy. South Dakota Representative DUSTY JOHNSON separately delivered a nominating speech for JORDAN before the House Republican Conference and thereafter supported JORDAN and encouraging more support for Israel during the House floor votes.4

35. The relationship also intersected with the fundraising network alleged herein. JORDAN was supported by the Republican Jewish Coalition Political Action Committee (“RJC-PAC”), further connecting JORDAN to the same national political organization with which LEDERMAN was affiliated. These overlapping personnel, political, communications, and fundraising relationships are alleged not as independent criminal conduct, but as evidence that the Ohio and South Dakota Nodes were connected through identifiable participants and institutions rather than geographic coincidence.

36. These parallel channels—LEDERMAN through the Republican Jewish Coalition and national Republican political networks, and CLOVIS through LEWANDOWSKI and the Trump campaign—connected the Siouxland Node to political and foreign-policy networks in which both Israeli and Russian influence operations and advocacy interests were present. These allegations are pleaded to establish the interstate political, organizational, fundraising, and personnel relationships preceding the Enterprise conduct alleged herein, and not to allege wrongdoing by the RJC or by any individual identified in these Paragraphs who is not separately charged.

37. Those relationships persisted. On or about August 24, 2025, JORDAN visited LEDERMAN, a bail bondsman, in Sioux City, Iowa, where the two met, dined, and were photographed together at Johnny Mars Family Restaurant. JORDAN thereafter appeared on Fox News advocating a tougher approach to crime.

38. On or about August 25, 2025—the following day—President DONALD J. TRUMP signed an Executive Order directing federal action against cashless-bail policies. Because LEDERMAN operated a commercial bail-bond business, governmental policies preserving or expanding reliance upon monetary bail were financially aligned with his industry. The temporal proximity of JORDAN’s meeting with LEDERMAN, JORDAN’s subsequent public crime messaging, and the Executive Order issued the following day is alleged as evidence of the continuing proximity among the Siouxland Node, national political actors, federal policy formation, and private commercial interests.

39.In subsequent years, defendants THUNE and NOEM supported and advanced state and federal measures targeting TikTok and other foreign-owned digital-media platforms, publicly framing those measures as necessary to protect national security, safeguard Americans’ data, and counter foreign influence.

40.During the same period, Enterprise participants expanded coordinated domestic messaging operations involving threat-framing, foreign-policy escalation narratives, and the amplification of terrorism-adjacent content through aligned governmental, political, and media channels.

41. The convergence of these initiatives, the Enterprise’s expanding information-control structure, and the foreign-policy framework alleged herein establishes the national-security and threat-framing environment in which the Enterprise operated.

42.After TikTok was forced to sell, however, defendants NOEM and Enterprise participant LARRY RHODEN pivoted from restricting the platform to lobbying for TikTok to relocate operations to South Dakota—an effort undertaken in furtherance of the Enterprise’s shared financial objectives.

43. Enterprise activity was concentrated in Pierre, South Dakota, where governmental authority could be exercised and conferred, and Dakota Dunes, South Dakota, a location associated with Enterprise-affiliated donors, financial activity, and political operatives, including individuals connected to defendant LEDERMAN. Together, these jurisdictions allowed the Enterprise to elevate individuals into positions of governmental authority, circulate funds through affiliated entities, and legitimize Enterprise participants.

44.The Enterprise was not confined to a single industry or policy objective. Its participants repeatedly operated across sectors dependent on government action, including energy, gaming, healthcare and elder care, real estate and development, defense, and foreign-policy advocacy. The interests varied, but the method remained consistent: political influence produced government action; government action produced economic or institutional benefit; and those benefits flowed back through political, consulting, nonprofit, fundraising, and media networks. The recurring use of the same participants, donors, consultants, vendors, and organizations across otherwise distinct sectors is alleged to establish the Enterprise’s continuity, methods, and structure.

SECTION 2 — FOSTER FRIESS FIRST CONSPIRATORIAL SUMMIT AND SUCCESSION PLACEMENT PLANNING

45.The conduct charged in this Indictment was not the parallel activity of independently motivated actors. It was the coordinated execution of a coalition whose founding coordination, financial backing, succession planning, and operational alignment are traceable to a specific time, place, and participant network. The earliest documented gathering at which Enterprise participants assembled as a coordinated political network occurred in or about the summer of 2019, on a remote Pacific island off the coast of northwestern British Columbia that can only be accessed by a private helicopter, at the annual deep-sea fishing retreat hosted by FOSTER FRIESS and LYNN FRIESS. FOSTER FRIESS was a Wyoming-based investment manager, Republican mega-donor, and longstanding financier of the national conservative donor and policy networks, including the foundational financing of Turning Point USA, the 2012 presidential campaign of Rick Santorum, and the Daily Caller, and was the donor identified in Republican fundraising circles as having “opened the door” to other early-adopter donors for the 2016 Trump campaign.5

46.In 2019, approximately forty conservative donors, political operatives, media figures, and elected officials attended a private retreat accessible only by helicopter. Attendees included defendants KRISTI NOEM and COREY LEWANDOWSKI, DONALD TRUMP JR., and Turning Point USA founder CHARLIE KIRK- whose original funder was Foster Friess. The closed gathering brought together donors, political officials, and media figures whose relationships and activities are alleged below.6

47.NOEM and other Enterp participants later publicly acknowledged close relationships with KIRK. Those relationships are alleged as evidence of the overlap between Enterprise political operations and aligned media and influencer networks.

48.Upon information and belief, participants discussed placing identified individuals in federal positions under a future Republican administration.7

49. The discussions included the contemplated placement of defendant COREY LEWANDOWSKI into a senior position within the Department of Homeland Security. Witness 1 further reported that Enterprise participants discussed potential future roles for CHARLES KIRK and the planning of a subsequent summit at which participants developed and promoted the phrase “Every State Is a Border State.” As alleged herein, Enterprise participants utilized that phrase and related messaging to amplify border-security narratives, elevate immigration as a primary political issue, and align domestic border-security objectives with foreign-policy initiatives involving Israel. The discussions further contemplated the development of mutually reinforcing funding, advocacy, and messaging structures through which support for Department of Homeland Security initiatives and Israeli defense-related objectives could be advanced through overlapping political and fundraising networks.

50. The succession-planning discussions at the 2019 retreat established the operational template for the credential-laundering method subsequently executed through Enterprise-controlled state and federal placements. That method consisted of placing politically loyal individuals into intermediate state, quasi-governmental, or party positions sufficient to manufacture the institutional credentials that subsequent federal appointments would require.

51.The credential-laundering method was thereafter executed through successive placements alleged with particularity in the sections that follow. These included the 2020 South Dakota appraiser certification of KASSIDY PETERS; the 2023 placement of defendant LUKE LINDBERG into the state-funded South Dakota Trade entity; the 2025 placements of defendant MADISON SHEAHAN into command of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and defendant TRICIA McLAUGHLIN into command of Department of Homeland Security public affairs; and the 2026 nomination of defendant LINDBERG to the executive directorship of the United Nations World Food Programme.

52.These placements emerged from the same broader donor-and-operative network that had converged at the 2019 Friess retreat. The gathering brought together, in a closed setting insulated from public scrutiny, donors, political figures, and operatives who would continue to intersect with defendant NOEM’s political rise and subsequent federal trajectory.

53.The retreat was itself consistent with FOSTER FRIESS’s longstanding role in financing and assembling conservative political networks. His support included foundational funding for Turning Point USA and, according to DONALD TRUMP JR., a role in “opening the door” to early-adopter donors for the 2016 Trump presidential campaign.

54.On or about December 23, 2020, FOSTER FRIESS and LYNN FRIESS publicly announced, through official communications channels of the South Dakota Governor’s Office, a $500,000 charitable distribution consisting of five separate $100,000 gifts made on behalf of defendant NOEM and each member of defendant NOEM’s immediate family. The announcement is pleaded as background evidence of the Enterprise’s early use of official governmental communications infrastructure to elevate politically connected donor relationships, confer public legitimacy upon aligned actors, and convert state communications platforms into instruments of patronage and political advancement.8

55.On or about April 19, 2022, twenty-six Republican governors, including Defendant NOEM, launched the American Governors’ Border Strike Force, a multi-state initiative spearheaded by Governors GREG ABBOTT and DOUG DUCEY. Participating governors weaponized the narrative that “every state is a border state” to nationalize immigration enforcement. The allegations in Paragraphs 47 through 50 are incorporated herein not as independent causes of action, but as overt evidence of the Enterprise’s coordinated donor relations, political patronage, and threat-framing communications.9

56.The Border Strike Force initiative and subsequent Republican Governors Association event, including the November 15, 2022 conference in Orlando, Florida, served as formal conduits for Enterprise participants to execute a unified border-security narrative, manufacture standing for non-border-state officials, and build political credentials to secure subsequent appointments and expand their authority over homeland security policies.

SECTION 3 — PROJECT 2025 AND PROJECT ESTHER AS A MANIFESTO

Figure below depicts specific quotes and pages numbers where the suggestion of war with Iran was present, this does not include the footnotes which shared similar levels of aggression, were written by the same authors and date back to at least 2019 as alleged below

57. The federal-phase conduct alleged in this Indictment was not the product of ad hoc policymaking following the 2024 federal election. It followed a pre-positioned personnel and policy infrastructure developed before the transfer of executive power through Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation, and affiliated organizations.

58.Project 2025 provided a formal institutional structure through which personnel could be identified, vetted, trained, and positioned for service in a future administration. In this manner, the succession-planning method alleged above acquired a federal personnel and policy infrastructure.

59.Participants in the 2019 Friess retreat, including defendants LEWANDOWSKI and NOEM, were subsequently affiliated with or politically aligned with individuals and organizations participating in that infrastructure. The transition from private donor-and-operative networks to formal personnel and policy institutions is alleged herein as evidence of continuity in the relationships, objectives, and methods described above.

60. On or about April 21, 2022 , approximately one year before the publication of Project 2025 ,President TRUMP traveled by private aircraft to a Heritage Foundation leadership conference in Florida. The flight was made in the company of KEVIN ROBERTS, the President of the Heritage Foundation and the principal institutional architect of Project 2025. The flight was subsequently documented in reporting by The Washington Post and later confirmed by ROBERTS, who told the Post that he had “personally” spoken to President TRUMP about Project 2025 during the relevant period.10

61. At the April 21, 2022 conference, President TRUMP delivered keynote remarks publicly characterizing the forthcoming initiative as the governing framework for a future conservative administration. President TRUMP stated of the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 that the participating organizations “are going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do” upon returning to executive power, and further characterized the forthcoming framework as a “colossal mandate to save America.”

62. The April 2022 statements were made publicly and transmitted through interstate wire facilities. The statements are alleged herein as documentary evidence that Project 2025 was publicly presented before the 2024 election as a governing framework for a future administration and that its policy objectives, personnel structure, and implementation mechanisms had been developed and publicly communicated prior to the transfer of executive power.

63. In or about April 2023, Project 2025 was published under the title “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise.” The published volume comprised more than 900 pages and 30 chapters, with 40 primary authors, and was developed under the coordination of more than 50 conservative organizations participating in an advisory coalition.

64.The volume was edited by PAUL DANS and STEVEN GROVES. Independent reporting by The New York Times identified more than 180 contributors with documented ties to Presi dent TRUMP. Nearly half of its principal authors and editors had previously served in the first TRUMP administration. The volume consolidated policy programs developed over multiple years by aligned organizations and personnel networks, including the foreign-policy advocacy organizations alleged with particularity below.11 12

65.Project 2025 operated through four integrated pillars: a policy guide, a personnel database, a Presidential Administration Academy, and a transition playbook.13

66.The policy guide supplied the governing blueprint. The personnel database, launched on or about May 2, 2023, identified and vetted prospective executive-branch personnel. The Presidential Administration Academy prepared those personnel for federal service. The transition playbook converted the project’s policy proposals into agency-specific implementation plans identifying regulations, executive orders, personnel requirements, and other actions for a new administration.14

67.Together, the four pillars transformed a collection of policy objectives into an operational transition program: the policies were written, prospective officials were identified and trained, and mechanisms for implementation were prepared in advance. The structure was designed to permit an incoming administration to install aligned personnel, issue executive actions, and begin implementing the published framework immediately after inauguration.15 16

68.Central to the personnel operation was JOHN McENTEE, the former Director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office and an architect of the loyalty-screening program deployed during the final year of the first TRUMP administration. McENTEE joined Project 2025 as a senior advisor associated with its personnel-database initiative, carrying into the project experience identifying, evaluating, and removing executive-branch personnel according to their perceived loyalty to the President and his agenda.17

69.The Heritage Foundation administered the resulting personnel system through ideological screening and centralized vetting. Applicants were evaluated not merely for professional qualifications, but for their willingness to support expanded presidential control over the federal bureaucracy and to overcome resistance from career civil servants and other institutional actors. The objective was therefore larger than filling vacancies. It was to assemble, before the election, a body of ideologically aligned personnel prepared to exercise governmental authority from the opening days of a new administration.18

70.Following the transfer of executive power, portions of that personnel-control framework were converted into formal governmental machinery. Executive Order 14171 created Schedule Policy/Career for career positions of a policy-determining, policymaking, policy-advocating, or confidential character. Executive Order 14317 subsequently created Schedule G for noncareer personnel performing comparable policy functions.

71.The creation of those classifications does not establish that every person appointed under them originated in the Project 2025 database. It does, however, demonstrate implementation of the framework’s central institutional objective: increasing presidential control over the personnel responsible for developing, interpreting, and executing federal policy. What Project 2025 had organized before the election as a private system of recruitment, ideological screening, training, and transition planning was thereafter reflected in the formal personnel structure of the federal government.

72.The same preference for political control over institutional independence subsequently appeared within the Department of Defense under Secretary PETER HEGSETH, where senior military leaders were removed or replaced as the administration sought greater alignment between presidential policy and the officials responsible for carrying it out. Those removals may establish an additional application of the personnel-control method alleged herein. Unless supported by direct communications, testimony, or official records, however, this Indictment does not allege that particular officers were removed specifically because they opposed military action against Iran.

73.At all times relevant to this indictment, the DOD and DHS maintained lateral influence between the two in order to coordinate to ensure that the domestic and Israeli -aligned objectives could be completed. PHILLIP HEGSETH, brother to PETER HEGSETH served as senior advisor to the Department of Homeland Security and traveled with defendants LEWANDOWKSI and NOEM maintaining continuous contact with connections in the DOD in order to implement Project 2025 and Project Esther initiatives largely under the guidance of STEPHEN MILLER whose chief goal was the eradication of Muslims and other minorities in the United States as well as abroad.

74. Project 2025 Director PAUL DANS publicly described the database as a “conservative LinkedIn” intended to permit rapid installation of pre-vetted ideological personnel throughout the federal government. In a December 2023 interview, DANS further stated that a future administration required the ability to “fire people right away” in order to exercise political control over federal agencies.19 20

75. The personnel-database system provided the placement infrastructure through which the appointments of LUKE LINDBERG, MADISON SHEAHAN, TRICIA McLAUGHLIN, and other Enterprise-aligned personnel alleged elsewhere in this Indictment were facilitated.

76. The Department of Homeland Security chapter. The Department of Homeland Security chapter of Project 2025 was principally authored by KENNETH CUCCINELLI, former Acting Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security during the first TRUMP administration.

77.The Department of Homeland Security chapter proposed a substantial restructuring of federal immigration and border authority. It called for dismantling components of DHS; expanding interior immigration-enforcement authority; increasing detention and expedited-removal capacity; imposing additional asylum-processing fees; and consolidating immigration and border-enforcement functions within a more centralized structure. It further proposed Title 42-style emergency expulsion mechanisms triggered by declarations that operational control of the border had been lost.

78.Taken together, the proposals concentrated enforcement, intelligence, border-security, and emergency-response authorities within institutions operating at the intersection of homeland security and national security. The same structure therefore placed authorities traditionally associated with domestic immigration enforcement alongside governmental powers responsive to national-security threats and emergencies.

79.As alleged throughout this Indictment, that convergence would become consequential. It supplied an administrative architecture through which foreign-policy priorities and national-security narratives could intersect with domestic enforcement activity—and through which policies developed on paper could later be translated into governmental action.

80. The substantive enforcement framework set forth in the Department of Homeland Security chapter of Project 2025 was thereafter implemented under defendant NOEM’s authority through operational directives, messaging frameworks, and enforcement mechanisms that tracked the Project 2025 framework in materially identical form. In multiple instances alleged elsewhere herein, the overlap included substantially identical policy language, structural proposals, operational sequencing, and associated advocacy-network materials linked to organizations participating in the Project 2025 advisory coalition.

81. The chapter was further contributed to by THOMAS HOMAN, former Acting Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. HOMAN was subsequently elevated to the position publicly designated as “border czar” during the second TRUMP administration, notwithstanding the absence of any Senate-confirmed statutory office corresponding to that role.

82. The operational structure of HOMAN’s role paralleled the extra-statutory authority defendant LEWANDOWSKI exercised within the Department of Homeland Security.

83. The placement of both HOMAN and defendant LEWANDOWSKI into operational authority over federal immigration enforcement, while neither held a Senate-confirmed statutory office corresponding to that authority, is consistent with the Enterprise’s documented method of vesting federal enforcement command in personnel whose authority bypassed the constitutional confirmation process.

84. The Department of State chapter of Project 2025 was principally authored by KIRON SKINNER, former Director of Policy Planning at the United States Department of State during the first TRUMP administration. The chapter directed the dismissal of senior State Department personnel in leadership roles before January 20, 2025, and their replacement with ideologically aligned acting officials not requiring Senate confirmation. The mechanism paralleled the credential-based placement and loyalty-screening structure alleged elsewhere in this Indictment with respect to Enterprise personnel advancement.21

85. The Department of State chapter further advocated the restoration and intensification of the “maximum pressure” sanctions framework against the Islamic Republic of Iran. The chapter characterized Iran as “the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism,” opposed any return to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, urged a future administration to deepen security cooperation with Israel and other regional partners, and stated that the next Republican president had a duty to assist in the liberation of Iran using United States capabilities and those of allied governments.

86.The chapter further advocated coordinated public messaging emphasizing Iranian threats to United States national security, regional stability, and domestic economic conditions. The policy framework set forth in the Department of State chapter was thereafter reflected substantially in National Security Presidential Memorandum-2 (“NSPM-2”), issued by President TRUMP on or about February 4, 2025, approximately fifteen days after the inauguration of the second TRUMP administration.

87.The temporal proximity between the inauguration and the issuance of NSPM-2 is alleged herein as evidence that the framework reflected in NSPM-2 had been developed, refined, and operationally positioned prior to the transfer of executive power through the Project 2025 policy structure alleged throughout this Section. NSPM-2 and the subsequent operational execution of its framework are alleged with particularity in Section 4 herein.

88.The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (“FDD”) supplied substantial institutional support for the policy framework reflected both in Project 2025 and in the subsequent implementation of federal Iran policy. The integration of FDD-affiliated personnel into federal national-security positions, including documented arrangements through which officials continued receiving compensation from FDD while exercising federal policymaking authority, is alleged with particularity in Section 4 herein.

89.In or about October 2024, the Heritage Foundation published Project Esther: A National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism. The document proposed an organized coalition operating across civil society and in collaboration with federal and state government. It grouped a broad range of pro-Palestinian organizations and activists into what it termed a “Hamas Support Network” and recommended coordinated legal, financial, educational, immigration, reputational, and employment-related measures against components of that asserted network.

90.Project Esther did not itself establish that every organization it identified was controlled by HAMAS, nor does its publication establish that every subsequent governmental action was directed by Heritage. Its evidentiary significance is narrower: before the 2024 election, an organization simultaneously operating a presidential personnel-and-policy project had publicly proposed a coordinated public-private campaign that converted political association and protest activity into a purported national-security threat.

91.The subsequent use of materially similar classifications, authorities, and institutional pressure should therefore be evaluated through specific implementation evidence—including common language, participating personnel, dated communications, and governmental actions—not merely ideological similarity.

SECTION 4 — FDD INTEGRATION INTO DHS, FOREIGN POLICY, AND

DOMESTIC ENFORCEMENT

92. The foreign-policy component of the Enterprise did not emerge independently following the 2024 election. As alleged in Sections 2 and 3, it arose from a preexisting network of personnel-placement systems, policy-development initiatives, advocacy organizations, and communications infrastructures that had been developed, coordinated, and publicly articulated prior to the transfer of executive power. During the same period, aligned organizations advanced parallel initiatives advocating expanded threat-framing, coordinated counter-activism, institutional pressure campaigns, and organized responses directed at political movements and speech activities characterized as supportive of terrorism, extremism, or foreign adversaries.

93.As alleged throughout this Indictment, Enterprise participants repeatedly employed a threat-framing methodology through which identified political, ethnic, religious, ideological, and social groups were portrayed as criminal, extremist, fraudulent, terrorism-adjacent, or threats to national security.

94.The methodology converted identity and association into purported evidence of danger. Group identity, political affiliation, protected speech, lawful association, and demographic characteristics were repeatedly invoked to support enforcement actions, surveillance activities, governmental intervention, resource expenditures, reputational attacks, and related political objectives.

95.As alleged herein, migrant populations were attributed criminal-enterprise affiliations; lawful protest activity was characterized as extremist conduct; Somali-American communities were portrayed as inherently fraudulent or criminal; anti-war activism was characterized as terrorism-adjacent; and opposition to data-center development was depicted as extremist, anti-American, or contrary to the public interest.

96.These incidents are alleged not as isolated examples of political rhetoric, but as recurring applications of the same threat-framing methodology across different populations, controversies, and governmental objectives.

97.The Enterprise used a public-private messaging architecture where government officials conspired with highly political groups, like the Heritage Foundation and FDD, to integrate Israeli government methodology. This system merged messaging, influencer amplification, official communications, and enforcement into a single information environment. Within it, political networks, aligned media, independent personalities-including CHARLIE KIRK, LAURA LOOMER and NICK SHIRLEY, and official channels amplified grievance-based narratives. Ultimately, these narratives provided the public justification for the enforcement actions, foreign policy initiatives, fundraising, and governmental activities alleged in this Indictment.

98. The personnel placements, contracting decisions, governmental communications, foreign-policy actions, and enforcement operations alleged in the sections that follow constituted the operational execution of those methods through coordinated political infrastructure, aligned governmental authority, and Enterprise-controlled communications systems.

99.The arrangement alleged above was not without precedent. Years earlier, an individual who would later become affiliated with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (“FDD”) occupied a senior national-security position within the United States government during the development of intelligence claims concerning Iraq.

100.In or about 2002 and 2003, AMBASSADOR ROBERT G. JOSEPH served as Senior Director for Proliferation Strategy at the National Security Council. In that capacity, JOSEPH participated in the review of proliferation-related language prepared for President GEORGE W. BUSH’s January 28, 2003 State of the Union Address.

101.The final address asserted that “the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” The claim concerned purported Iraqi efforts to obtain uranium from Africa and was associated with intelligence that included documents subsequently determined to be forgeries. Central Intelligence Agency officials had repeatedly objected to the inclusion of uranium-related claims in earlier presidential remarks.

102.JOSEPH thereafter continued to occupy senior positions within the national-security establishment, including service as Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security. He subsequently became a member of the Board of Advisors of FDD’s Nonproliferation and Biodefense Program.

108.JOSEPH also received compensation in connection with advocacy concerning the Mujahedin-e Khalq (“MEK”), an Iranian opposition organization then designated by the United States Department of State as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. That advocacy sought the removal of MEK from the Department of State’s terrorist designation.22

103.These facts are alleged herein to establish the historical intersection among national-security policymaking, threat-related intelligence claims, subsequent FDD affiliation, and compensated advocacy concerning the legal designation of an Iranian opposition organization and the expansion of Israeli influence in the United State’s National Security Counsel.

Figures below demonstrates Israeli integration into the Department of Homeland Security and their funding apparatus and operations.

104.Beginning in or about 2017 and continuing through the period relevant to this Indictment, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (“FDD”), a tax-exempt advocacy organization organized as a Section 501(c)(3) corporation under Employer Identification Number 13-4174402, supplied policy frameworks, personnel, and threat-framing narratives thereafter adopted within official United States Iran policy. The integration operated through a recurring placement method in which individuals concurrently compensated by FDD were installed into senior federal national-security positions whose statutory authority was thereafter utilized to implement FDD’s institutional “maximum pressure” program against the Islamic Republic of Iran.

105.The institutional connection between the Project 2025 personnel-and-policy infrastructure and the foreign-policy network alleged herein was express rather than inferential. By February 2024, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies was publicly identified as one of the 100 organizations participating in the Project 2025 coalition.

106.FDD’s participation placed an organization that had long advocated maximum economic pressure against Iran within a presidential-transition coalition simultaneously developing policy recommendations, identifying prospective administration personnel, training future appointees, and preparing agency-specific implementation plans for use after the transfer of executive power

107.FDD’s participation in Project 2025 does not establish that Heritage or FDD controlled every subsequent national-security decision. It does establish a documented institutional channel through which FDD’s personnel and preexisting Iran-policy program operated within the broader transition infrastructure described above.

108.In or about January 2019, then-National Security Advisor JOHN BOLTON caused the creation within the National Security Council staff of the position of Director for Countering Iranian Weapons of Mass Destruction. The position was created without public solicitation or competitive selection and was intended to advance the “maximum pressure” framework publicly advocated by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (“FDD”). RICHARD GOLDBERG23, then serving as a senior advisor at FDD and as a former senior staff member to United States Senator MARK KIRK, was selected to occupy the position. Upon assuming federal office, GOLDBERG exercised governmental authority directly affecting Iran sanctions policy, energy policy, and related national-security matters while maintaining ongoing institutional affiliation with FDD.

109.The placement is alleged as an example of the recurring personnel-integration method through which individuals associated with private advocacy organizations were installed into federal policymaking positions possessing authority to implement the same policy objectives those organizations had previously developed and promoted.

110.On or about November 12, 2024, President-elect DONALD J. TRUMP announced the selection of United States Representative MICHAEL G. WALTZ to serve as National Security Advisor.

111.Before assuming office, WALTZ publicly signaled that the incoming administration would restore the maximum-pressure framework against Iran.

112.On or about November 26, 2024, during an appearance on CNBC, WALTZ connected renewed economic pressure against Iran to broader United States foreign-policy objectives, stating that maximum pressure would promote stability not only in the Middle East, but also in the Russia-Ukraine theater.

113.WALTZ continued advancing the same position in December 2024. On or about December 11, 2024, during an appearance on Fox News, WALTZ called for constraining Iran’s access to cash and oil and expressly advocated a return to “maximum pressure.”

114.These statements were made before WALTZ assumed governmental authority and are alleged herein as evidence that restoration of the maximum-pressure framework was a preexisting policy objective of the incoming national-security apparatus rather than a policy developed in response to events occurring after inauguration.

121.On or about December 9, 2024, after the presidential election but before the transfer of executive power, FDD published an implementation proposal titled “How to Bring Back Maximum Pressure on Iran.” The proposal recommended restoring economic pressure against Iran and its affiliated organizations through coordinated action by the Treasury and Justice Departments, renewed restrictions upon Iranian revenue, reversal of financial licenses issued during the preceding administration, and renewed terrorist designations and sanctions against Iran-aligned organizations.

115.The proposal also expressly extended the maximum-pressure framework beyond Iran’s territorial boundaries by recommending Treasury and Justice Department action against alleged Hamas financial and organizational networks operating within the United States and Europe. FDD therefore publicly articulated, before inauguration, a framework connecting foreign-policy pressure against Iran with domestic financial and law-enforcement authorities.

116.Less than two months later, the White House issued NSPM-2 directing federal agencies to restore maximum economic pressure against Iran. The sequence does not establish that FDD authored NSPM-2. It establishes that FDD publicly proposed materially similar measures before inauguration, while participating in the Project 2025 coalition and maintaining personnel relationships extending into the incoming administration.

117.In or about late 2024, GOLDBERG returned to federal service as senior counselor to the White House National Energy Dominance Council, serving through August 2025. Throughout that period, GOLDBERG continued as senior advisor to FDD and continued to receive compensation from FDD. The dual-compensation arrangement alleged elsewhere herein was reactivated within the second administration in connection with the policy area — energy dominance — most directly affected by the maximum-pressure framework’s effects on global oil supply.

118. On or about January 20, 2025, MICHAEL G. WALTZ assumed office as National Security Advisor, leaving his seat in the United States House of Representatives. His elevation placed WALTZ, who had publicly advocated a more aggressive posture toward Iran, within the senior national-security apparatus of the incoming administration.

119.WALTZ’s departure from Congress also created a vacancy in Florida’s Sixth Congressional District. RANDY FINE thereafter became the Republican nominee to succeed WALTZ and received financial support from the Republican Jewish Coalition (“RJC”) and affiliated political interests. In the heavily Republican district, FINE entered the general election as the substantial favorite to succeed WALTZ.

120.Following his election to Congress, FINE repeatedly employed extreme rhetoric concerning Muslims, Palestinians, and Iran. Among other statements alleged herein, FINE advocated military action against Iran and publicly invoked the use of nuclear weapons against Iran and Palestinians.

121.As alleged herein, FINE’s rhetoric substantially tracked threat-framing and foreign-policy positions separately advanced by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (“FDD”), the RJC, and other Enterprise participants. To the extent established by the communications and records alleged below, Enterprise participants also circulated prepared messaging and talking points advancing substantially similar positions.

122.The sequence is alleged as evidence of the personnel-placement and policy-continuity structure described above: WALTZ moved from Congress into the national-security apparatus; FINE succeeded him in Congress with support from overlapping political networks; and substantially similar foreign-policy and threat-framing positions continued to be advanced through both governmental institutions.

123.On or about February 4, 2025, fifteen days after WALTZ assumed office as National Security Advisor, the White House issued National Security Presidential Memorandum 2 (“NSPM-2”), titled “Imposing Maximum Pressure on the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Denying Iran All Paths to a Nuclear Weapon, and Countering Iran’s Malign Influence.”

124.NSPM-2 directed federal agencies to restore and intensify the maximum-pressure campaign against Iran. Among its stated objectives, the memorandum directed the federal government to drive Iranian oil exports toward zero; impose additional economic sanctions, including against non-oil sectors of the Iranian economy; and counter Iran’s nuclear and missile programs.24

125.As alleged above, FDD had publicly advocated materially similar maximum-pressure measures beginning no later than 2017. RICHARD GOLDBERG subsequently carried that policy framework into the National Security Council during his service from 2019 through 2020, after which FDD continued publicly advocating substantially similar measures.

126.The February 4, 2025 issuance of NSPM-2 is therefore alleged as evidence of policy continuity between the maximum-pressure framework developed and promoted before the 2024 election and the governmental policy implemented after Enterprise participants assumed positions within the federal national-security apparatus.

127.The National Security Council thereafter became very easy to infiltrate by outside groups that wanted a war with Iran and the elimination of the Palestinian people. This included defense contractors that could profit from enhanced law-enforcement and military action and organizations like AIPAC.

128.Around March 2025, National Security Advisor Michael G. Waltz…engaged in direct coordination with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu concerning potential military operational victories against Iran. According to contemporaneous reporting by The Washington Post published on or about May 3, 2025, the coordination occurred without the knowledge of President TRUMP and preceded a state visit by Netanyahu.25

129.In April 2025, investigative outlet The Grayzone obtained a leaked audio recording from an off-the-record panel at the AIPAC Congressional Summit, where the organization openly bragged about its strong backchannel ties to the incoming administration’s national security team.

130.During the discussion, AIPAC CEO Elliott Brandt noted that several newly appointed cabinet members were former lawmakers with whom AIPAC had built long-term relationships. He specifically named Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, calling these connections vital “lifelines” for direct insight and access to internal executive branch policy talks. 26

131.WALTZ was removed from the position of National Security Advisor on or about May 1, 2025, after approximately 101 days of service, amid public reporting that WALTZ was advocating and coordinating Iran-policy positions inconsistent with those of the President. During the same period, the Republican Jewish Coalition (“RJC”) — an advocacy organization in which defendant DAN LEDERMAN held national leadership roles throughout the period relevant to this Indictment — publicly endorsed the “maximum pressure” framework through its institutional leadership.

132.On or about April 1, 2025, in connection with the introduction of legislation styed the Maximum Pressure Act, RJC Chairman Senator NORM COLEMAN and Chief Executive Officer MATT BROOKS issued a joint statement describing the legislation as the codification of the framework set forth in NSPM-2. RANDY FINE was elected to Congress the same day.

133.Following United States military operations against Iranian nuclear facilities in or about June 2025, FDD Chief Executive MARK DUBOWITZ described GOLDBERG’s March 2025 public analysis as “a great preview” of what subsequently occurred. DUBOWITZ further stated that GOLDBERG had expressed “full confidence” since January 2025 that President TRUMP would authorize military force if he considered it necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.27 Those statements are alleged as evidence that military action had been publicly contemplated and advocated by FDD-affiliated personnel months before the June 2025 operations. They do not, standing alone, establish that the decision to use force had already been made.

134.Upon information and belief, RICHARD GOLDBERG was the intended recipient of the leaked signal chat that mistakenly got sent to JEFFREY GOLDBERG due to a mix up in how WALTZ saved their name in his signal contacts.

135. On or about March 17, 2026, JOSEPH KENT , at that time the Senate-confirmed Director of the National Counterterrorism Center within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence ,resigned from his federal position in protest of the United States military operations against Iran. KENT’s resignation letter, publicly posted to the X platform, stated, in substance: “I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.” KENT had been nominated to the position by President TRUMP in or about February 2025, had served as acting Chief of Staff to Director of National Intelligence TULSI GABBARD from approximately February through July 2025, and had been confirmed by the United States Senate on or about July 30, 2025.28

136.On or about March 26, 2026 KENT said on a podcast that CHARLIE KIRK told him in the White House “not to go to war with Iran” demonstrating further the public-private messaging architecture among paid influencers in the Administration and KIRK’S reluctance demonstrated knowledge among participants that a war with Iran as imminent and not in response to real time events.29

137. The resignation of a Senate-confirmed federal counterterrorism director, publicly attributing the underlying Iran policy to foreign-government pressure and its associated American advocacy network, constitutes documented internal federal recognition of the institutional integration alleged in this Section.

138.The foreign-policy component of the Enterprise operated through the convergence of three categories of actors: elected and appointed public officials possessing authority over national-security and foreign-policy decisions; advocacy organizations seeking particular geopolitical outcomes; and commercial entities whose revenues, contracts, market position, or strategic interests were affected by those decisions.

139.The significance of that convergence is not that all participants shared identical motives, but that the same policy outcomes repeatedly advanced the political objectives of advocacy organizations, the institutional interests of government actors, and the economic interests of private-sector beneficiaries. As alleged herein, Enterprise participants functioned at the intersection of those relationships, facilitating the movement of personnel, messaging, influence, and resources among otherwise distinct political, governmental, advocacy, and commercial networks.

SECTION 5 — CONTINUITY OF THE OHIO CORRUPTION APPARATUS AND DEFENDANT LEWANDOWSKI’S DOCUMENTED ROLE IN THE FIRSTENERGY POLITICAL OPERATION

Figure below is offered as demonstrative evidence of the Israeli influence over the Ohio government and key entities operating within that node. This image was created by hand by Myranda Kazos-Sievers (MyrandaPolisci) and digitalized by Claude.

140.The policy-and-personnel architecture alleged above did not stop at Washington. As national-security policy expanded, defense technology, public financing, and surveillance capabilities increasingly converged through state-level partnerships—including a government-supported channel connecting Ohio institutions with Israeli technology companies.

141.Through the JobsOhio regional network, the Dayton Development Coalition participated in the Dayton Region Israel Trade Alliance (“DRITA”), which facilitated commercial relationships between Ohio and Israeli companies in aerospace, unmanned aerial systems, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance technologies. Among the companies introduced into that network was SIMLAT LTD., an Israeli developer of simulation and training systems for unmanned aircraft.30

142.On or about March 19, 2025, members of the Ohio House introduced House Bill 188 to expand that regional model into a statewide Ohio-Israel Trade and Innovation Partnership. The proposed partnership encompassed trade, investment, infrastructure, academic exchange, emerging technology, and economic development. During legislative proceedings, proponents cited DRITA and its unmanned-systems partnerships as evidence that the model had already produced results. Support came from Ohio Jewish Communities, Jewish Columbus, CUFI Action Fund, the Jewish Federations of North America, economic-development organizations, and representatives associated with the proposed partnership.31

143.These relationships are not alleged to establish that bilateral commerce, Israeli technology, or any supporting organization was inherently unlawful. They establish the institutional terrain: Ohio had created a government-supported pathway through which foreign technology companies, aerospace and surveillance interests, advocacy organizations, economic-development authorities, and public resources could converge.

144.That convergence carried national-security technology beyond foreign battlefields and federal institutions and into the domestic infrastructure of the states. Its economic success depended upon governmental decisions—legislative authorization, public incentives, regulatory treatment, procurement, and access to state officials.

145.Internal legislative records further documented that OJC's involvement extended beyond public testimony. On or about June 19, 2025, HOWIE transmitted proposed statutory language establishing funding mechanisms associated with the international-partnership framework. Legislative staff thereafter circulated the language internally, and portions of the proposed funding structure remained in subsequent versions of the legislation.32

146.The structure generated concern within the administration itself. Internal Ohio Department of Development communications transmitted to Governor DeWine's staff in March 2026 identified concerns with the amended legislation, including a foreign voting majority, appointment qualifications requiring only connections to the relevant region-American community or interests, the absence of restrictions on ties to foreign governments or foreign adversaries, and duplication of existing state economic-development programs.

147.The lobbying coalition supporting that structure extended beyond organizations focused principally upon Israel. OHIO LIFE SCIENCES, through policy director WILLA BLUESTONE, supported House Bill 188 as a mechanism for connecting international innovation to Ohio commercialization and economic development. The same organization and representative later supported House Bill 292 establishing the Ohio Defense Commission, expressly describing Ohio’s biotechnology sector as a strategic national-security asset and emphasizing technologies capable of both civilian and military use.33

148.The overlap is alleged not as evidence of wrongdoing by those organizations, but as evidence of the institutional pipeline developing around the legislation: international research and technology, commercial development, state economic incentives, and defense applications increasingly operated through overlapping advocacy and economic-development networks.34

Figure below is a demonstrative illustration of the public-private economic-development pipeline described above. It depicts the institutional functions through which university research, venture capital, state economic-development resources, commercialization programs, and legislative initiatives may intersect within Ohio's technology and defense-development environment created by journalist Laura Loth.

149.The scale of that public-private model became visible in the 2025 ANDURIL INDUSTRIES Arsenal-1 project, supported by an incentive package exceeding $830 million for an Ohio facility manufacturing drones, autonomous systems, and other defense technologies. ANDURIL is not alleged to have participated in the corruption alleged herein; the project demonstrates the scale of governmental resources administered through Ohio’s expanding public-private defense and technology infrastructure.35

150.FDD had for years characterized the Islamic Republic of Iran and affiliated networks operating within Canada as a potential threat to United States security. By 2025, FDD leadership was publicly warning that Iranian regime personnel operating “north of the border” could exploit the United States-Canada boundary. Ohio, meanwhile, was expanding both the commercial infrastructure surrounding unmanned surveillance technology and the governmental authority under which such technology could be deployed.

151.During the same legislative period in which Ohio considered House Bill 188 and the expansion of the Ohio-Israel technology partnership described above, the State enacted House Bill 251. That legislation authorized Ohio law-enforcement agencies, beginning in October 2026, to conduct unmanned-aerial surveillance without a warrant within fifty miles of a national border for specified border-policing purposes. In Ohio, that international boundary extends through Lake Erie to Canada.

152.The legislation further authorized specified drone surveillance for public-safety, threat-assessment, disaster-response, investigative, research, testing, and development purposes

153.These developments are alleged not as evidence that the Ohio-Israel technology partnership itself supplied equipment used for border surveillance, for which no such allegation is presently made, but to establish the convergence of three developments occurring within the same Ohio institutional environment: the expansion of foreign-linked unmanned-systems and surveillance-technology relationships; the expansion of governmental authority to deploy unmanned surveillance systems; and the increasing characterization of the United States-Canada border as a national-security vulnerability as previously and frequently laid out by GOLDBERG.

154.Political access was therefore not incidental but rather, economically consequential.

155.That fact returns the Enterprise to Ohio, where a documented political-finance apparatus had already enabled private interests to pursue favorable governmental action through intermediaries connected to senior public officials. Long before the defense-and-surveillance expansion described above, the operation involving FirstEnergy Corp. placed defendant LEWANDOWSKI inside that machinery and documented how money, political access, and demands for government intervention could move through the same operational chain.

156.The Ohio political-finance apparatus exposed through the federal prosecution of former Ohio House Speaker LARRY HOUSEHOLDER neither arose in isolation nor ended with his conviction. As alleged in Paragraphs 33 through 46, elements of the same utility-backed infrastructure persisted through overlapping donors, consultants, political organizations, and financial channels operating at the state and federal levels.

157. Across the conduct alleged herein, the same pattern recurred: commercial actors whose economic interests depended upon governmental action intersected with political intermediaries capable of influencing that action. Those relationships repeatedly concentrated within four regulated or government-dependent sectors:
a) energy and utilities;
b) real-estate development and infrastructure;
c) gaming and gambling; and
d) elder care and health-care reimbursement.

158.The repeated involvement of these sectors in various transactions, jurisdictions, and government actions is presented here as evidence of an ongoing operational pattern rather than isolated incidents.

159.These same sectors were allegedly used to secure money for pardons through figures like Laura Loomer, Jack Burkman, and Jacob Wohl; to help contractors land lucrative government deals with DHS and DOS via THOMAS HOMAN and COREY LEWANDOWSKI; and to place personnel into the administration using PACs as conduits, such as in the cases of KASHYAP PATEL and TIMOTHY BALLARD.

Figure below is offered as demonstrative evidence to depict defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s documented operational role across the relevant period — from the 2017 FirstEnergy engagement alleged in this Section through the federal Department of Homeland Security conduct alleged in Section 13, and the recurring operational features documented at each successive scale.

160. In or about April 2017, FirstEnergy Corp. , the corporate participant later identified as the principal financier of the HOUSEHOLDER bribery enterprise, retained Avenue Strategies LLC, a Washington, D.C. lobbying and consulting firm co-founded by defendant LEWANDOWSKI, to pursue federal intervention benefiting FirstEnergy’s nuclear and coal-fired generating facilities.

161. On or about May 2, 2017, FirstEnergy Vice President of External Affairs MICHAEL DOWLING transmitted an internal communication to FirstEnergy Chief Executive Officer CHARLES JONES identifying defendant LEWANDOWSKI among the “Outside consultants engaged” to support FirstEnergy’s internal “DOE Team,” the operational group organized to obtain favorable action from the United States Department of Energy. Avenue Strategies LLC subsequently invoiced FirstEnergy approximately $150,000 for the April 2017 engagement period.

[SEE EXHIBIT B]36

162.Neither Avenue Strategies LLC nor defendant LEWANDOWSKI registered as federal lobbyists on behalf of FirstEnergy during the engagement notwithstanding the contemporaneous policy-advocacy activities, presidential-access coordination, and Department of Energy intervention efforts alleged in the paragraphs that follow.

163.In or about May 2017, the organization Public Citizen publicly requested an investigation into whether defendant LEWANDOWSKI violated the Lobbying Disclosure Act. Shortly thereafter, defendant LEWANDOWSKI publicly departed Avenue Strategies LLC.

164.On or about June 28, 2017, defendant LEWANDOWSKI executed a consulting agreement between his newly formed entity, LEWANDOWSKI STRATEGIC ADVISORS LLC, and FirstEnergy Corp. An exhibit describing the services to be provided expressly stated that the firm “cannot and will not engage in any lobbying or advocacy services.” The agreement followed LEWANDOWSKI’s public departure from Avenue Strategies after Public Citizen requested an investigation into whether his prior activities required registration under the Lobbying Disclosure Act.

165. Contemporaneous communications nevertheless documented the value FirstEnergy placed upon LEWANDOWSKI’s presidential access. On June 22, 2017, MICHAEL RUBINO transmitted the new consulting agreement and invoice to FirstEnergy executive MICHAEL DOWLING and advised that “Corey is waiting for the final ok from POTUS on the meeting.” LEWANDOWSKI STRATEGIC ADVISORS subsequently invoiced FirstEnergy approximately $150,000 for services performed during July 2017.

[SEE EXHIBIT C]

166.During the FirstEnergy engagement, defendant LEWANDOWSKI coordinated presidential access for company leadership. Subpoenaed communications documented efforts to arrange a meeting between FirstEnergy Chief Executive Officer CHARLES JONES and President TRUMP while the company sought federal intervention to preserve its financially distressed coal and nuclear facilities. Subsequent records showed LEWANDOWSKI continuing to monitor federal energy policy and prospective White House action.

167.On or about June 1, 2018, President TRUMP directed Secretary of Energy RICK PERRY to prepare immediate measures to prevent the retirement of financially distressed coal and nuclear generating facilities—the category of intervention FirstEnergy had retained politically connected consultants to pursue. PADUCHIK circulated news of the directive within the FirstEnergy communications network. LEWANDOWSKI responded: “Boom!!!”

168.That response does not, standing alone, establish that LEWANDOWSKI caused the directive or that the directive provided FirstEnergy its requested relief. It constitutes contemporaneous evidence that he monitored and celebrated White House action aligned with the objective FirstEnergy had retained him to advance.

169.The directive also returned the narrative to a personnel relationship alleged at the Enterprise’s inception. In 2015, SAMUEL H. CLOVIS, JR. moved from PERRY’s presidential campaign into the TRUMP campaign after being recruited by LEWANDOWSKI. Three years later, LEWANDOWSKI appeared in FirstEnergy records monitoring presidential action directed to PERRY, then Secretary of Energy. This recurrence does not establish that CLOVIS participated in the FirstEnergy engagement or influenced the directive. It demonstrates the reappearance of the same political personnel across the campaign, presidential-access, and federal-policy channels alleged herein.

170.The communications also placed ROBERT PADUCHIK inside the broader access operation. PADUCHIK, who had directed TRUMP’s 2016 Ohio campaign and later served as Republican National Committee co-chair, appeared in FirstEnergy records as the consultant identified as “Bob P” in communications concerning LARRY HOUSEHOLDER’s campaign for Speaker of the Ohio House. After HOUSEHOLDER secured the Speakership in January 2019, PADUCHIK joined JONES, DOWLING, and LEWANDOWSKI in discussing the result. His assessment was blunt: “2019 could be FE’s year.”

171. PADUCHIK’s involvement continued during the campaign for House Bill 6. In 2019, PADUCHIK contacted Ohio legislators urging support for the legislation, later stating publicly that he had done so as a private citizen. The following year, his relationship with FirstEnergy became financial as well as political: on or about February 17, 2020, FirstEnergy entered into a political-consulting agreement with PADUCHIK’s AGINCOURT CONSULTING providing for payments of approximately $12,500 per month through March 2021, with month-to-month extensions thereafter.

172. FirstEnergy communications further reflected the governmental-access value attributed to PADUCHIK. In March 2020, DOWLING recommended him to an Energy Harbor executive seeking assistance involving the Department of Energy, describing PADUCHIK as the person to contact for DOE help. A December 2020 presentation to FirstEnergy’s board later listed the AGINCOURT agreement among external-affairs consulting retainers that had been suspended, terminated, or placed under review.

173. The FirstEnergy records therefore documented an access structure involving multiple politically connected intermediaries rather than a single consultant. LEWANDOWSKI and PADUCHIK each possessed relationships extending into the TRUMP political organization and federal government; each appeared in FirstEnergy communications concerning political or governmental objectives; and each was separately retained or compensated through consulting entities connected to FirstEnergy’s external-affairs strategy. These consulting relationships are not alleged to have been inherently unlawful. Their significance lies in the mechanism they document: a regulated commercial actor repeatedly retaining intermediaries capable of reaching governmental decision-makers whose actions could materially affect its economic interests.

174.The access structure extended to governmental appointments. A federal indictment returned in January 2025 alleged that JONES and DOWLING promoted FirstEnergy-approved candidates for appointment to the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, including SAMUEL RANDAZZO as Commission Chairman.

175.The indictment further alleged that, in January 2019, FirstEnergy caused more than $4.3 million to be paid to entities controlled by RANDAZZO in exchange for favorable official action in proceedings affecting FirstEnergy. RANDAZZO’s subsequent appointment placed the recipient of those payments in leadership of the state commission exercising regulatory authority over the company.

176.These allegations remain pending and are not pleaded as adjudicated findings against JONES or DOWLING. Their relevance is structural: the episode alleged the same sequence identified elsewhere in this Indictment—private financial influence, intervention in personnel selection, placement into governmental authority, and official action affecting the originating commercial interest.

177. The HOUSEHOLDER investigation exposed the financial counterpart to that access structure: an architecture through which industry money could enter political organizations while obscuring its source, control, and ultimate political purpose.

178.FirstEnergy’s acknowledgment extended beyond the mechanics of its political payments. In a 2021 deferred-prosecution agreement, the company accepted responsibility for a charged conspiracy to commit honest-services wire fraud and agreed to pay $230 million in criminal penalties and forfeiture. The accompanying statement of facts documented approximately $60 million in payments to GENERATION NOW and related entities in exchange for official action benefiting FirstEnergy, including the passage and preservation of House Bill 6.

179.That concealment mechanism was subsequently admitted by FirstEnergy in a federal deferred-prosecution agreement. Between 2017 and 2019, FirstEnergy exclusively funded PARTNERS FOR PROGRESS with approximately $25 million. Approximately $15 million was thereafter transferred to GENERATION NOW, the Section 501(c)(4) entity controlled by HOUSEHOLDER and his associates.

180.FirstEnergy admitted that its executives directed certain payments through PARTNERS FOR PROGRESS in a manner that helped conceal FirstEnergy as the original source. The intermediary organization therefore performed a function central to the architecture alleged herein: separating the commercial source of political money from the organization exercising control over its political use.

181. In a recorded conversation subsequently introduced by federal prosecutors, NEIL CLARK described that advantage directly: “Nobody knows the money goes to the Speaker’s account . . . it is controlled by his people, and it’s not recorded.” CLARK’s description is alleged herein as evidence that nondisclosure was understood by a participant as a functional advantage of the structure—separating political money from public identification of its source and control.37

182. CLARK described FirstEnergy's function within that architecture in similarly direct terms, referring to the company as “the bank.” The characterization is alleged herein as evidence of how a participant within the operation understood the relationship: not merely as a series of isolated political contributions, but as an available source of financial support for the political apparatus.

183.CLARK also discussed contributions from industries he represented, including the nursing-home industry. Subpoenaed banking records subsequently identified 55 GREEN MEADOWS, an organization associated with Ohio Health Care Association executive PETER VAN RUNKLE, as a substantial contributor to GENERATION NOW.

184.Between October 2017 and April 2020, 55 GREEN MEADOWS transferred approximately $515,000 to GENERATION NOW through fifteen separate checks. VAN RUNKLE later acknowledged the contributions but denied that CLARK directed them, identifying JEFF LONGSTRETH as his recollected point of contac

185.The prosecution of HOUSEHOLDER did not end the political-finance activity of 55 GREEN MEADOWS. The organization continued making substantial contributions through Ohio political committees and nonprofit organizations after the HOUSEHOLDER enterprise was exposed, as alleged below.

186.These allegations do not charge VAN RUNKLE with participation in the HOUSEHOLDER conspiracy. They establish the continued operation of a political-finance entity that funded GENERATION NOW and remained active within the Ohio donor network after that scheme was exposed, as alleged elsewhere herein.

187.The continuation of the Ohio apparatus following the HOUSEHOLDER prosecution reflected the persistence of a broader political-finance structure operating through regulated industries dependent upon governmental action, including the energy, elder-care, gaming, and development sectors.

188.NEIL CLARK, an Ohio political consultant associated with the HOUSEHOLDER network, was charged in the federal prosecution and died during the pendency of the investigation.

189. Following the narrowing of that prosecution, continuity entities associated with the Ohio apparatus continued political-finance operations, lobbying activity, and contribution routing through successor firms, trade associations, consulting vehicles, and affiliated political committees.

190.The continuity alleged herein does not require that every subsequent project reproduce the HOUSEHOLDER bribery scheme. Rather, the relevant continuity was institutional: regulated and subsidized industries continued seeking access to governmental decisions controlling legislation, tax treatment, appropriations, incentives, infrastructure funding, regulatory treatment, and other public resources. Ohio's economic-development structure provided multiple potential points of governmental intervention, including programs administered through the Department of Development and Tax Credit Authority, assistance provided through JobsOhio, and incentives administered by local governments. A single project could therefore implicate multiple layers of public financial support. The industries changed. The pressure points remained.38

191.CLARK’s subsequent account described the transactional structure as extending beyond the principal FirstEnergy legislation. In his unpublished account of the investigation, CLARK described what he termed “sister bills” benefiting other utilities or the cable industry in exchange for their silence concerning House Bill 6. CLARK separately wrote that, following his arrest, he informed federal investigators that Charter Communications “believed and vocalized that they were owed by Householder.”

192.These statements are alleged not as independent proof that every referenced legislative action constituted a corrupt exchange, but as evidence of CLARK’s own description of an Ohio political environment in which regulated industries understood legislative outcomes, political support, and financial relationships in transactional terms

193.The political-finance architecture alleged herein cannot be understood by examining its component organizations solely according to the names on their filings or the legal categories under which they were organized. Political action committees, candidate committees, nonprofit corporations, advocacy organizations, consulting firms, campaign organizations, and commercial vendors possessed different legal identities, served different stated purposes, and operated under different regulatory regimes. Within the network alleged herein, however, their significance frequently arose not from what an entity called itself, but from what it was capable of doing.

194.A political committee organized around a candidate or electoral objective could perform functions extending substantially beyond the candidacy around which it was initially assembled. Once established, the entity could hold funds and political capital; accumulate donor and supporter data; maintain mailing lists, digital infrastructure, and fundraising systems; retain consultants and vendors; purchase communications and media services; and preserve relationships capable of being activated in subsequent political operations.

195.Nonprofit and advocacy organizations could perform complementary functions by providing employment, research, communications, donor development, issue advocacy, and institutional continuity unavailable to candidate committees themselves. Consultants, vendors, strategists, and media firms supplied additional connective tissue by simultaneously or successively serving organizations that appeared separate on paper.

196. The allegation is not that these functions were inherently unlawful or that every organization was created for a concealed purpose. The architecture emerged through repetition: where the money moved, who controlled it, which vendors were paid, and whether the same donors, operatives, personnel, and beneficiaries reappeared under different organizational names.

197. Elections ended. The infrastructure did not. Accounts remained. Donors remained. Data, vendors, consultants, and fundraising capacity remained—available for the next candidate, organization, or political objective.

198.When that method is applied to the Ohio apparatus, the HOUSEHOLDER prosecution appears not as the endpoint of the political-finance structure alleged herein, but as one documented iteration of it. Public records, campaign-finance filings, nonprofit disclosures, corporate records, and Federal Election Commission complaints thereafter documented overlapping financial and operational relationships among Ohio continuity entities, BUCKEYE LEADERSHIP FUND, ARDLEIGH IMPACT CORPORATION, WinRed-connected committees, and donor-routing organizations associated with defendant GOEDE and BROGHAMMER. Across those relationships, money moved through committees and organizations; recurring consultants and vendors connected formally separate entities; and political infrastructure persisted beyond the particular campaigns and controversies around which portions of it had originally been organized.

199.The resulting continuity linked defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s federal-access operation to the post-HOUSEHOLDER Ohio network and the financial architecture alleged below. Across each, the method recurred: private money sought political access, and political access sought governmental action.

200.The network also moved personnel across jurisdictions. According to reporting by The Rooster, PADUCHIK orchestrated a late-2020 introduction between MADISON SHEAHAN and then-South Dakota Governor KRISTI NOEM. SHEAHAN thereafter served as NOEM’s political director and as executive director of the South Dakota Republican Party. In December 2023, Louisiana Governor-elect JEFF LANDRY appointed SHEAHAN Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. The Rooster, citing multiple sources, subsequently reported that defendant LEWANDOWSKI devised the Louisiana appointment. That source-based account is alleged as reporting and not as an adjudicated finding.39

201. SHEAHAN’s appointment placed the Ohio–South Dakota personnel channel inside the LANDRY administration and a Louisiana political operation populated by additional TRUMP-connected consultants. Among the most consequential was JAY CONNAUGHTON, a veteran Republican media strategist and principal of PEOPLE WHO THINK. Public reporting identified CONNAUGHTON as a central branding consultant to LANDRY’s 2023 gubernatorial campaign, which spent millions of dollars with consultants connected to TRUMP’s political network. CONNAUGHTON thereafter appeared within LANDRY’s transition and policy apparatus.

202. The presently available public record does not establish that CONNAUGHTON selected SHEAHAN or participated in her appointment. His relevance is institutional: SHEAHAN and CONNAUGHTON occupied separate but overlapping positions within the same LANDRY political network before each later reappeared within the federal personnel-and-contracting structure alleged in the Section that follows.

203. The network eventually returned SHEAHAN to Ohio. After serving in Louisiana and as Deputy Director of United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, SHEAHAN entered the 2026 Republican primary for Ohio’s Ninth Congressional District. PADUCHIK reappeared as her Ohio campaign manager and spokesman. The personnel had crossed from Ohio to South Dakota, from South Dakota to Louisiana, and from Louisiana into the federal government. When the operation returned to Ohio, the earlier political intermediary returned with it.

204. The HOUSEHOLDER prosecution exposed one iteration of the Ohio apparatus. The money moved. The personnel moved. The network endured. It did not expose the apparatus’s endpoint.

SECTION 6- FINANCIAL ARCHITECTURE MEDIA SHELL COMPANIES AND CLOSED LOOP DEALINGS

205.To identify that endpoint, it is necessary to follow not merely the candidates whose names appeared on ballots, but the individuals who administered the political accounts behind them. Candidates changed. Committees opened and closed. Organizations adopted different legal forms, participated in different elections, and operated across different jurisdictions. The personnel responsible for receiving, allocating, recording, reporting, and disbursing political funds could nevertheless persist across those changes. Treasurers, compliance officers, accountants, consultants, and vendors therefore provide a separate means of tracing continuity across organizations that appeared independent when viewed only by name. Where the candidate identified the public-facing political objective, the administrative personnel identified the financial infrastructure capable of surviving it.

206.The Ohio financial network alleged above also operated through overlapping compliance, treasury, recordkeeping, and administrative personnel serving multiple political committees and fundraising vehicles. Among those individuals was KEVIN BROGHAMMER, who held compliance, treasury, filing, and recordkeeping roles for state and federal political organizations, including the Ohio Republican Party, candidate committees, political action committees, and joint fundraising committees.

207.Federal Election Commission records identify BROGHAMMER as Compliance Director and Custodian of Records for the Ohio Republican Party. In those capacities, BROGHAMMER occupied an administrative position within the infrastructure through which contributions were recorded, allocated, reported, and disbursed among participating political entities.

208.BROGHAMMER’s federal political-finance activity extended beyond the Ohio Republican Party. Federal Election Commission records separately identify BROGHAMMER as treasurer of Reinventing a New Direction Political Action Committee (“RAND PAC”). In 2019, during Matter Under Review 7191, the Federal Election Commission authorized a subpoena and order directed to RAND PAC and BROGHAMMER in his official capacity as treasurer. The Commission’s action is alleged solely to establish BROGHAMMER’s documented administrative role within federal political-finance organizations and not as evidence that BROGHAMMER committed a violation in connection with that matter.40

209.The same Ohio political infrastructure participated in joint fundraising arrangements capable of receiving a single contribution and allocating the proceeds among multiple participating committees. VANCE VICTORY, for example, operated as a joint fundraising committee whose participating organizations included JD VANCE FOR SENATE, WORKING FOR OHIO, the OHIO REPUBLICAN PARTY, and, during the relevant period, the NATIONAL REPUBLICAN SENATORIAL COMMITTEE.

Figure Below is offered as demonstrative evidence of the financial architecture as alleged below

106. 

     Figure below depicts a few examples though not exhaustive list of Broghammer’s relationship to the Enterprise as it extends laterally across multiple state, and federal organizations as to centralize control.

     

     210.In or about March 2017, defendant KEGAN BERAN registered Powertrain Media to a private residential address in New Albany, Ohio. On or about June 15, 2017, BERAN incorporated FlexPoint Media in the State of Delaware, designating the same Ohio residential address as its principal place of business. At the time of its corporate formation, FlexPoint Media possessed no physical commercial office space, no prior operational history, and no established presence in the political media marketplace.

     211. Shortly after its incorporation, FlexPoint Media received its earliest foundational funding from tax-exempt entities operating directly within the RSLC ecosystem administered by defendant GOEDE. In or about 2017, the State Government Leadership Foundation (“SGLF”)—a tax-exempt entity for which defendant GOEDE served as treasurer—issued approximately $141,500 to FlexPoint Media. No other non-profit organization or political committee is known to have provided comparable startup capital during this period. Financial disclosures filed on IRS Form 990 revealed that during the period of these foundational disbursements, defendant GOEDE received annual compensation exceeding $250,000 from SGLF for an arrangement representing approximately one hour of weekly work—amounting to an effective compensation rate of over $4,800 per disclosed hour, drawn directly from the tax-exempt funds whose outward distribution defendant GOEDE simultaneously controlled. [1]

     212. FlexPoint Media’s co-founder, TIMOTHY CAMERON, previously served as a senior digital strategist at the RSLC during the period in which defendant GOEDE exercised centralized authority as its Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer. The rapid capitalization and market dominance of FlexPoint Media was therefore not the product of an arms-length, competitive vendor-selection process. Rather, political-finance entities operating under defendant GOEDE’s treasury authority directed foundational seed funding to a newly formed commercial enterprise co-founded by her former internal colleague. By the close of the 2018 election cycle, FlexPoint Media had received more than $17,000,000 from Enterprise-aligned entities, establishing a repeatable operational template for high-volume, closed-loop media placement.

     213. On or about January 10, 2024, defendants TIMOTHY CAMERON and KEGAN BERAN registered a successor entity, Barrell Placements, utilizing the identical residential address assigned to FlexPoint Media and Powertrain Media. Barrell Placements was established as a passive conduit vehicle to facilitate rapid, closed-loop financial routing, effectively insulating the Enterprise’s primary funding entities from public and regulatory scrutiny through successive layers of corporate entities. Immediately following its formation, Barrell Placements began receiving and dispersing multi-million dollar sums of political capital originating from, and directed back to, Enterprise-affiliated committees.

     214. In furtherance of the conspiracy, and to effect the illegal objects thereof, Enterprise participants executed and caused to be executed the following financial transfers and layering operations:

     a) On or about February 13, 2024, merely weeks after the corporate formation of Barrell Placements—the political committee Conservatives for American Excellence caused a disbursement of approximately $326,860 to be routed directly to Barrell Placements.

     b) On or about March 21, 2024, Ardleigh Impact Corporation—an obscure entity incorporated in Delaware, controlled by defendant GOEDE from her personal residence, and lacking any public operational footprint—caused a disbursement of approximately $400,000 to be routed to Conservatives for American Excellence.

     c) On or about July 15, 2024, Ardleigh Impact Corporation transmitted an additional $150,000 to Conservatives for American Excellence. Concurrently, on or about the same date, defendants BERAN and CAMERON, operating through FlexPoint Media, directed approximately $89,500 to the AFC Victory Fund, utilizing capital traceable to the broader Ardleigh Impact funding network.

     d) Approximately one-third of FlexPoint Media’s historical revenue streams originated from the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, two of the principal party committees integrated into the WinRed fundraising platform.

     215.The WinRed platform functioned as a centralized data and capital aggregation utility, capturing millions of small-dollar transactions from down-ballot committees, stripping out processing fees that enriched internal stakeholders, and utilizing the resulting donor database to algorithmically target expenditures through the closed-loop media vendor network controlled by defendants BERAN and CAMERON.

     216. At all times relevant to this Indictment, defendant GOEDE owned and operated SAGe Advisory Group LLC, a consulting entity registered at her personal residence at 7816 Rose Garden Lane, Springfield, Virginia — the same address from which she subsequently operated ARDLEIGH IMPACT CORPORATION, LEON RACHEL CORPORATION, and CONDORCET INITIATIVE CORPORATION. SAGe Advisory Group LLC had no commercial office, no public-facing operations, no website, no employees other than defendant GOEDE, and no business purpose independent of the political committees on which defendant GOEDE served as treasurer.

     217.Political committees for which defendant GOEDE served as treasurer repeatedly paid SAGe Advisory Group LLC, an entity owned by GOEDE and operated from her residence, for “Consulting, Bookkeeping, and Compliance” services. Reported payments included $3,000 on December 31, 2019; $1,750 on May 6, 2022; and $175 on June 30, 2022. GOEDE thus occupied positions on both sides of the transactions: administering the political committees making the disbursements while owning the company receiving them.

     218.The resulting financial interest is alleged as evidence of GOEDE’s control over, and personal financial participation in, the financial architecture described herein. It is not alleged, standing alone, to constitute honest-services fraud under 18 U.S.C. § 1346. See Skilling v. United States, 561 U.S. 358 (2010) (limiting § 1346 to bribery and kickback schemes). To the extent the transactions form part of the bribery, kickback, wire-fraud, or other predicate conduct alleged elsewhere in this Indictment, their criminal significance arises from that underlying conduct and not from undisclosed self-dealing alone.

     219.Defendants GOEDE and BROGHAMMER administered overlapping networks of federal political committees, 501(c)(4) organizations, and 527 entities sharing donors, vendors, fundraising infrastructure, and recurring financial counterparties. By 2024, GOEDE alone simultaneously served as treasurer of no fewer than twenty-one federal political committees registered with the Federal Election Commission.

     220. The political-finance relationships alleged herein continued after the arrest and conviction of LARRY HOUSEHOLDER. During the subsequent period, GOEDE and BROGHAMMER appeared in administrative roles across political organizations operating beyond the Ohio state-level network, while newly formed entities associated with recurring addresses, personnel, donors, and vendors began making substantial contributions to federal political organizations.

     221.The paragraphs that follow examine whether those recurring relationships represent continuity in the financial methods exposed through the HOUSEHOLDER investigation.

     222.The continuity extended to the donor side of the apparatus. As alleged above, 55 GREEN MEADOWS, an organization associated with Ohio Health Care Association executive PETER VAN RUNKLE, transferred approximately $515,000 to GENERATION NOW through fifteen checks between October 2017 and April 2020. After the HOUSEHOLDER operation was exposed, 55 GREEN MEADOWS continued directing substantial funds through Ohio political committees and nonprofit organizations. Its continued activity supplies a financial bridge between the HOUSEHOLDER-era structure and the post-prosecution network examined below: the committees, administrators, and recipients changed, but a funding entity embedded in the earlier apparatus remained active. These facts are not alleged to establish that VAN RUNKLE participated in the HOUSEHOLDER conspiracy. They are alleged to establish the persistence of the same donor infrastructure across successive political-finance arrangements.

     223.The network’s expansion also incorporated major commercial donors whose political spending repeatedly intersected with the same committees, operatives, and fundraising structures alleged herein. Among them was DAVID FRECKA, the former owner of an Ohio plastics-manufacturing company and a major Republican political donor.FRECKA’s financial activity connected multiple components of the network across successive election cycles. In 2021, FRECKA contributed approximately $1,000,000 to HOUSE FREEDOM ACTION, the political organization associated with the House Freedom Caucus and a principal political vehicle supporting Representative JIM JORDAN and allied candidates. During the same period, FRECKA contributed approximately $1,000,000 to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN ACTION41, the pro-TRUMP super PAC then operated by defendant COREY LEWANDOWSKI.

     224.That financial relationship subsequently extended into the political-finance infrastructure alleged in this Section. During the 2023–2024 period, FRECKA contributed approximately $150,000 to AMERICAN RESOLVE PAC, whose filings identify defendant STACI GOEDE as Director and Treasurer. FRECKA thereafter supplied approximately $2,000,000 to FRECKA PAC, which directed additional funds to HOUSE FREEDOM ACTION and financed substantial independent expenditures in Ohio federal and judicial contests.

     225.FRECKA is alleged herein not merely because he contributed to Republican political organizations, but because his documented contributions recur across financial structures separately connected to defendants LEWANDOWSKI and GOEDE and to the Ohio political network from which this Section proceeds. The meetings, transactions, and subsequent financial relationships involving FRECKA alleged below are therefore pleaded as part of the continuing financial chronology of the Enterprise.

     226.Among the major contributors supplying that capital was JOEL BROUSSARD, a Louisiana businessman associated with the offshore-logistics industry. BROUSSARD’s appearance in the American Resolve structure did not represent his entry into political finance. Public campaign-finance records document political contributions associated with BROUSSARD and Gulf Offshore Logistics extending back more than a decade. On or about March 15, 2023, BROUSSARD contributed approximately $100,000 to the Republican Party of Louisiana. During the same broader period, BROUSSARD contributed approximately $100,000 to AMERICAN RESOLVE PAC, becoming one of the committee’s largest disclosed contributors.42

     227.BROUSSARD’s significance therefore extended beyond the amount of a single contribution. His appearance in the American Resolve funding structure connected the Ohio–South Dakota financial architecture alleged above to an established Louisiana political and commercial network centered in a state whose offshore, maritime, energy, and logistics industries depended heavily upon federal regulatory and executive-branch policy.

     The Louisiana connection would recur.

     228.As alleged in subsequent sections, BROUSSARD and entities associated with the Louisiana node thereafter intersected with additional participants, organizations, and governmental interests within the Enterprise. His contributions are therefore pleaded here as the first documented financial bridge into that node, rather than as evidence that an otherwise unrelated Louisiana donor happened to contribute to the same political committee.

     229.To mask the injection of multi-million dollar sums designed to alter the composition of the Ohio Supreme Court and defeat state-level anti-gerrymandering constitutional amendments, the following coordinated actions were executed: a) In or about 2024, DAVID FRECKA utilized Frecka PAC—a specialized Super PAC—to dump approximately $2,000,000 into targeted advertising loops. b) These funds were structurally synchronized with the BUCKEYE LEADERSHIP FUND and Ohioans for a Healthy Economy, which were concurrently managed via the compliance and treasury mechanisms administered by defendant GOEDE. c) This arrangement ensured that FlexPoint Media and Barrell Placements—operating from the closed-loop residential addresses alleged in Section 6—captured the corresponding multi-million dollar ad-buy placement contracts, generating massive, untraceable vendor revenue for internal Enterprise operators.

     230. The Broussard Capital Conduit and Federal Integration. The Enterprise's horizontal expansion simultaneously integrated multi-state maritime and logistics interests to fund parallel federal influence operations. In or about August 2022, JOEL BROUSSARD, a Louisiana-based logistics executive, injected $150,000 into AMERICAN RESOLVE PAC—a federal political entity co managed by defendant GOEDE as official treasurer and strategically directed by defendant LEWANDOWSKI. 42. The Extraction and Shell-Layering Mechanism. The funds generated via the JOEL BROUSSARD injection and related high-net-worth donors were not deployed for ordinary, independent political expenditures. Instead, the Enterprise deployed a deceptive shell-layering extraction routine:

     a) Defendant GOEDE, in her capacity as director of the American Resolve Policy Fund, authorized a covert $80,000 disbursement to Ashwood Advisors LLC, a Delaware shell company.

     b) Ashwood Advisors LLC functioned strictly as a passive conduit to funnel those cash proceeds directly to key political figures positioned to assume leadership over federal executive institutions, including the United States Department of Homeland Security.

     c) To protect the operation from statutory public transparency frameworks, defendant GOEDE intentionally executed an IRS Form 990 filing that omitted these direct consulting disbursements, falsely categorizing the capital flight under generalized "travel expenses" to obstruct regulatory scrutiny.

     231.The network operated across entities subject to materially different disclosure requirements. Political committees disclosed donors and expenditures through federal and state campaign-finance systems, while affiliated tax-exempt organizations operated under separate reporting regimes that did not require equivalent public disclosure of their funding sources.

     232.As alleged below, funds repeatedly moved through this overlapping structure while the same treasurers, compliance personnel, vendors, donors, beneficiaries, and counterparties appeared on multiple sides of the transactions. In certain instances, regulatory filings reported transactions in non-sequential order, obscuring the chronological relationship among related receipts and disbursements.

     233.Through this structure, the Enterprise continued the financial method exposed in the Ohio network alleged above: formally distinct organizations operating through common financial infrastructure, with funds moving across political committees, tax-exempt organizations, vendors, and affiliated entities before reaching their ultimate political or economic beneficiaries.

     234.The transactions alleged below are pleaded to establish the operation and continuity of that financial structure, including whether ostensibly independent transactions constituted components of recurring closed-loop transfers among entities sharing common administrators, vendors, donors, and beneficiaries.

     Below figure 6 depicts the broader network at large, their connections and the closed- loop dealings that occurred on July 15, 2024

     

     235. On or about July 15, 2024, FlexPoint Inc. , operating from the New Albany, Ohio residential address through which the Enterprise’s vendor network was first capitalized in 2017, contributed approximately $89,500 to the AFC Victory Fund, a federal independent-expenditure-only committee organized on or about July 27, 2023 and identified in the Federal Election Commission as a recipient of contributions from defendant GOEDE’s Springfield, Virginia network.

     236.The transaction reflects the integration of the Enterprise’s Ohio vendor node and its Virginia shell-entity node into a single contribution circuit operating across two residential addresses, two regulatory classifications, and at least seven years of continuous activity.

     237.On or about October 2023, defendant GOEDE incorporated ARDLEIGH IMPACT CORPORATION in the State of Delaware. The certificate of incorporation identified defendant GOEDE’s personal residence at 7816 Rose Garden Lane, Springfield, Virginia, as the entity’s principal place of business. ARDLEIGH IMPACT CORPORATION conducted no commercial operations, had no employees, maintained no public-facing business presence, and generated no revenue from any source independent of the contribution stream alleged herein. At the same time, defendant GOEDE incorporated the CONDORCET INITIATIVE CORPORATION in Delaware, registered to the same Springfield, Virginia address and also showing no identifiable commercial activity.

     238.ARDLEIGH’s subsequently filed federal tax return supplied additional evidence concerning its initial capitalization. For its 2023 tax year—the year in which the organization was incorporated—ARDLEIGH reported approximately $10,000,000 in contributions, representing 100 percent of its reported revenue, while reporting no program-service revenue and no expenses. The organization ended the reporting period with approximately $10 million in net assets. Within the following months, it began making the federal political contributions described below.

     239.The timeline plays an important role in understanding the financial setup described here. A newly formed organization, with no reported program-service income, took in about $10 million in contributed capital in its first year. Later, it became known as the source of millions in federal political donations. While public tax records show the amount it received, they don’t reveal who actually contributed the funds or prove that the later political donations were made for that contributor.

     240. The director of record reported on ARDLEIGH IMPACT CORPORATION’s tax filings was CASEY CONTRES, and Campaign Manager to the 2022 United States Senate campaign after which CONTRES integrated OZ into the Enterprise through both pay to play appointments and influencer amplification.

     241. Mehmet Oz later became involved in the Enterprise’s larger messaging-amplification network, working through interconnected political, media, and advocacy channels that aligned with the foreign policy and enforcement - including partnering on a social media campaign with defendant, NICHOLAS SHIRLEY as alleged elsewhere herein

     242. At all times relevant to ARDLEIGH IMPACT CORPORATION’s incorporation and subsequent contribution activity, CONTRES held no documented professional experience in nonprofit administration, tax-exempt compliance, or corporate governance unrelated to electoral campaign operations. The address reported for CONTRES on ARDLEIGH IMPACT CORPORATION’s federal tax filings was not his own residence or place of business; it was defendant GOEDE’s residence at 7816 Rose Garden Lane.

     243. During the same period in which CONTRES served as the nominal director of record for ARDLEIGH IMPACT CORPORATION, CONTRES concurrently served as Chief of Staff to a sitting United States Senator. The use of an experienced Republican campaign operative employed within the office of a sitting United States Senator to serve as the nominal director of a Delaware corporation with no commercial operations, listed at the residential address of a federal political-committee treasurer rather than at CONTRES’s own address, reflects the deliberate decoupling of nominal corporate officers from their independently identifiable locations and the use of campaign-professional credentials to lend ostensible legitimacy to entities operating without independent commercial substance. The arrangement was designed to obscure operational control, impair regulatory traceability, and frustrate the disclosure obligations imposed upon corporations engaged in the making of federal contributions under 52 U.S.C. § 30122.

     244. Within approximately three months of incorporation, ARDLEIGH IMPACT CORPORATION deployed approximately $2,575,000 in political contributions to multiple Enterprise-aligned federal committees using funds from undisclosed sources. The use of newly formed entities with no commercial activity, operating from private residences, and rapidly distributing millions of dollars in political contributions was designed to conceal the true source, ownership, and purpose of those funds, in violation of 52 U.S.C. § 30122, which prohibits making a contribution in the name of another or knowingly permitting one’s name to be used to affect such contributions.

     245. The Campaign Legal Center subsequently filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission identifying ARDLEIGH IMPACT CORPORATION as the source of approximately $2.5 million in contributions to federal political committees through a structure consistent with prohibited straw-donor activity in violation of 52 U.S.C. § 30122.

     [SEE EXHIBIT F]43

     246. Notwithstanding the filing of that complaint, defendant GOEDE continued to operate political-finance entities through her private residence into the federal phase of the conduct charged herein. As of in or about 2025, an additional federal political committee supporting the reelection campaign of a sitting United States Senator listed defendant GOEDE’s Springfield, Virginia residential address as the principal officer address of record.

     247.The continued use of a private residence as the registration address for federal political committees, after the public filing of a Federal Election Commission complaint identifying that same address as the locus of suspected straw-donor activity, demonstrates that defendant GOEDE treated the regulatory complaint as an operational cost rather than a compliance directive.

     248. CONDORCET INITIATIVE CORPORATION formed part of the same Springfield, Virginia entity cluster as ARDLEIGH IMPACT CORPORATION and LEON RACHEL CORPORATION. Public filings reflect that all three entities were incorporated within approximately a two-month period between October 2023 and December 2023, operated from the same residential address at 7816 Rose Garden Lane, Springfield, Virginia, and possessed no independently identifiable commercial operations, employees, public-facing business activity, or revenue-generating infrastructure.

     249. Public corporate filings identified MARGEE CLANCY as President and Secretary of CONDORCET INITIATIVE CORPORATION, with sole voting and operational authority. CLANCY previously occupied comparable administrative positions within ARDLEIGH IMPACT CORPORATION before being replaced in 2024. The recurring use of the same administrative personnel across multiple entities operating from the same residence is alleged as evidence of centralized administration and operational continuity.

     250. Financial records demonstrate and extraordinary overlap in the contribution activity of ARDLEIGH IMPACT CORPORATION and CONDORCET INITIATIVE CORPORATION. Among other examples, both entities contributed approximately $1,000,000 to Eighteen Fifty-Four Fund, an organization that subsequently participated in the routing and redistribution sequences alleged herein.

     251. Texans for a Conservative Majority was among the entities receiving contributions from all three members of the Springfield, Virginia entity cluster—ARDLEIGH IMPACT CORPORATION, CONDORCET INITIATIVE CORPORATION, and LEON RACHEL CORPORATION. The convergence of funding from three newly formed entities operating from the same residence, sharing overlapping administrative personnel, and created within a compressed period is alleged as evidence that the entities functioned as components of a coordinated financial architecture rather than as independent political donors.

     252. During 2023, American Resolve PAC, operating under the treasurer authority of defendant BROGHAMMER, reported approximately ninety-three disbursements totaling approximately $231,000. The committee's disclosure filings listed numerous transactions materially out of chronological order. The reporting method is alleged not as an administrative irregularity, but as evidence of coordinated disbursement activity and the same-day transfer patterns alleged below.

     The figure below depicts the Springfield, Virginia entity cluster and common recipient relationships as alleged in particularity in paragraphs 127 through 131 above

     

     253. The financial-routing architecture alleged in this Section operated, during the relevant period, in coordinated relationship with a federal political committee designated American Resolve PAC, Inc., and with an affiliated tax-exempt entity designated American Resolve Policy Fund. The two entities, considered together with the personal limited-liability company defendant NOEM established in Delaware as alleged at paragraph 129 below, constituted the documented operational mechanism through which approximately $80,000 in political contributions raised through American Resolve Policy Fund were converted into personal income to defendant NOEM during 2023.

     254. On or about June 22, 2023, at approximately 1:00 p.m., Ashwood Strategies LLC was registered as a Delaware limited-liability company. Defendant NOEM was, and at all times relevant to this Indictment is, the principal of Ashwood Strategies LLC. Approximately four minutes later, on the same date, American Resolve Policy Fund was incorporated in Delaware. The four-minute interval between the two incorporations is alleged in this Indictment as documentary evidence that the two entities were established in coordinated sequence by the same operational actors for the purpose of the routing arrangement that thereafter operated between them.44

     255.Following the coordinated incorporations alleged in paragraph 133, American Resolve Policy Fund paid approximately $80,000 to Ashwood Strategies LLC during 2023. American Resolve Policy Fund reported the payment on its annual tax filing as a fundraising fee equal to ten percent of approximately $800,000 the organization reported defendant NOEM had raised on its behalf during the same period. Contemporaneously, American Resolve Policy Fund compensated a separate professional fundraising firm, JBest Co., at a documented commission rate of approximately seven percent. The differential compensation structure is alleged as documentary evidence that the arrangement between American Resolve Policy Fund and Ashwood Strategies LLC was not an arm’s-length fundraising relationship, but the mechanism through which contributions raised by defendant NOEM were converted into personal income to defendant NOEM through her privately controlled limited-liability company at a rate exceeding that paid to independent professional fundraisers performing substantially similar services.

     256.On or about January 25, 2025, in connection with her nomination to serve as Secretary of Homeland Security, defendant NOEM filed a federal financial-disclosure report identifying sources of income required by federal ethics law. The report did not identify the approximately $80,000 American Resolve Policy Fund reported paying to ASHWOOD STRATEGIES during 2023. Ethics experts subsequently told ProPublica that the omission likely violated federal financial-disclosure requirements.

     257. Defendant NOEM's counsel disputed that characterization and maintained that she had complied with applicable law. The omission is alleged herein as evidence relevant to the transparency of the financial relationship, rather than as an adjudicated criminal violation

     The payment to ASHWOOD STRATEGIES did not end in 2023. American Resolve Policy Fund’s subsequent federal tax filing reported an additional approximately $137,842 paid to ASHWOOD STRATEGIES during 2024 for “fundraising consulting,” increasing the amount paid to defendant NOEM’s privately controlled company across the two disclosed years to approximately $217,842. The 2024 payment likewise was not identified as income from American Resolve Policy Fund on the federal financial disclosure defendant NOEM executed in December 2024 in connection with her entry into the federal government.

     258. The same 2024 filing reported that American Resolve Policy Fund had no employees while spending approximately $291,741 on travel and approximately $71,371 specifically for travel or entertainment expenses benefiting federal, state, or local public officials. The organization separately reported substantial expenditures for advertising, polling, fundraising, and political consulting. These records are alleged not as proof that each expenditure was unlawful, but as evidence that the organization functioned as a continuing political and financial platform while simultaneously compensating defendant NOEM’s privately controlled company.

     259.On or about January 25, 2025, in connection with her nomination as Secretary of Homeland Security, defendant NOEM filed a financial disclosure report with the Office of Government Ethics. The report required her to identify sources of income exceeding $200 during the reporting period. NOEM did not disclose the approximately $80,000 that American Resolve Policy Fund had paid Ashwood Strategies LLC in fundraising fees. The omission is alleged as evidence that NOEM concealed the routing arrangement described above and as a separate violation of federal disclosure and false-statement laws.

     260.The affiliated federal committee, American Resolve PAC, operated under the treasurer authority of defendant KEVIN BROGHAMMER. During 2023, the PAC reported approximately ninety-three disbursements totaling approximately $231,000. Its Federal Election Commission filings listed those transactions materially out of chronological order. 45

     261.That reporting pattern is alleged not as a clerical irregularity, but as a method that obscured the operational relationships among recipients and the synchronized, same-day disbursements alleged below, altering IRS data has been done by the defendant on dozens of other filings in the past.

     Figure below is offered as demonstrative evidence depicting the layered closed loop transactions among Enterprise as alleged herein

     

     262. Within the documented disbursement record of American Resolve PAC during 2023, on or about January 26, 2023, American Resolve PAC made eight separate disbursements in a single day to eight separate recipients across four states. The eight same-day disbursements included approximately $8,264 to Baker & Hostetler in Ohio; approximately $722 to Source Direct Marketing in Ohio; approximately $1,508 to Lewandowski Associates in Delaware; approximately $1,154 to Lewandowski Associates in Delaware; approximately $3,250 to Black Hills Balloons in South Dakota; approximately $2,000 to The Aventine Group in Ohio; approximately $514 to SDP Creative in Pennsylvania; and approximately $576 to MDS Enterprise in South Dakota. The aggregate same-day disbursement totaled approximately $17,988. The synchronized character of the disbursements — eight separate recipients across four states receiving payments from a single political committee on a single date — is alleged in this Indictment as documentary evidence of coordinated disbursement administration, incompatible with the ordinary operation of a political committee processing routine vendor invoices, and consistent only with the pre-coordinated release of political-committee funds to a pre-existing Enterprise-aligned recipient network.

     263.American Resolve PAC’s 2023 disclosures identify multiple disbursements alleged to constitute the conversion of political funds to personal use in violation of 52 U.S.C. § 30114(b).

     264.The principal transaction occurred on or about January 25, 2023, when the PAC paid approximately $13,772 to the South Dakota Department of Revenue for “sales and use tax.” The use of federal political-committee funds to satisfy a state tax obligation is alleged to have benefited the person or entity responsible for the underlying liability.

     265.On or about March 24, 2023, the PAC also paid approximately $498 to “Governor Noem” for “party supplies” and approximately $23 to “Governor Noem” for “postage reimbursement.” Additional, recurring payments identified First National Bank in Nebraska as the recipient of expenditures described as “Event Food Bev Let it Fly,” “gift expenses and trophy,” “Phone AT&T,” and “travel lodging at Harborside Hotel.” Because those descriptions concern goods and services unrelated to banking, the identification of First National Bank as the payee is alleged as a method of obscuring the funds’ ultimate recipients.

     Collectively, the transactions are alleged as evidence that political-committee funds were converted to personal benefit and that the identities of the ultimate recipients were concealed..46

     266. On or about June 14, 2023, AMERICAN RESOLVE PAC disbursed approximately $5,000 to THE STRATEGY GROUP FOR MEDIA, INC., the Ohio political-media firm operated by defendant BENJAMIN YOHO and alleged with particularity in Section 9 in connection with South Dakota’s Freedom Works Here campaign. The PAC reported the purpose of the payment as “copyright and other payments.”47

     267.The timing and stated purpose of the transaction are material.

     Approximately two months earlier, on April 13, 2023, South Dakota executed the Freedom Works Here contract. Approximately five months before the PAC’s payment, the South Dakota Governor’s Office of Economic Development had awarded approximately $5,000,000 in taxpayer funds to GoWest Media an entity controlled by defendant, BENJAMIN YOHO, for production and media-buy services associated with the campaign.

     268.The resulting financial relationship crossed the boundary between public advertising and private political activity. South Dakota taxpayers financed the production and distribution of a statewide advertising campaign prominently featuring defendant NOEM. AMERICAN RESOLVE PAC thereafter paid an Enterprise-connected media vendor for “copyright and other payments.” Defendant NOEM’s personal commercial entity, ASHWOOD STRATEGIES LLC, separately maintained documented commercial relationships within the same broader creative-production ecosystem.

     269.Around May 2022, internal communications from public-records requests revealed that the Ohio Peace Officer Training Academy launched a pilot program to test virtual reality technology for statewide law-enforcement training. OPOTA bought about 24 headsets for roughly $12,000 and teamed up with Ohio University to create and assess immersive scenarios, including research on deploying the technology among geographically spread-out Appalachian law-enforcement agencies.

     270.The Attorney General's communications office described the pilot as the “first step” in determining whether VR could supplement traditional classroom instruction and as part of the Attorney General's “vision to prepare officers for the next decade.” The pilot subsequently expanded into a statewide OPOTA training program involving approximately 160 headsets and access for law-enforcement agencies throughout Ohio.

     [SEE EXHIBIT M FOIA OBTAINED EMAILS]

     271.The June 14, 2023 transaction is presented here as evidence of the moment when those otherwise separate financial relationships converged. Public funds supported the campaign, political funds covered the intellectual property rights tied to its creative ecosystem, and private commercial relationships operated alongside both..

     272.The money came from different accounts. The resulting value repeatedly converged around the same political brand.

     
     273.During the same period, the Government of Israel and its ministries maintained a separately disclosed communications infrastructure inside the United States through agents registered pursuant to the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Those registrations included American public-relations, digital-media, advertising, legal, and faith-oriented firms retained by Israeli governmental entities to conduct communications and related activities within the United States, through a series of layered non-profits, PACS, and LLCS these influencers were paid in order to advance the Enterprise’s messaging, and to give legitimacy to the administration’s claims.

     274.Among those registrants was CLOCK TOWER X LLC, which registered on or about September 18, 2025, to perform work on behalf of the State of Israel through Havas Media Germany GmbH. BRADLEY PARSCALE, the former campaign manager and digital strategist for President TRUMP, registered as an agent of CLOCK TOWER X in connection with that representation.

     [SEE EXHIBIT N ISRAELI FOREIGN AGENT SPREAD SHEET]48

     275.The registration is not alleged, standing alone, as evidence of unlawful conduct or undisclosed foreign influence. Its significance is structural: a political operative who had previously occupied senior positions within the TRUMP political apparatus subsequently participated in a formally disclosed communications operation conducted on behalf of a foreign government whose policy objectives intersected with the foreign-policy and domestic messaging environment alleged herein.

     276. The legal architecture through which ARDLEIGH IMPACT CORPORATION was organized was not designed by lay participants. It was designed by ALEXANDER L. REID, a partner at BakerHostetler and the national leader of that firm’s Tax-Exempt Organizations and Charitable Giving practice. REID previously served as Legislation Counsel to the Joint Committee on Taxation and as a tax policy fellow at the United States Department of the Treasury’s Office of Tax Policy — credentials that confer specialized knowledge of the disclosure regulations governing 501(c)(4) entities and the enforcement constraints applicable to the Internal Revenue Service.

     277. In the month preceding his incorporation of ARDLEIGH IMPACT CORPORATION, REID publicly stated to Bloomberg that political pressures made it difficult for the Internal Revenue Service to enforce existing laws regulating 501(c)(4) groups. One week after he incorporated ARDLEIGH IMPACT CORPORATION, REID caused the formation of ARDLEIGH IMPACT LLC, a Delaware twin entity with no public presence, Registered through Registered Agents Inc., a commercial service often noted in public reports as a way to run businesses with almost complete secrecy.33

     278. The use of a tax attorney specializing in tax-exempt organizations to design a corporate-and-LLC structure leveraging the precise enforcement gap he had publicly identified one month earlier reflects not coincidence, but the deliberate engineering of a financial-routing architecture by counsel possessing specialized knowledge of the regulatory limits that architecture was designed to evade.

     279. Incorporation of LEON RACHEL CORPORATION. On or about December 7, 2023, LEON RACHEL CORPORATION was incorporated in Delaware, approximately six weeks after the incorporation of ARDLEIGH IMPACT CORPORATION and listed the same residential address at 7816 Rose Garden Lane in Springfield, Virginia. Defendant GOEDE served as treasurer. JAMES CLAYPOOL served as director of record.

     280.LEON RACHEL CORPORATION (EIN: 93-4811475) maintained no publicly identifiable commercial operations, no employees, no independently identifiable revenue-generating activity, no website, and no business presence apart from the residential address at which defendant GOEDE simultaneously operated ARDLEIGH IMPACT CORPORATION, CONDORCET INITIATIVE CORPORATION, and SAGe Advisory Group LLC.

     [SEE EXHIBIT I]49

     281. Notwithstanding its operation from a private residence and the absence of documented employees, commercial activity, or independently identifiable sources of revenue, LEON RACHEL CORPORATION reported approximately $11,150,000 in contributions to federal political committee during the 2024 election cycle. The absence of identifiable revenue-generating operations, considered together with the scale of the reported political contributions, is alleged as evidence that LEON RACHEL CORPORATION did not independently generate the contribution capacity reflected in federal disclosure filings.

     282. The contribution activity alleged in paragraph 132, together with the entity’s lack of documented operational infrastructure, is alleged as evidence that LEON RACHEL CORPORATION functioned as a financial-routing entity through which externally sourced funds were introduced into the federal political disclosure system.

     Figure below is offered as demonstrative evidence depicting the financial architecture and closed-loop transactions alleged in paragraphs 115 through [end of section]: Leon Rachel Corp conduit spending to Enterprise-aligned recipients.

     

     283. During the same period, LEON RACHEL CORPORATION caused approximately $17,000,000 to be disbursed to political committees, advocacy organizations, and tax-exempt entities aligned with the Enterprise’s foreign-policy framework and its domestic fundraising network, including:

     (a.$350,000 to 314 Action (81-3165165).

     (b. $5,000,000 to AIPAC (53-0217164).

     (c.$1,500,000 to American Prosperity Alliance (88-2451891).

     (d. $250,000 to Center for Campaign Innovation (84-288453).

     (e. $500,000 to Coalition for American Excellence (92-2746969).

     (f. $750,000 to Common Sense Leadership Fund (86-2883453). This entity is controlled by defendant GOEDE and affiliated with Enterprise- aligned actors as alleged herein.

     (g. $100,000 to FDD Action (83-2602916).

     (h. $500,000 to New Heights for America (93-4878531). This entity is controlled by defendant, JOHN THUNE as alleged herein.

     (i. $250,000 to New York Solidarity Network, Inc (87-4076413).

     (j. $3,200,000 to Republican Jewish Coalition (52-1386172). This entity is associated with LEDERMAN, FINE and the Enterprise at large as alleged herein.

     (k. $100,000 to Republican Mainstreet Partnership (59-1828852).

     (l. $250,000 to Right Count Action Inc (93-2863832).

     (m. $500,000 to Right Vote (93-2721813).

     (n. $500,000 to Stand For America Inc. (83-3203087).

     (o. $100,000 to State Armor Action (93-3689747).

     (p. $500,000 to Winning For Women Inc (82-1505471). This entity is a nonprofit for Winning For America PAC conduit for Israeli funding as alleged herein.

     (q. $3,000,000 to With Honor Action Inc. (82-1940227).

     284.In addition to reporting an invalid Employer Identification Number for Center for Campaign Innovation, LEON RACHEL CORPORATION’s Form 990 reported multiple recipient organizations using names that did not conform to their registered legal names in Internal Revenue Service records, including reporting “314Action” rather than “314 Action” and similar deliberate errors across additional entries.

     285.The reporting of an invalid Employer Identification Number together with the reporting of recipient organizations under names inconsistent with Internal Revenue Service records on a federal tax return signed under penalty of perjury constitutes a materially false statement in violation of 26 U.S.C. § 7206(1). The recurring reporting inaccuracies alleged herein are further evidence of the pattern of materially false filings, concealment, and documentary irregularities underlying the Enterprise’s financial-routing architecture.

     286. The reporting on COALITION FOR AMERICAN EXCELLENCE’s Form 990 of a $75,000 disbursement to an Employer Identification Number that does not correspond to any registered tax-exempt entity in Internal Revenue Service records, signed under penalty of perjury by an officer of COALITION FOR AMERICAN EXCELLENCE, constitutes a materially false statement on a federal tax filing in violation of 26 U.S.C. § 7206(1).

     287. The transaction sequence alleged in paragraphs 133(e) and 135 — LEON RACHEL CORPORATION’s approximately $500,000 contribution to COALITION FOR AMERICAN EXCELLENCE, followed by COALITION FOR AMERICAN EXCELLENCE’s reporting of an approximately $75,000 disbursement to an Employer Identification Number that does not correspond to any registered tax-exempt entity in Internal Revenue Service records — reflects the use of intermediary entities to receive, hold, and redirect Enterprise funds while concealing the identity of the true funding sources and the ultimate recipients.

     288. The closed-loop fragmented routing method. Beyond the direct disbursement architecture alleged in the preceding paragraphs, the Enterprise’s financial network operated through a documented method of routing contributions through intermediate political committees in fragmented outbound transfers calibrated to obscure the matched relationship between source and ultimate beneficiary.

     289.The method operated through three defining elements. First, an inbound contribution of a defined amount was made from an Enterprise-aligned source to an intermediate political committee. Second, the same amount, or a materially equivalent amount, exited the intermediate committee in two or more smaller outbound transfers, frequently across separate Federal Election Commission reporting periods. Third, the fragmented outbound transfers converged on a single ultimate beneficiary or on a small, coordinated set of beneficiaries serving a common political objective.

     290. Documented instances of the closed-loop fragmented routing method include, among others:

     a) On or about September 25, 2024, LEON RACHEL CORPORATION contributed approximately $250,000 to Mission Iowa, an independent-expenditure-only committee registered with the Federal Election Commission as Committee ID C00874370. On or about September 27, 2024 — two days following the LEON RACHEL CORPORATION contribution — Mission Iowa contributed approximately $50,000 to Together for Nevada’s Future PAC, an independent-expenditure-only committee registered with the Federal Election Commission as Committee ID C00882050 and active during the 2024 election cycle in support of the Republican United States Senate candidate in Nevada.

     b) On or about October 16, 2024, Mission Iowa contributed an additional approximately $200,000 to Together for Nevada’s Future PAC. The two outbound Mission Iowa contributions totaled approximately $250,000 — an amount materially identical to the inbound LEON RACHEL CORPORATION contribution.

     c) The Eighteen Fifty-Four Fund / 1959 PAC / Flexpoint Media circular-routing sequence. The Eighteen Fifty-Four Fund (Federal Election Commission Committee ID C00809483), which received approximately $150,000 from ARDLEIGH IMPACT CORPORATION, disbursed approximately $754,500 to 1959 PAC, of which Eighteen Fifty-Four Fund was the sole reported contributor. 1959 PAC thereafter disbursed approximately $635,075 — nearly its entire budget — to Flexpoint Media. Separately, Eighteen Fifty-Four Fund disbursed approximately $700,000 to Ohio Victory Fund, which thereafter disbursed approximately $450,000 back to Eighteen Fifty-Four Fund. The circular structure of the Eighteen Fifty-Four Fund outbound transfers, combined with the documented endpoint disbursements to Flexpoint Media — the Enterprise-affiliated media vendor alleged with particularity in the sections that follow — establishes Eighteen Fifty-Four Fund’s operational function as a routing instrument rather than an independent political committee.

     d) Eighteen Fifty-Four Fund additionally received approximately $1,000,000 contributions from both ARDLEIGH IMPACT CORPORATION and CONDORCET INITIATIVE CORPORATION, further linking the Springfield, Virginia entity cluster to the routing structure alleged herein.

     Figure below is offered as demonstrative evidence of the two sequences as alleged herein

     

     291. The recurrence of the matched-amount-fragmented-outbound structure across multiple sequences involving multiple Enterprise-aligned sources, multiple intermediate committees, and multiple ultimate beneficiaries — including the foreign-policy advocacy network identified herein and the Enterprise-affiliated media vendor Flexpoint Media — is consistent only with the coordinated execution of a documented method, rather than with independent contribution decisions by formally distinct entities.

     292. Of the funds described in paragraphs 102 through 104, the largest categorical share was directed to organizations engaged in pro-Israel foreign policy advocacy, including the REPUBLICAN JEWISH COALITION, FDD ACTION, and other entities advancing the foreign policy framework alleged herein.

     293. The concentration of LEON RACHEL CORPORATION’s outbound grants among these recipients establishes that the entity functioned as a financing instrument for the foreign-policy advocacy network through which the Enterprise’s threat-framing narratives were developed and deployed, and not as an independent political donor.

     294. The conduct alleged above constitutes, among other predicate offenses, contributions in the name of another in violation of 52 U.S.C. § 30122; failures of earmarking disclosure in violation of 11 C.F.R. § 110.6; materially false statements on federal tax filings in violation of 26 U.S.C. § 7206(1); and wire fraud and honest-services fraud in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1343 and 1346.

     295. Beginning on or about March 5, 2026 and continuing thereafter, members of the press transmitted written requests to defendant GOEDE and to other treasurers of Enterprise-controlled political committees and tax-exempt entities, seeking inspection and copies of Forms 8871 and 8872 filed with the Internal Revenue Service pursuant to 26 U.S.C. § 527(i) and (j).

     296. Under 26 U.S.C. § 6104(d), tax-exempt organizations, including 527 political organizations, are required to provide copies of such forms within thirty days of a written request and to make such forms available for public inspection during regular business hours at the organization’s principal office.50

     297. More than thirty days elapsed following the transmission of the requests described in paragraph 145, during which period defendant GOEDE was statutorily required under 26 U.S.C. § 6104(d) to produce the requested forms or to provide written notice of the basis for any asserted exemption from production.

     298. Defendant GOEDE did not produce the requested Forms 8871 and 8872 within the period required by 26 U.S.C. § 6104(d).

     299. Defendant GOEDE did not acknowledge the requests described in paragraph 112 and did not assert any lawful basis for non-production.

     300. The failures alleged in paragraphs 246 through 248 each constitute a violation of 26 U.S.C. § 6104(d)

     301. The requests further sought copies of articles of incorporation and other formation documents for entities controlled by defendant GOEDE, including ARDLEIGH IMPACT CORPORATION, CONDORCET INITIATIVE CORPORATION, LEON RACHEL CORPORATION, ASHWOOD STRATEGIES, LLC, and the AMERICAN RESOLVE POLICY FUND.

     302. This failure, occurring across multiple entities, multiple treasurers, and over an extended period, was not the product of administrative delay or inadvertence. It was coordinated.

     303. The refusal to disclose was undertaken to conceal the structure, ownership, funding, and operations of the Enterprise’s financial network from journalists, regulators, and the public.
     

     304. Funds distributed through this network reached, among others, MISSION , the CONGRESSIONAL LEADERSHIP FUND, the SENATE LEADERSHIP FUND, the REPUBLICAN JEWISH COALITION FOUNDATION, and FDD ACTION.

     305. Additional recipient entities participated in the closed-loop transfer circuit described in paragraphs 29 through 36, ultimately routing funds to FLEXPOINT MEDIA and affiliated Enterprise vendors.

     306. During the same fourteen-month period, ARDLEIGH IMPACT, CONDORCET INITIATIVE, and LEON RACHEL CORPORATION operated from the same residential address, under common control, and deployed more than $15 million to Enterprise-aligned federal committees.

     307. This pattern establishes that these entities functioned as components of a coordinated financial structure, rather than as independent actors.

     308. The financial circuit established by LEON RACHEL CORPORATION is the connective tissue between the Enterprise’s domestic fundraising architecture and its foreign-policy messaging network. The same shell entity that funded FLEXPOINT MEDIA through the closed-loop circuit also funded the REPUBLICAN JEWISH COALITION FOUNDATION and FDD ACTION.

     309.The two organizations through which the terrorism-framing narratives as alleged elsewhere herein were developed, empirically validated, and subsequently adopted verbatim by official governmental communications.

     During the relevant period, defendant THUNE advanced foreign-policy frameworks associated with the advocacy organizations identified above through official United States Senate channels, including legislative proposals, committee activity, public statements, and floor remarks.

     310. As alleged elsewhere herein, THUNE received information concerning the foreseeable consequences of military action against Iran, including the risk of disruption or closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Notwithstanding that information, THUNE advanced messaging attributing resulting economic pressures to corporate actors. Those allegations are addressed with particularity elsewhere in this Indictment.

     311.The network’s significance, however, extended beyond money and messaging. The same political infrastructure also created pathways through which individuals acquired government-adjacent positions, institutional experience, public visibility, and credentials capable of supporting subsequent elevation to positions of greater authority.

     312. LUKE LINDBERG illustrates the larger-scale operation of that pathway. Already possessing substantial professional credentials, including senior service at the Export-Import Bank, LINDBERG became President and CEO of South Dakota Trade, a public-private organization supported by defendant NOEM’s administration and later awarded approximately $1 million by the Governor’s Office of Economic Development. There, he led international trade missions and gained state-associated experience later reflected in his elevation to Under Secretary of Agriculture for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs.51

     313. LINDBERG’s trajectory illustrates the institutional mechanism alleged herein: government and government-adjacent platforms provided experience, relationships, visibility, and credentials that could later be carried into positions of greater authority, and the sustained pro-Israel influence that drives narratives about the global economy and foreign policy.

     ---

SECTION 7 — SOUTH DAKOTA STATE-LEVEL OPERATIONAL PREDICATE: ACCESS TO FULL LATERAL CONTROL

The Peters Appraiser Certification and the Bren Retaliation

314.An earlier and more direct manifestation of that method appeared inside South Dakota’s professional-licensing system. Unlike LINDBERG, whose preexisting qualifications are not disputed herein, KASSIDY PETERS required the State itself to confer the professional credential she sought. The conduct was different. The institutional function was similar: governmental authority stood between the individual and a credential capable of producing lasting professional value.

315.In or about 2020, that authority reached directly into defendant KRISTI NOEM’s family through the South Dakota Appraiser Certification Program.

316.KASSIDY PETERS is the daughter of defendant NOEM. During 2020, PETERS repeatedly failed to satisfy requirements administered by the South Dakota Appraiser Certification Program. Program Director SHERRY BREN, a career civil servant who had administered the program for approximately three decades, offered PETERS a stipulation agreement providing an additional opportunity to complete the certification process. South Dakota Secretary of Labor and Regulation MARCIA HULTMAN thereafter intervened in the terms of that agreement in a manner BREN subsequently testified was unprecedented, reducing the requirements PETERS was required to satisfy. PETERS failed to satisfy even the modified conditions.

317.On or about July 26, 2020, following PETERS’s subsequent failure, defendant NOEM caused BREN to be summoned without prior notice to the Governor’s Office for a meeting the following morning. Present at the July 27, 2020 meeting were defendant NOEM, PETERS, Secretary HULTMAN, BREN’s direct supervisor, the Governor’s general counsel, and defendant NOEM’s Chief of Staff by telephone. The meeting constituted the extraordinary deployment of senior executive-branch personnel and gubernatorial authority on behalf of a single private licensing applicant who was also the Governor’s daughter.

318. BREN subsequently testified under oath before the South Dakota Government Operations and Audit Committee that she felt intimidated during the July 27, 2020 meeting and was subjected to pointed questioning regarding PETERS’s training record. During that meeting, defendant NOEM stated to BREN that South Dakota was “the hardest state to get licensed as an appraiser” and that defendant NOEM “intended to get to the bottom of this.” The Committee subsequently found that South Dakota’s appraiser certification process was not materially more difficult than the certification processes of comparable states, directly contradicting the rationale defendant NOEM had asserted in BREN’s presence.

319. Secretary HULTMAN acknowledged to the Committee that the inclusion of a pending licensing applicant in an executive-branch meeting of this character was unprecedented and that she was “not aware of another time” such a meeting had occurred.

320. Within ten days of the July 27, 2020 meeting, PETERS received a third stipulation agreement permitting her to complete certification. The third stipulation was not available under the program’s standard procedures, which permitted only two attempts, and was not authorized by any documented exercise of regulatory discretion preceding the meeting.

321. During the October 2021 hearing before the South Dakota Government Operations and Audit Committee, Secretary MARCIA HULTMAN testified under oath that the third stipulation agreement permitting KASSIDY PETERS an additional certification attempt had been established prior to the July 27, 2020 meeting in the Governor’s Office.

322. Approximately two weeks later, Secretary HULTMAN submitted a written communication to the Committee stating that the third stipulation agreement had not been in place prior to that meeting. The two accounts materially contradicted one another concerning the timing and origin of the unprecedented third stipulation agreement granted to PETERS.

323. On or about November 24, 2020, Secretary HULTMAN initiated proceedings to compel BREN’s retirement from the position she had held for approximately three decades.

324.On or about November 25, 2020, PETERS obtained her appraiser certification. BREN was thereafter removed from her position. She filed an age discrimination complaint against the State of South Dakota.

325.The State of South Dakota thereafter paid BREN approximately $200,000 in public funds to settle her age-discrimination complaint. The settlement included a nondisclosure provision and was paid from a state litigation fund that defendant NOEM’s office subsequently sought to shield from public-records inspection.

326. The controversy did not end with BREN’s departure. In or about September 2021, then-Attorney General JASON RAVNSBORG filed a complaint against defendant NOEM with the South Dakota Government Accountability Board alleging malfeasance, conflict of interest, misappropriation of public funds, and unauthorized use of public money. In or about August 2022, the Board unanimously found sufficient evidence to conclude that NOEM may have engaged in misconduct involving malfeasance or a conflict of interest under South Dakota law. The Board indicated that “appropriate action” would follow but did not publicly identify that action. No public disciplinary sanction followed.

327. The significance of the episode extended beyond the certification obtained by NOEM’s daughter. A regulatory official had resisted extraordinary intervention, was pressured to retire, and was replaced; the State then paid public funds to resolve the resulting employment claim. The official responsible for investigating NOEM subsequently referred the matter for formal accountability review.

328. The personnel method alleged herein would later recur on a larger scale: pressure, removal, resignation, or replacement of officials occupying positions capable of resisting political direction or exercising institutional oversight. As alleged in the sections that follow, LEWANDOWSKI would emerge as a recurring participant in that personnel architecture as the same method moved from South Dakota into the federal government.

329. Following her certification, PETERS obtained a real estate license and accepted employment with HAUGAN NELSON REALTY, INC., an entity with documented commercial relationships to the Noem family’s real estate and insurance interests. The credential PETERS obtained through gubernatorial intervention produced commercial-real-estate access for the Noem family within the same regulatory environment continuing to operate under defendant NOEM’s executive authority.

The Dacotah Bank Regulatory-Capture Nexus

330. During the period in which defendant NOEM exercised executive authority over the State of South Dakota, defendant NOEM’s office held regulatory jurisdiction over state-chartered financial institutions operating within South Dakota, including authority over the regulatory environment in which those institutions extended credit, set lending terms, and managed loan portfolios.

331. During that same period, BRYON NOEM — defendant NOEM’s spouse — operated insurance and commercial real estate businesses, including Noem Insurance, headquartered in South Dakota and operating within the regulatory jurisdiction defendant NOEM’s office controlled.

332. Federal financial disclosures filed by defendant NOEM in or about January 2025, in connection with her Cabinet nomination as Secretary of Homeland Security, reflect that BRYON NOEM’s insurance and commercial real estate businesses had accumulated between approximately $2,650,000 and approximately $3,350,000 in business and commercial-mortgage liabilities. The disclosures reflect that the indebtedness was extended through at least five separate loan instruments originated between in or about 2020 and in or about 2022, meaning that the substantial majority of the indebtedness was originated during defendant NOEM’s gubernatorial tenure.

333.Records filed with the Internal Revenue Service, the Federal Election Commission, and state corporate registries identify FRECKA and BROUSSARD with entities operating from or associated with 7669 Stagers Loop.

334.The same address appears repeatedly throughout the Enterprise’s financial architecture and is associated with entities and participants including BENJAMIN YOHO, COREY LEWANDOWSKI, TRICIA McLAUGHLIN, MICHAEL McELWAIN, CONNAUGHTON, Aventine Group, and affiliated vendor and consulting entities alleged elsewhere in this Indictment.

Figure below is offered as demonstrative evidence of the way the Enterprise operated across key operational nodes in Ohio, South Dakota, Louisiana, Kentucky and Virgina both before and after elevation into federal roles.

335The recurrence of the same address across donors, consultants, vendors, and recipient entities establishes that the subsequent disbursements from Committee 2 did not flow through unrelated actors. They flowed through participants operating within the same documented operational network.

336. The substantial majority of those liabilities were extended by Dacotah Bank, a South Dakota-chartered financial institution headquartered in Aberdeen, South Dakota, operating throughout the relevant period within the regulatory jurisdiction defendant NOEM’s office controlled. The Dacotah Bank loan instruments to BRYON NOEM’s business enterprises include the original financing extended to acquire Noem Insurance from Bryant State Bank in or about 2010, and additional business-loan instruments extended during defendant NOEM’s gubernatorial tenure, the most recent at an interest rate of approximately 4.15 percent.

337. During defendant KRISTI NOEM’s gubernatorial tenure, Dacotah Bank served as a principal lender to business entities associated with her spouse.

338. Defendant NOEM’s office did not publicly disclose the lending relationship as a potential conflict of interest in any public filing, and defendant NOEM did not publicly recuse herself from matters affecting the regulatory and operating environment of South Dakota state-chartered financial institutions, including Dacotah Bank.

338. The lending relationship provided substantial financial accommodation to the spouse of the sitting Governor by a state-chartered financial institution operating within the regulatory jurisdiction of the State of South Dakota during the period of defendant NOEM’s executive authority.

The Pandemic Grant Self-Dealing and the Minnesota Commercial Campaign Falsity

Figure 8 -Below depicts the Pandemic self-dealing of the Enterprise in South Dakota this particular photo was generated with AI- ChatGpt

339.On or about July 16, 2020, the South Dakota Governor’s Office of Economic Development launched a paid commercial advertising campaign directed at residents and businesses of the State of Minnesota, produced by the firm Lawrence & Schiller at a publicly reported cost of approximately $369,500.

340.In the campaign communications, defendant NOEM appeared personally on camera and represented that South Dakota businesses operated free from the restrictions that “hold companies back in other places.” The campaign was directed specifically at Minnesota audiences and continued through Labor Day 2020.

341. At the time the Minnesota-directed campaign was disseminated, the State of South Dakota had a higher per-capita rate of confirmed COVID-19 infections than the State of Minnesota — approximately 858 per 100,000 South Dakota residents, compared to approximately 769 per 100,000 Minnesota residents. Defendant NOEM’s representation that South Dakota offered operating conditions unavailable in Minnesota was therefore materially false at the time of dissemination, and the underlying public-health data establishing its falsity was publicly reported by state health authorities in both jurisdictions.

342. On or about September 8, 2020 — approximately seven weeks after the Minnesota-directed campaign launched — defendant NOEM personally proposed an approximately $400,000,000 small-business grant program funded through federal Coronavirus Relief Funds appropriated under the CARES Act and publicly requested legislative authorization. In the official state release announcing the proposal, defendant NOEM represented that the program was designed to assist South Dakota businesses “hurt by this pandemic.”

343. The statement constituted a contemporaneous acknowledgment, made by defendant NOEM in her official capacity and disseminated through official state channels, that South Dakota businesses had been materially harmed by pandemic conditions — the same conditions the Minnesota-directed campaign had represented as comparatively absent in South Dakota.

344. On or about October 5, 2020, the South Dakota Legislature authorized defendant NOEM’s proposed grant program, with an individual award cap of $100,000 per recipient. Later in the same month, defendant NOEM caused the individual grant cap to be raised fivefold — to $500,000 per recipient — and authorized a second round of applications covering the September-through-November 2020 period.

345.Following defendant NOEM’s modification of the grant structure, approximately 126 business entities — fewer than four percent of statewide applicants — qualified for the maximum $500,000 award. Among the qualifying recipients were entities affiliated with defendant NOEM’s immediate family. On or about February 19, 2021, Racota Valley Ranch Partnership received a single payment of $500,000. On or about January 6 and January 20, 2021, Arnold Bros. Water Management, Inc. — operated by defendant NOEM’s brothers, ROCK ARNOLD and ROBB ARNOLD — received additional grant payments exceeding $100,000.

346.At the time those grant payments were issued; defendant NOEM maintained an ongoing financial relationship with Racota Valley Ranch under which the partnership paid her approximately $2,200 annually for the use of twenty-two acres of farmland she personally owned. The continuing rental relationship was not publicly disclosed until after public reporting identified Racota Valley Ranch as a recipient of the maximum modified grant award.

347.None of the Minnesota-directed campaign communications disclosed that defendant NOEM had personally proposed a $400,000,000 pandemic-relief program premised upon the acknowledgment that South Dakota businesses had been materially harmed by pandemic conditions; that

The Department of Education and the Hillsdale Diversion

348.In or about 2021, the South Dakota Department of Education convened a social-studies content-standards commission composed primarily of South Dakota public-school educators for the purpose of drafting revised K-12 social-studies standards subject to public review and adoption through the South Dakota Board of Education Standards. In or about 2022, defendant NOEM caused the work product of that educator-led commission to be discarded in its entirety and replaced with a successor commission consisting of fifteen members, only three of whom held current South Dakota teaching certification.

349.The replacement of the original educator-led commission occurred during the same period in which defendants NOEM and LEWANDOWSKI were expanding aligned personnel and administrative influence across multiple South Dakota governmental departments and administrative structures, as further alleged herein.

350.Defendant NOEM thereafter caused the State of South Dakota to pay approximately $200,000 to WILLIAM MORRISEY, a Professor Emeritus affiliated with Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, to draft replacement social-studies standards derived substantially from the Hillsdale “1776 Curriculum,” a curriculum framework publicly aligned with the educational and political objectives advanced by Hillsdale College and affiliated organizations.

351.At the time defendant NOEM caused the Hillsdale-derived standards framework to be imposed upon South Dakota public schools, defendant GOEDE served as treasurer of the 1776 Project PAC, a Virginia-registered political committee operating within the same curricular and political framework reflected in the Hillsdale-derived standards adopted in South Dakota. Defendant GOEDE simultaneously served as treasurer of additional Enterprise-affiliated political committees alleged elsewhere in this Indictment, thereby occupying concurrent operational roles within both the Enterprise’s political-financial infrastructure and the political-committee network aligned with the curricular framework adopted in South Dakota.

352.The membership of the 2022 successor social-studies standards commission was assembled through Enterprise-affiliated political and relationship networks rather than through an open educator-led selection process based primarily upon South Dakota classroom experience. At least two members of the successor commission maintained documented professional or personal relationships with LEDERMAN predating their appointments.

353.On or about April 17, 2023, the South Dakota Board of Education Standards adopted the Hillsdale-derived social-studies standards drafted by MORRISEY and the successor commission notwithstanding sustained opposition from South Dakota educators, historians, and members of the public during the statutorily required review process.

354.The adoption of standards drafted by an out-of-state Hillsdale-affiliated principal, at a publicly reported cost of approximately $200,000 and through a commission assembled in material part through Enterprise-affiliated networks, completed the replacement of the prior educator-led standards process with a politically aligned curricular framework imposed through coordinated executive and administrative action.

The Althoff Appointment and the Department of Social Services Suppression Apparatus

355. On or about January 2023, in continuance of the Enterprise’s latter control capture, defendant KRISTI NOEM appointed MATTHEW ALTHOFF as Secretary of the South Dakota Department of Social Services (“DSS”). From approximately 2010 through approximately 2023, ALTHOFF served as Chancellor of the Catholic Diocese of Sioux Falls. During a 2017 South Dakota media investigation, a former diocesan employee produced a contemporaneous audio recording in which ALTHOFF warned that continued reporting of sexual-harassment allegations against a priest would “complicate the church’s ability to employ” her. The statement reflected the use of employment consequences to deter disclosure of institutional misconduct.52

356. Defendant ALTHOFF thereafter assumed control of a state agency administering federally funded public-assistance and medical-benefit programs serving approximately one in four South Dakota residents.

357. Eyewitness 6, an employee of DSS with direct operational knowledge of the Benefits Eligibility and Enrollment System (“BEES”), has provided first-hand information concerning systemic failures within the Department. According to Eyewitness 6, the BEES platform, developed by Illinois-based vendor RedMane Technology and deployed in or about 2022, repeatedly lost resident applications, wrongfully terminated Medicaid coverage for qualifying beneficiaries, and rendered Department offices operationally unable to timely process applications and eligibility determinations.

358. Eyewitness 6 further has stated that DSS employees were directed to absorb the resulting workload through unpaid overtime while operating under explicit instructions from defendant ALTHOFF prohibiting public disclosure of the BEES failures. Employees additionally were required to execute acknowledgments stating that personal and Department-issued devices could be searched in the event of unauthorized disclosure of Department information.

359. Eyewitness 6 further has stated that DSS discontinued its prior practice of issuing written notice to residents whose Medicaid coverage had been terminated. As a result, qualifying beneficiaries allegedly remained unaware their coverage had ended until medically necessary treatment, including scheduled surgeries and procedures, was delayed, denied, or canceled.

360. The conduct alleged herein reflects a coordinated internal-suppression structure within DSS designed to restrict disclosure of ongoing program failures. Internal escalation channels were curtailed through explicit prohibitions on disclosure, while the device-search acknowledgments operated as a credible threat of identification and retaliation against employees communicating with outside authorities or the public.

361.The discontinuation of written termination notices further concealed wrongful Medicaid terminations from affected residents and reduced the creation of documentary records capable of triggering external review.

362.As alleged herein, the combined effect of these practices was to shield continuing system failures from oversight authorities, public scrutiny, and regulatory intervention notwithstanding documented harm to qualifying South Dakota residents dependent upon federally funded medical care.

The Workforce Housing Diversion, Union Crossing, and the Kyle Peters Trajectory

363. Beginning in or about 2022 and continuing throughout the period relevant to this Indictment, the South Dakota Governor’s Office of Economic Development directed millions of dollars in state economic-development funds — including federal funds appropriated under the CARES Act and the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 — to infrastructure and land-development projects promoted under the designation of a statewide “workforce housing” initiative. In practice, those allocations directed public funds to projects and entities aligned with Enterprise participants and their affiliated commercial networks, rather than to the traditional workforce or blighted community needs the federal funding source was designated to address.

364. Although publicly characterized as workforce housing, multiple state-subsidized developments were priced at levels well above the income thresholds for the workforce populations the program was nominally designed to serve. The structure channeled federal and state public subsidies to private projects benefiting politically connected developers, contractors, and investors.

365.The credential-and-access method extended into economic development through KYLE PETERS, defendant NOEM’s son-in-law. In January 2019, PETERS joined the South Dakota Governor’s Office of Economic Development (”GOED”) as a Senior Business Development Representative, gaining professional experience and access to the state’s development, incentive, and grant infrastructure.

366.In or about May 2021, PETERS left GOED and joined A1 Development Solutions as a partner. He thereafter became a principal public advocate for Union Crossing, an approximately 87-acre mixed-use development in North Sioux City. The project subsequently received approximately $2.71 million in infrastructure-grant funding through the South Dakota Housing Development Authority.

367.Union Crossing also received an approximately $10 million tax-increment financing district, approved over organized local opposition and petitions signed by approximately one-third of North Sioux City’s registered voters. The TIF permitted future property-tax increment generated within the district to finance project costs for up to twenty years.

368.The project was presented as workforce housing. Its first phase, however, included single-family homes advertised at approximately $262,000 to $410,000. The disparity between the project’s public workforce-housing rationale and the housing ultimately marketed therein is alleged as relevant to the use and distribution of the public subsidies described above.

369.PETERS’s trajectory extended the credential-and-access method into economic development: from a publicly funded position inside GOED to private development activity involving a project receiving substantial public support. Other members of the NOEM family simultaneously maintained interests in South Dakota real estate, insurance, and property appraisal.

370.The four South Dakota structures alleged above—the PETERS certification matter, the Dacotah Bank lending relationships, the pandemic-relief grants, and Union Crossing—involved different programs and different forms of governmental authority. Their significance lies in recurrence: each placed public institutions, resources, or regulatory authority in proximity to private financial interests connected to defendant NOEM’s family.

371.Those relationships also operated alongside the political-finance architecture alleged herein, through recurring donors, consultants, vendors, and political organizations associated with defendant NOEM’s broader political operation.

SECTION 8 — DILS, THE INSTITUTIONAL CAPTURE OF SOUTH DAKOTA PROSECUTORIAL AUTHORITY, AND THE PATTERN OF NON-ENFORCEMENT

The Materially False Independent-Communication Certification

372.The same period produced a separate test of South Dakota’s political-enforcement system: what happened when organizations supporting defendant NOEM’s political agenda were required to disclose whether their communications were actually independent of her campaign.

373.On or about March 8, 2022, defendant GOEDE, acting as treasurer of the Dakota Institute for Legislative Solutions (”DILS”), filed an independent-communication statement with the South Dakota Secretary of State. The filing certified that communications disseminated by DILS “WAS NOT controlled by, coordinated with, requested by, or made upon consultation with” defendant KRISTI NOEM, her campaign committee, or agents acting on their behalf.

374.The certification was categorical. The surrounding political relationships were not.

375.During the same period, DILS publicly described its mission through Executive Director ROB BURGESS as generating support for Governor Noem’s agenda and operated with a publicly reported budget of approximately $2.3 million.

376.The question presented by the DILS filings was therefore straightforward: whether an organization publicly organized to advance the Governor’s agenda remained legally independent of the Governor, her campaign, and their agents when it paid to communicate that agenda to South Dakota voters.53

377. The certification of independence executed by defendant GOEDE was materially false at the time it was made. DILS did not operate as an independent entity; it operated, as its own executive director publicly stated, as the institutional vehicle through which defendant NOEM’s political objectives were advanced by retaliatory action against public officials who resisted those objectives.

378. The materially false certification deprived the South Dakota Secretary of State, the impeachment committee subsequently targeted by DILS, the named legislators, the former Attorney General, and the South Dakota public of the disclosure to which they were legally entitled under South Dakota campaign-finance law. Each interstate wire transmission of the false certification, and each interstate wire transmission of contributions and disbursements made in reliance upon it, constitutes a separate predicate act.

The Intimidation Operation Against the Impeachment Committee

379. Within days of defendant GOEDE’s execution of the materially false certification, DILS commenced a coordinated billboard campaign in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The billboards demanded the impeachment of then-Attorney General JASON RAVNSBORG and identified by name, with photographs, members of the South Dakota House Select Committee on Investigation responsible for evaluating the predicate for RAVNSBORG’s impeachment.

380.The named officials included Speaker SPENCER GOSCH, Representative JON HANSEN, Representative JAMIE SMITH, Representative SCOTT ODENBACH, and Representative RYAN CWACH. The billboards bore the message “What are they hiding?” beside the photographs of named legislators evaluating evidence in a constitutionally established impeachment proceeding.

381.DILS expended approximately $24,024 on the billboard communications. BURGESS publicly refused, on behalf of DILS, to identify the funding sources for the operation.

382. The DILS billboard operation did not arise from RAVNSBORG’s 2020 traffic incident in isolation. It arose at a time when RAVNSBORG, in his official capacity, had initiated and was actively pursuing two ethics investigations into defendant NOEM personally:

a) defendant NOEM’s interference in the South Dakota Appraiser Certification Program on behalf of her daughter, KASSIDY PETERS, as alleged elsewhere herein.; and

b) defendant NOEM’s use of state-owned aircraft for travel to events hosted by the Republican Governors Association, the Republican Jewish Coalition, Turning Point USA, and the National Rifle Association. Speaker GOSCH, then sitting as a target of the DILS campaign and as the presiding officer of the legislative body evaluating RAVNSBORG’s impeachment, publicly acknowledged the connection: “She does not like that man. I don’t know if it’s because he’s got ongoing investigations into her conduct, I don’t know what it is.” The statement was made by an officeholder with no political incentive to defend RAVNSBORG and constitutes contemporaneous acknowledgment, by a Republican legislative leader within defendant NOEM’s own party, of the retaliatory character of the operation.

383. The DILS billboard operation was referred to the Minnehaha County State’s Attorney for investigation, including for failure to disclose the organization’s top five donors. DILS maintained that the expenditures constituted “grassroots lobbying activity” rather than reportable independent communications.

384.The operation, however, was conducted by a Virginia-registered 501(c)(4), administered by an out-of-state officer, through paid billboards targeting named South Dakota legislators during an active impeachment proceeding. The classification permitted DILS to withhold the identities of its principal donors.

The Removal of RAVNSBORG and the Consolidation of Treasurer Authority

385.On or about June 21, 2022, RAVNSBORG was convicted and removed from office by the South Dakota Senate. The investigations initiated during his tenure into conduct involving defendant NOEM thereafter proceeded without him.

386.The Government Accountability Board referred the state-aircraft matter to the Hughes County State’s Attorney for prosecutorial review. On or about October 25, 2022, while MARK VARGO was serving as defendant NOEM’s appointed interim Attorney General, the matter was closed after prosecutors reported finding “no basis to pursue” the allegations and characterized allegations concerning altered flight records as “frivolous.” No charges were brought.

387.Separately, the Government Accountability Board found sufficient information to conclude that NOEM may have engaged in misconduct in connection with her intervention in the appraiser-certification process involving her daughter. That matter likewise produced no criminal charges.

388.RAVNSBORG left office therefore, the investigations he initiated ended without prosecution.

389. The institutional separation represented to South Dakota regulatory authorities between DILS and defendant NOEM’s gubernatorial campaign apparatus was thereafter formally eliminated. At the time of the March 8, 2022 certification representing DILS as independent, defendant KEVIN BROGHAMMER served as treasurer of Kristi for Governor.

390.In or about mid-2023, defendant GOEDE succeeded defendant BROGHAMMER as treasurer of Kristi for Governor, thereby assuming control of the same campaign committee DILS had previously certified itself as institutionally independent from.

391.The succession consolidated, under a single Enterprise participant, treasurer authority over entities previously represented to state regulators as organizationally separate.

The Installation of Defendant JACKLEY as the Object of the Removal

392. On or about January 28, 2023, following RAVNSBORG’s impeachment and removal from office, defendant MARTIN J. JACKLEY assumed the office of Attorney General of South Dakota.

393. The operational effect of the removal described in paragraphs 225 through 229 was the installation of a successor Attorney General under whose tenure the investigations initiated during RAVNSBORG’s service terminated without criminal prosecution and no comparable prosecutorial action was initiated against Enterprise-affiliated principals notwithstanding the complaints, referrals, and conduct alleged herein.

394.Defendant NOEM publicly endorsed defendant JACKLEY, RAVNSBORG’s predecessor in office and defendant NOEM’s former opponent in the 2018 Republican gubernatorial primary, as RAVNSBORG’s replacement. During the interim period between RAVNSBORG’s June 2022 removal and defendant JACKLEY’s January 2023 assumption of office, defendant NOEM appointed MARK VARGO to serve as interim Attorney General, thereby maintaining continuity of executive influence over the Office during the pendency of the investigations described above.54

395. After RAVNSBORG was removed, a new state Attorney General took office. However, according to the following allegations, their actions didn’t lead to any prosecutions of Enterprise members or related activities, despite receiving documented complaints that should have been enough to justify action under South Dakota law.

The Two-Mechanism Architecture of Non-Enforcement

396. The pattern of non-enforcement alleged in the paragraphs that follow was not the product of defendant JACKLEY’s conduct alone. It was produced by the combined operation of two distinct mechanisms, occurring concurrently and continuing from in or about 2021 through the date of this Indictment. First, Enterprise participants dismantled or impaired the internal reporting, compliance, and oversight functions within the South Dakota Investment Council, the Department of Social Services, the Office of the Governor, and other state agencies, reducing the likelihood that misconduct within those agencies would generate documented complaints or formal referrals. Second, complaints and referrals that nevertheless reached the external prosecutorial layer were not acted upon by defendant JACKLEY’s office.

397. The internal-dismantling mechanism operated to prevent agency-level reporting channels from producing the complaints that would have required external prosecutorial action. The external-non-action mechanism operated to dispose of the complaints that escaped the internal dismantling and reached defendant JACKLEY’s office. The combined operation of the two mechanisms was the operational architecture through which the Enterprise exercised continuing lateral control over state institutional authority in South Dakota.

The Public Integrity Unit and Whistleblower Tip Line as Concealment Infrastructure

398.In or about December 2024, following public disclosure of criminal misconduct by state employees, defendant JACKLEY proposed legislation requiring state employees to report suspected felonies, expanding whistleblower protections, and establishing a Public Integrity Unit within the Office of the Attorney General. The legislation became law in 2025, and JACKLEY thereafter publicly solicited reports of government misconduct.

399.The Office’s 2025 Public Integrity Report disclosed 47 misconduct reports, 14 criminal investigations, and charges against four state employees. Those charged occupied subordinate, non-policy positions, including a food-service inspector, motor-vehicle clerks, and a Department of Social Services employee. During the period alleged herein, the Unit brought no criminal charges against the senior political and Enterprise-affiliated actors identified in this Indictment.55

400.The resulting pattern was stark: the new integrity system demonstrated its willingness to prosecute misconduct below, while the allegations concerning politically connected actors described herein produced no comparable public enforcement action. Multiple whistleblowers from each department in South Dakota reported criminal activity and misconduct but stated that Jackley’s office used the hotline to protect top officials and confidants and punish lower level errors.

401. In some cases, harassment and intimidation were used by his office to prevent further investigation and law enforcement oversight.

The Schwartz Non-Prosecution and the Federal Pardon-Advocacy Operation

402. JOSEPH SCHWARTZ operated approximately eighteen nursing-home facilities in South Dakota through Skyline Healthcare-affiliated entities. As those facilities collapsed under SCHWARTZ’s ownership, a Skyline vice-president responsible for the South Dakota portfolio, DEBBIE MENZENBERG, sent documented emails to South Dakota state health officials seeking institutional intervention.

403.The State of Arkansas subsequently prosecuted and convicted SCHWARTZ for Medicaid fraud and tax evasion. Federal prosecutors in the District of New Jersey subsequently prosecuted and convicted SCHWARTZ for a $39,000,000 payroll-tax scheme. 56

404.Defendant JACKLEY initiated no corresponding South Dakota state prosecution, notwithstanding the documented operational presence of the SCHWARTZ enterprise within South Dakota, the documented harm to South Dakota residents dependent upon the affected nursing-home facilities, and the documented receipt by South Dakota state health officials of contemporaneous notice from within the SCHWARTZ enterprise.

405. On or about November 2025, President TRUMP pardoned SCHWARTZ, eliminating the federal conviction while leaving the Arkansas state conviction intact. SCHWARTZ paid in excess of $1,000,000 to lobbyists and political operatives to secure the pardon.

406.The federal pardon did not foreclose South Dakota state prosecution for conduct occurring within the jurisdiction of the South Dakota Attorney General. As of the date of this Indictment, no South Dakota state prosecution has been initiated.

407. JOSHUA NASS, an attorney and federally registered lobbyist with documented institutional ties to pro-Israel advocacy and evangelical political networks, conducted the principal advocacy effort.

408.NASS filed a Lobbying Disclosure Act report dated January 15, 2026 reflecting receipt of approximately $100,000 from SCHWARTZ, with “federal presidential pardon advocacy” listed as the lobbying issue.

409.On or about March 2026, NASS was charged in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York with attempting to extort an additional $500,000 from a client whose circumstances were publicly described as materially identical to those of SCHWARTZ.57

410.The pardon-advocacy operation was conducted in part through JACK BURKMAN and JACOB WOHL, each of whom had previously been convicted in federal court for orchestrating racist robocall campaigns targeting Black voters during the 2020 federal election cycle. In connection with the effort, SCHWARTZ paid approximately $1,000,000 to operatives who subsequently reported that they had worked with LAURA LOOMER.58

411.The pardon effort was further advanced by LAURA LOOMER, a political activist whose influence within President TRUMP’s political and advisory circle had, by that period, been documented in independent public reporting. As alleged elsewhere herein, LOOMER’s access to President TRUMP was amplified through the Enterprise’s broader messaging architecture, including the use of influencers to promote and amplify pro-Israel and pro-DHS messaging. LOOMER’s involvement in the SCHWARTZ pardon effort originated through an Orthodox Jewish outreach group chat in which she participated.

412.Thereafter, LOOMER used the X platform to disseminate a series of materially false and unsupported public statements concerning SCHWARTZ’s underlying criminal conduct, including assertions that the federal judge presiding over SCHWARTZ’s case had acted from antisemitic motive, notwithstanding the absence of evidentiary support in the judicial record.

413.In or about March 2026, substantially similar narrative themes appeared in the official White House explanation issued in connection with SCHWARTZ’s pardon. The appearance of advocacy themes previously circulated through private pardon-promotion efforts within an official executive-branch justification is alleged herein as evidence of LOOMER’s intermediary role in the pardon process. Following issuance of the pardon, SCHWARTZ personally approached LOOMER during a White House Hanukkah event and acknowledged her role in the pardon effort.

414. LOOMER’s intermediation function — operating outside formal pardon-application procedures, through informal access to the President, on behalf of an Enterprise-aligned defendant — established the operational template for the broader pattern of Enterprise-aligned media-figure intermediation alleged in subsequent sections of this Indictment.

415.The significance of LOOMER’s role extended beyond pardon advocacy. Her access placed a private political influencer between government officials, politically useful information, public accusation, and executive action.

416.That intermediary function subsequently appeared in federal litigation involving former FEMA Chief Financial Officer MARY COMANS. COMANS alleges that defendant LEWANDOWSKI supplied information concerning her to LOOMER, who publicly identified COMANS and accused her of unlawful conduct shortly before COMANS was terminated and DHS publicly accused her of misconduct. In July 2026, a federal court granted COMANS partial summary judgment on separate due-process claims arising from the government’s termination and public accusations. The allegation that LEWANDOWSKI supplied information to LOOMER remains pending and is pleaded herein as an allegation, not an adjudicated fact.

417.The alleged mechanism was significant: information originating inside government did not remain inside government. It could move outward through politically aligned media figures, acquire public force through amplification, and return to the governmental sphere as personnel action, enforcement justification, or official narrative.

418.A separate federal action filed by MAHMOUD KHALIL in July 2026 alleged a related public-private structure on a broader scale. KHALIL alleges that private organizations including the Heritage Foundation, Canary Mission, and Betar identified and publicized pro-Palestinian activists and that federal officials thereafter used immigration authority against selected targets. The complaint names, among others, former Secretary NOEM and alleges a “public-private partnership” between private ideological organizations and governmental actors. Those allegations remain contested and are not pleaded herein as adjudicated findings.

419.Taken together, the SCHWARTZ, COMANS, and KHALIL matters identify different alleged uses of the same institutional boundary: private actors could supply advocacy, targets, narratives, or amplification while governmental actors retained the formal authority to pardon, terminate, investigate, detain, or remove.

Summary of Institutional Consequence

420. The conduct alleged above establishes a coordinated Enterprise operation, extending from on or about March 8, 2022 through the date of this Indictment, directed at the suppression of state-level prosecutorial review of Enterprise-affiliated conduct in South Dakota and, where state-level suppression proved insufficient, the conversion of federal pardon authority into the further extinguishment of Enterprise-affiliated criminal exposure. The operation proceeded in four phases, set forth in paragraphs beneath.

421. First, Enterprise participants discredited and removed an Attorney General who had initiated investigations into defendant NOEM, as alleged elsewhere herein.

422. Second, Enterprise participants consolidated treasurer authority over entities previously represented to South Dakota regulators as institutionally independent, including the transfer of treasurer authority over Kristi for Governor to the same Enterprise participant who had executed the DILS independence certification, as alleged elsewhere hrein.

423. Third, Enterprise participants installed a successor Attorney General whose tenure, as alleged herein, produced no prosecutorial action against Enterprise-affiliated principals notwithstanding documented complaints and referrals, and during whose tenure the reporting framework described elsewhere herein — operating in practice as concealment infrastructure — was established.

424. Fourth, where state-level non-enforcement proved insufficient to extinguish criminal exposure, Enterprise participants and affiliated operatives sought federal pardon intervention on behalf of Enterprise-aligned individuals, as alleged elsewhere herein. The witness allegations set forth in this Indictment arose within state institutional channels that, for the reasons alleged in this Section, were not constituted to produce independent prosecutorial review of Enterprise-affiliated conduct.

425. During Q2 2025 (April through June), three events occurred contemporaneously. First, defendant LEWANDOWSKI solicited personal financial compensation from the chief executive officer of GEO Group in exchange for protecting GEO Group’s federal contracts, as alleged elsewhere herein. Second, the South Dakota Investment Council increased its disclosed GEO Group equity position by approximately 454 percent, from approximately 25,000 shares to approximately 138,500 shares. Third, the Senior Investment Manager who had raised internal-control concerns regarding the Council’s asset-allocation practices was demoted and subsequently terminated.

426. The contemporaneous occurrence of the three events alleged above is not, standing alone, pleaded as evidence of coordinated conduct among those events. It is pleaded as evidence of the operational environment alleged in this Section: an environment in which Enterprise-aligned financial conduct occurred at the state and federal levels simultaneously, and in which the state prosecutorial apparatus produced no inquiry into either set of events.

The Convergent-Beneficiary Architecture: Foreign-Policy Advocacy, Federal Enforcement Authority, and the Defense-and-Detention Contracting Network

427. The convergence of three beneficiary classes around a single policy frame establishes the Enterprise’s operational integration with two institutional networks already alleged above. the foreign-policy advocacy network coordinated through the Republican Jewish Coalition, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and the affiliated donor-and-operative ecosystem alleged in Sections 2 and 4; and the South Dakota institutional ecosystem alleged in Sections 1, 6, 7, and 8. The conduct alleged below establishes the Enterprise’s third operational integration: the federal defense, immigration-detention, and law-enforcement contracting network whose corporate beneficiaries derived direct financial benefit from the same policy framework the Enterprise advanced through governmental authority.

Figure below is offered as demonstrative evidence of the institutional integration of the Enterprise’s domestic financial architecture, the foreign-policy advocacy network identified in Sections 2 and 4, the law-enforcement and intelligence apparatus of the State of Israel, and the federal enforcement framework administered by defendants NOEM and LEWANDOWSKI is depicted in Figure 8 below.

428. The structural convergence. Three categories of institutional actor derived measurable financial benefit from the policy framework alleged in this Indictment. First, the foreign-policy advocacy network derived institutional, political, and financial benefit from the maximum-pressure framework alleged in Section 4 and from the threat-framing messaging alleged in paragraphs 11 through 25. Second, federal officeholders — including defendant LEWANDOWSKI, defendant NOEM, defendant SHEAHAN, and others identified herein — derived political and, as alleged elsewhere herein. Third, the corporate defense, immigration-detention, surveillance, and security-contracting industry derived direct contract revenue from the operational implementation of that framework. The three beneficiary classes did not operate in parallel; they operated through interlocking financial, personnel, and policy channels documented elsewhere in this Indictment.

429. The conduct alleged above establishes the convergence with particularity. In the same fiscal quarter — Q2 2025 — in which defendant LEWANDOWSKI solicited personal payment from GEO Group’s chief executive in exchange for protecting GEO Group’s federal contracts, the South Dakota Investment Council increased its disclosed equity position in GEO Group by approximately 454 percent, and the Senior Investment Manager who attempted to surface internal-control concerns at the Council was demoted and terminated. The same federal enforcement framework that produced GEO Group’s contract revenue produced

a) the personal payment solicited by defendant LEWANDOWSKI,

b) the appreciation in the Investment Council’s GEO Group position, and

c) the operational predicate for the killings of GOOD and PRETTI alleged elsewhere herein. A single policy framework produced converging financial benefit for the federal officeholder administering the enforcement, the state pension fund holding the corporate position, and the corporate operator of the detention infrastructure the enforcement framework required.

430. The institutional pattern: DHS-Israeli operational integration. The federal enforcement framework administered by defendant NOEM through the Department of Homeland Security and operationally directed by defendant LEWANDOWSKI through the extra-statutory authority alleged in Section 15, was integrated through documented and longstanding institutional channels with the law-enforcement, surveillance, and counterterrorism apparatus of the State of Israel. Those channels include, among others:

a) joint training programs through which senior United States law-enforcement personnel, including Department of Homeland Security officials and state-level homeland-security directors, have received counterterrorism instruction in Israel;

b) the procurement and operational deployment by Department of Homeland Security components of Israeli-developed surveillance, forensic, and targeting technologies, including Palantir Technologies products and Cellebrite forensic tools; and

c) Federal Bureau of Investigation funding, through the Joint Terrorism Task Force structure and the Federal Emergency Management Agency Urban Area Security Initiative, of training conducted by private contractors specializing in instruction derived from Israeli counterterrorism methodology. The institutional integration is not alleged as a covert or undisclosed program. It is alleged as a documented operational relationship through which the tactical methodology of a foreign government’s law-enforcement and military apparatus has been imported into the operational doctrine of domestic United States federal enforcement.

431. The convergence with the foreign-policy advocacy network alleged in Sections 2 and 4. The institutional relationships described in paragraph 269 are operationally integrated with the foreign-policy advocacy network alleged with particularity in Sections 2 and 4. The Republican Jewish Coalition, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and the affiliated donor-and-operative ecosystem identified in those sections supply the policy framework within which the operational doctrine described elsewhere herein is justified to the public, advocated to Congress, and adopted as the formal policy of the United States government.

432.The financial network alleged in Section 5 — through which approximately $11,150,000 was disbursed in the 2024 election cycle through a single shell corporation operating from defendant GOEDE’s personal residence — directed substantial portions of that funding to entities within that policy network, including approximately $3,200,000 to the Republican Jewish Coalition alone.

433.The conduct alleged in this Indictment thereby reflects a closed circuit: the foreign-policy advocacy network financed through the Enterprise’s domestic dark-money apparatus advanced the policy framework that produced the federal enforcement authority defendant LEWANDOWSKI administered, that authority produced the contract revenue from which defense and detention contractors profited, and the profits from that revenue returned, through the same financial network, to the foreign-policy advocacy entities through which the cycle began.

434. Defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s documented foreign-state operational ties. Defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s operational ties to foreign-state interests are not limited to the institutional relationships alleged above. As alleged with particularity in paragraphs [Section 5 — FirstEnergy and Russia, defendant LEWANDOWSKI maintained documented compensated relationships through which foreign-aligned commercial interests obtained access to United States policymaking authority during the period in which defendant LEWANDOWSKI exercised that authority. The pattern alleged in this Indictment is not that defendant LEWANDOWSKI advanced the interests of a single foreign government; it is that defendant LEWANDOWSKI converted his proximity to executive power into a channel through which multiple foreign-aligned commercial and political interests obtained access to United States enforcement and policymaking authority, with personal financial benefit to defendant LEWANDOWSKI from each such channel.

435. The convergent architecture alleged elsewhere herein was further reinforced through the placement of personnel proximate to the Enterprise’s political-messaging and financial infrastructure into senior positions within the federal law-enforcement apparatus, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The personnel and financial relationships through which that integration occurred are alleged additionally created a conflict of interest between DHS and FBI which would later investigate criminal conduct of Enterprise participants as alleged herein.

436. The institutional relationship through which the federal-enforcement-personnel integration alleged at paragraph 242 was effectuated is documented through the Aventine Group / Palumbo / Lewandowski financial and professional nexus. MATTHEW PALUMBO operated The Aventine Group59, an Ohio-based political-consulting entity registered through a fictitious-name designation. PALUMBO and defendant LEWANDOWSKI served concurrently on the 2016 presidential campaign of DONALD J. TRUMP — defendant LEWANDOWSKI in the position of campaign manager until in or about June 2016, and PALUMBO in a campaign-adviser capacity during the same period. The 2016 campaign service established the institutional relationship through which the subsequent financial coordination alleged in this paragraph is documented.

437. During the period from in or about September 2022 through in or about May 2023, The Aventine Group received approximately ten separate payments from American Resolve PAC, a federal political committee for which defendant KEVIN BROGHAMMER served as treasurer and through which the financial network alleged in Section 6 was further administered. The payments to The Aventine Group during that period aggregated approximately $97,683 and included, among others:

a) $24,500 on or about September 11, 2022

b)$12,750 on or about September 11, 2022

c) $14,500 on or about September 27, 2022;

d)$19,000 on or about October 25, 2022

e) $10,000 on or about November 11, 2022

f) $2,000 on or about January 26, 2023;

g) $10,000 on or about February 6, 2023

h) $1,433 on or about February 6, 2023

i) $2,000 on or about March 24, 2023

j)$2,000 on or about May 25, 2023.

438.During the same period, separate disbursements from American Resolve PAC were directed to entities affiliated with defendant LEWANDOWSKI and to The Strategy Group operated by defendant YOHO. The contemporaneous receipt of sustained payments by The Aventine Group, by defendant LEWANDOWSKI-affiliated entities, and by The Strategy Group, from a single Enterprise-aligned political committee during a single operational period, is alleged as documentary evidence of the financial coordination through which the institutional relationship established on the 2016 TRUMP campaign was thereafter operationalized.

439.The placement of personnel proximate to this financial-coordination nexus into senior positions within the Federal Bureau of Investigation during the period relevant to this Indictment — including positions whose statutory duties encompassed matters in which defendant LEWANDOWSKI, the principals of The Strategy Group, and the Enterprise-aligned vendor network alleged throughout this Indictment held financial and operational interests — is alleged as the documentary completion of the federal-enforcement-personnel integration alleged elsewhere herein.

The Role of Independent Journalism in Preserving the Documentary Record

440. The factual record supporting the RAVNSBORG investigations into defendant NOEM, and supporting the broader investigative documentation alleged in this Indictment, was preserved in substantial part through the reporting of independent South Dakota journalists, including AUSTIN GOSS and the Dakota Scout, which documented defendant NOEM’s financial activity, travel patterns, and the institutional architecture surrounding the Office of the Governor during the period in which defendant LEWANDOWSKI exercised undeclared advisory authority over defendant NOEM. The state-level intimidation removed the official whose investigations would have publicly documented defendant NOEM’s misconduct before her elevation to federal office and would, in the ordinary course, have prevented that elevation.60

SECTION 9 — THE FREEDOM WORKS HERE PROCUREMENT AND TRADE-SECRET MISAPPROPRIATION

The Pre-RFP Coordination and the Steered Procurement

441. Beginning in or about late 2022 and continuing through in or about May 2023, defendant KRISTI NOEM, defendant COREY LEWANDOWSKI, and others, acting through the South Dakota Governor’s Office of Economic Development, caused the award of an approximately $5,000,000 state-funded workforce-marketing contract — designated “Freedom Works Here” — to GoWest Media, an Ohio-based entity controlled by BENJAMIN YOHO. The procurement was conducted through a sequence of pre-RFP coordination with the predetermined winning vendor, formal solicitation language substantially derived from materials supplied by that vendor in advance, misappropriation of the proprietary creative work product of a competing bidder, retaliatory removal of the state procurement official who refused to lend documentary cover to the directed outcome, and coordinated payment streams combining state taxpayer funds with undisclosed political contributions. The conduct is alleged with particularity in the paragraphs that follow.

442. In or about late 2022, and prior to the public issuance of any formal request for proposals for the “Freedom Works Here” campaign, representatives of the South Dakota Governor’s Office of Economic Development engaged in substantive, non-public communications with politically connected vendors who would later be designated as winning bidders. These communications occurred weeks before any formal solicitation was released and concerned campaign strategy, scope, and execution. The communications included BENJAMIN YOHO, Chief Executive Officer of The Strategy Group for Media, Inc., and officials from the political polling firm WPA Intelligence.

443.The proposal language submitted by the eventual awardees was materially identical, or substantially similar, to language thereafter incorporated into the official Request for Proposal. The solicitation process functioned to formalize a predetermined outcome rather than to solicit competitive bids.

The Eyewitness 7 Account of the Directed Outcome61

444. Eyewitness 7 served at the South Dakota Governor’s Office of Economic Development from on or about September 2022 through on or about May 2023. Eyewitness 7 has provided a first-hand account of the Freedom Works Here procurement process that materially corroborates the procurement-fraud and trade-secret-misappropriation conduct alleged herein.

445. Eyewitness 7 has stated that, in or about late December 2022, defendant NOEM and members of her senior staff discussed the creation of a national workforce-recruitment advertising campaign with an anticipated budget of approximately $5,000,000. According to Eyewitness 7, those discussions occurred outside their presence but were subsequently communicated to personnel within the Governor's Office of Economic Development.

446.Thereafter, in early 2023, the Office issued an initial Request for Proposal seeking messaging-research services relating to the planned campaign. Eyewitness 7 has stated that defendant YOHO was among the individuals who participated in, or otherwise performed work associated with, that preliminary research phase. Following completion of the research component, the Office issued a second Request for Proposal for development and execution of the national advertising campaign at the previously discussed budget level. The resulting contract was awarded to GoWest Media, an entity owned and controlled by defendant YOHO.

447. Eyewitness 7 has stated that “it was made clear” to them by two director-level colleagues and by his direct supervisors — Commissioner of Economic Development STEVE WESTRA and Deputy Commissioner CHRIS SCHILKEN — that defendant NOEM “wanted” YOHO’s company to win the contract. [REDACTED] conducted finalist interviews and proposal review without regard to the external direction. After the in-person interviews, Eyewitness 7 has stated, “it became clear and direct that I was expected to recommend GoWest Media.” Eyewitness 7 refused. When Eyewitness 7 offered, as an accommodation, simply not to transmit his recommendation by electronic mail, “it became clear that the goal was to have cover for the administration to say, ‘It was recommended to hire them.’”

448. The contract with GoWest Media was executed on or about April 13, 2023. The procurement process described by Eyewitness 7— in which the same vendor participated in both the preliminary research phase and the subsequent execution phase, and in which the official competitive-review process was conducted under direction toward a predetermined vendor outcome — is alleged herein as evidence that the procurement was structured to create documentary justification for a vendor selection that had been directed in advance, while preserving the outward appearance of independent competitive review.

The Removal of Eyewitness 7

449. Within days of the execution of the GoWest Media contract, and notwithstanding Eyewitness 7’s refusal to recommend GoWest for the award, Eyewitness 7 was directed to resign. The initial justification provided to Eyewitness 7 referenced an Attorney General investigation unrelated to Eyewitness 7’s official duties and concerning conduct previously characterized by supervisors as ill-intentioned. The stated basis for the action thereafter shifted to an alleged “lack of confidence” attributed to peer directors who possessed no supervisory authority over .

450.Eyewitness 7 recorded one of the calls in which the revised justification was conveyed. When Eyewitness 7 proposed accepting employment with Design Sensory, the Tennessee-based firm that had managed an earlier iteration of state marketing work, Deputy Commissioner SCHILKEN invoked a South Dakota statutory restriction prohibiting state employees from accepting employment with state contractors within one year of separation from state service.

451.Upon information and belief, the same restriction was not applied during the relevant period to Enterprise-aligned principals appointed to state positions while maintaining existing financial relationships with state-affiliated entities, as alleged elsewhere in this Indictment.

452.Eyewitness 7 was thereafter terminated by written notice stating no reason. The Freedom Works Here campaign entered public launch shortly thereafter. The removal of Eyewitness 7 for refusing to lend the procedural cover the Enterprise required for a predetermined contract award replicated the retaliatory-removal method alleged with respect to SHERRY BREN a0, STEPHANY BAWEK , and RENAE RANDALL. The consistency of the method across multiple state agencies and multiple categories of resisting officials establishes the Enterprise’s documented practice of removing career and professional personnel whose continued performance of office threatened predetermined Enterprise outcomes.

The Misappropriation of Lawrence & Schiller’s Creative Concept

453. During the formal evaluation phase of the Freedom Works Here procurement, state officials permitted the preferred vendor to access, review, or otherwise benefit from competing proposals submitted by other bidders, including the firm Lawrence & Schiller. As a result, proprietary concepts, creative frameworks, and strategic materials submitted by Lawrence & Schiller in confidence as part of the competitive bid were appropriated and incorporated into final campaign deliverables produced by GoWest Media without authorization, attribution, or compensation. Lawrence & Schiller had developed a proprietary creative concept for workforce recruitment, including the visual execution depicting defendant NOEM in the role of a skilled worker. The concept derived independent economic value from its novelty and from the firm’s investment of creative expertise. The concept was submitted confidentially as part of a competitive bid, in a context paradigmatic for trade-secret protection under federal law.

454. The unauthorized appropriation of Lawrence & Schiller’s confidential creative concept, by state officials acting in concert with the predetermined winning vendor, and for the financial and political benefit of Enterprise participants, constitutes misappropriation of a trade secret in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1832 and 1836. Trade-secret misappropriation committed for financial gain is a predicate racketeering act under 18 U.S.C. § 1961(1).

The Trade-Name Appropriation

455. Eyewitness 962, a private business operator with documented prior use of a business name materially identical to the name subsequently adopted by the state-funded “Freedom Works Here” campaign, has provided to investigators first-hand information concerning the appropriation of the trade name. Eyewitness 9’s identity and specific role are not separately alleged in this Indictment in order to preserve the integrity of ongoing investigative activity. The substantive content of Eyewitness 9’s account, as set forth in the paragraphs that follow, is alleged on the basis of Eyewitness 9’s account, corroborated by the documentary record of pre-launch correspondence preserved by Eyewitness 9.

456. Eyewitness 9 has stated that, during the period preceding the April 13, 2023 launch of the “Freedom Works Here” campaign, Eyewitness 9 operated a business under a name materially identical to the name subsequently appropriated by the campaign and corresponded with the South Dakota Governor’s Office and the South Dakota Legislature under that business name during the relevant pre-launch period. Eyewitness 9 retains the documentary record of that correspondence.

457. The South Dakota Governor’s Office and the South Dakota Legislature received the pre-launch correspondence described in paragraph 257 and were thereby on notice of Eyewitness 9’s prior use of the name. The campaign nonetheless adopted the name without authorization from Eyewitness 9 and without compensation to Eyewitness 9. The appropriation of a trade name in active prior use by an independent party, after documented notice of that prior use through correspondence directed to the very state offices subsequently overseeing the appropriating campaign, constitutes an additional layer of misappropriation distinct from and additional to the Lawrence & Schiller creative-concept misappropriation alleged in paragraphs 253 through 255.

The Coordinated Payment Architecture

458. Concurrent with the misappropriation conduct alleged in paragraphs 253 through 258, payments flowed in coordinated streams in furtherance of the same campaign. South Dakota taxpayer funds were directed through the Future Fund to GoWest Media and The Strategy Group for Media, Inc. for production and media buys. Dark-money contributions were directed through the AMERICAN RESOLVE 527 to The Strategy Group for “copyright and other payments” supporting the same campaign. Approximately $130,000 was additionally directed from the same state marketing budget to a NASCAR vehicle wrap featuring defendant NOEM.

459. Approximately $25,000 was directed from GoWest Media to defendant MADISON SHEAHAN, then serving in defendant NOEM’s gubernatorial political operation, during the period in which The Strategy Group and GoWest Media were performing the Freedom Works Here campaign. The payment is documented in publicly available federal financial disclosures and is alleged with particularity in connection with the credential-laundering trajectory of defendant SHEAHAN in Section 10 below.63

460. The combined structure converted a state workforce-recruitment procurement into a coordinated political-branding vehicle for defendant NOEM, funded simultaneously by state taxpayers and by undisclosed political donors, with portions of the proceeds flowing to Enterprise participants and to political-operation personnel.

The Zero-Placement Outcome and the Pretextual Character of the Program

461. Notwithstanding the substantial state expenditure, the coordinated payment architecture elsewhere, and the multi-year duration of the “Freedom Works Here” campaign, the campaign produced no documented placement of out-of-state workforce candidates into South Dakota employment. The publicly stated purpose of the program — to recruit out-of-state professionals into South Dakota employment — was not achieved in any documented respect during the relevant period.

462.A workforce-recruitment program that, after substantial state expenditure and multi-year operation, produced no documented placements is not, in operational substance, a workforce-recruitment program. The “Freedom Works Here” campaign was, in operational substance, a vehicle for the taxpayer-funded production of media content featuring defendant NOEM during the period preceding her federal selection as Secretary of Homeland Security.

463.The structure converted state expenditure into the equivalent of an in-kind political contribution to defendant NOEM’s national political profile, funded through state public funds rather than through disclosed political contributions, and routed through vendors with documented relationships to Enterprise principals.

The Documentary Record and the Pattern

464. The pre-RFP coordination alleged above is documented in records obtained and published by Sioux Falls Live, which established that YOHO and WPA Intelligence pitched the South Dakota Governor’s Office of Economic Development on Freedom Works Here messaging in the weeks following the 2022 election, that the language of those proposals was nearly identical to the language thereafter published in the official Request for Proposal issued on or about January 10, 2023, and that the messaging-research contract was awarded to WPA for approximately $100,000.

465. WPA Intelligence was operated at the time of the award by founder CHRIS WILSON, who was terminated on or about December 5, 2024, after two external audits confirmed that he had used WPA funds for personal expenses including vacations and household personnel. His termination followed by months the termination and indictment of WPA’s Chief Financial Officer on embezzlement charges. The contemporaneous internal record of WPA Intelligence — the vendor awarded the messaging-research contract that produced language thereafter incorporated into the campaign-execution RFP — reflects an operating environment characterized by financial misconduct at multiple levels of the firm’s leadership.

466. The conduct alleged in this Section — including the directed procurement process, the misappropriation of competing bidders’ proprietary materials, the coordinated vendor-payment structure, and the absence of measurable workforce-placement results — was not subjected to state prosecutorial review during defendant NOEM’s gubernatorial tenure or during the subsequent tenure of defendant JACKLEY as Attorney General. The absence of state enforcement is alleged herein as evidence of the two-mechanism non-enforcement.

467. The state-level method documented in this Section was thereafter redeployed at the federal level. The Freedom Works Here procurement architecture — pre-RFP coordination with a politically connected vendor, formal solicitation structured to produce documentary cover for the predetermined outcome, misappropriation of competing bidders’ proprietary work product, retaliatory removal of officials who refused to lend the procedural cover the Enterprise required, and the deployment of the resulting deliverable in service of an Enterprise participant’s political profile — was replicated through the $220,000,000 Department of Homeland Security advertising contracts awarded to Safe America Media, LLC and People Who Think, LLC, as alleged with particularity in paragraphs [Section 14 — Federal Procurement Corruption]. The state-level procurement of a $5,000,000 workforce-marketing contract through a directed outcome and the federal-level procurement of a $220,000,000 advertising contract through a directed outcome are alleged not as discrete incidents but as the deliberate replication of the same procurement-corruption method across two jurisdictions, two scales of public expenditure, and two administrations of governmental authority by the same network of Enterprise-aligned vendors, principals, and approving officials.

468. The vendor network alleged in this Section — comprising GoWest Media, The Strategy Group for Media, Inc., and the affiliated production and media-buy infrastructure operating under YOHO’s executive authority — continued to receive coordinated payment streams from Enterprise-aligned principals during the federal phase alleged in the sections that follow. As alleged elsewhere herein, the same vendor architecture was retained, through subcontract, in connection with the production of a federally produced video featuring U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commander GREGORY BOVINO at Mount Rushmore National Memorial during the period preceding BOVINO’s removal from operational command. The continuity of the vendor architecture across the state-level Freedom Works Here procurement alleged in this Section and the federal-level BOVINO production is alleged not as coincidence of vendor selection, but as the deliberate maintenance of a single Enterprise-aligned vendor circuit across the state-to-federal transition of Enterprise-controlled governmental authority

469.The conduct alleged in this Section and the broader procurement-corruption pattern alleged in this Indictment produced commercial benefit beyond the directly named Enterprise participants. Throughout the period relevant to this Indictment, state expenditure, federal expenditure routed through state intermediaries, and federally produced media content were directed in patterns that conferred sustained commercial benefit upon South Dakota-based industries including, among others, lodging, hospitality, event-production, and ancillary tourism-related commerce. The location-selection patterns underlying that conferral are alleged elsewhere herein.

SECTION 10 — THE CREDENTIAL-LAUNDERING METHOD AT FEDERAL SCALE

The Method and Its Operational Logic

470.The credential-laundering method alleged elsewhere herein—which first appeared through the 2020 manipulation of the South Dakota Appraiser Certification Program for the benefit of KASSIDY PETERS, was refined through the 2021 placement of KYLE PETERS within the South Dakota Governor’s Office of Economic Development as alleged in paragraphs 199 through 200, and was applied to commercial procurement through the 2023 Freedom Works Here process alleged in Section 9—was thereafter executed at federal scale through a coordinated sequence of personnel placements. The federal-scale execution alleged herein is not alleged as a series of independent employment decisions, but as the continuation of a recurring placement method operating through the personnel-vetting infrastructure of Project 2025 alleged elsewhere in this Indictment.

471.The method operated through three stages. First, politically connected individuals lacking comparable subject-matter, statutory, or administrative qualifications were placed into intermediate governmental, quasi-governmental, or politically aligned positions. Second, those positions were used to generate the appearance of relevant institutional experience through publicly funded entities, directed state expenditures, politically aligned employment, and related credential-building mechanisms. Third, the resulting credentials were used to support appointment to positions of substantial federal authority.

472.The federal-scale execution of the method encompassed, among other placements, the 2023 appointment of defendant LUKE LINDBERG to the state-funded South Dakota Trade entity, his subsequent appointment as Under Secretary of Agriculture for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs, and his 2026 nomination to serve as Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme; the 2025 appointment of defendant MADISON SHEAHAN, then twenty-eight years old, to operational leadership within U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement; the 2025 appointment of defendant TRICIA McLAUGHLIN to lead Department of Homeland Security public affairs; and the subordinate placements alleged in Subsection F below.

Defendant LINDBERG and the South Dakota Trade Credential-Manufacturing Vehicle

473. Defendant LUKE LINDBERG is the son-in-law of defendant JOHN THUNE. Prior to in or about 2023, defendant LINDBERG held no federal trade-policy experience, no documented expertise in international agricultural markets, and no statutory qualifications for the senior federal trade position to which he was subsequently appointed.

474.In or about 2022, the South Dakota Governor’s Office of Economic Development — the same state agency through which the Freedom Works Here procurement alleged in Section 9 was directed, the same agency through which KYLE PETERS was placed and credentialed as alleged in paragraphs 199 through 200, and the agency operating under defendant NOEM’s executive authority — directed approximately $1,600,000 in public funds to establish and capitalize South Dakota Trade, a quasi-governmental entity organized for the publicly stated purpose of promoting South Dakota exports.

475. In or about 2023, defendant LINDBERG was appointed President and Chief Executive Officer of South Dakota Trade. Defendant LINDBERG held the position for the period preceding his federal appointment. During that tenure, the position produced the appearance of relevant trade-policy experience — title, public profile, attendance at international trade events, and the documentary record of executive authority over an organization carrying the State of South Dakota’s name — without producing any documented federal trade-policy work product, treaty-negotiation experience, agricultural-market expertise, or training in the substantive federal statutory and regulatory framework governing United States trade.

476. The publicly funded capitalization of South Dakota Trade occurred in temporal proximity to defendant LINDBERG’s appointment as its principal officer and preceded defendant LINDBERG’s subsequent elevation to federal trade authority. The sequence is alleged herein as evidence of the Enterprise’s method of using state-funded entities to generate institutional credentials for politically connected personnel lacking comparable prior federal subject-matter experience.

477. On or about July 11, 2025, the United States Senate confirmed defendant LINDBERG as Under Secretary of Agriculture for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs by a vote of 52 to 44. In the position, defendant LINDBERG exercised statutory authority over United States agricultural trade policy, including responsibility for the negotiation and implementation of bilateral and multilateral agricultural trade agreements; the supervision of the Foreign Agricultural Service; the determination of federal policy concerning agricultural exports and imports; and the representation of the United States in agricultural-trade and food-security forums.64

478. On or about February 2026, defendant LINDBERG was nominated by President TRUMP to the executive directorship of the United Nations World Food Programme — the principal United Nations agency responsible for emergency food assistance and food security in conflict zones, displacement settings, and famine-affected regions. The position is among the most consequential in the international humanitarian system. The nomination occurred approximately seven months after defendant LINDBERG’s confirmation to the Under Secretary position, approximately three years after his appointment to South Dakota Trade, and approximately five years after the publicly funded establishment of that state entity.

479. During the period of defendant LINDBERG’s federal service, defendant THUNE advanced through official United States Senate channels the foreign-policy frameworks alleged in Section 4 and paragraph 153 herein. At the same time, defendant LINDBERG served as Under Secretary of Agriculture for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs and was subsequently nominated to lead the United Nations World Food Programme.

480. The simultaneous exercise by the Senate Majority Leader and his son-in-law of authority affecting United States agricultural trade policy, foreign-agricultural policy, congressional appropriations, and international food-security operations occurred without contemporaneous public disclosure of the conflict-of-interest concerns the overlapping roles created.

481. The financial-architecture predicate documented at paragraph 153(h) — LEON RACHEL CORPORATION’s $500,000 contribution to New Heights for America, the federal political committee controlled by defendant THUNE — operated within the same fourteen-month period in which defendant LINDBERG’s federal appointment was advanced. The simultaneous flow of Enterprise-routed contributions through the shell-corporation architecture alleged in Section 6 to a political committee controlled by the Senate Majority Leader whose son-in-law was being elevated through the credential-laundering method is alleged as documented evidence of the operational integration of the Enterprise’s financial-routing infrastructure with its federal-credential-laundering pipeline.

Defendant SHEAHAN and the Federal Law-Enforcement Command Placement

482.Defendant MADISON SHEAHAN originated within the same Ohio political network through which Enterprise participants and affiliates including defendant COREY LEWANDOWSKI, MATT BORGES, ROBERT PADUCHIK, and associated Republican Party of Ohio operatives maintained longstanding political and operational relationships. Defendant SHEAHAN thereafter entered the South Dakota political operation of defendant NOEM, where she served in communications and political-operations roles during the period in which the South Dakota apparatus became integrated into the broader Enterprise structure alleged throughout this Indictment.

483.During the same period, defendant SHEAHAN became financially connected to the Enterprise-aligned vendor and communications network through the Freedom Works Here operation alleged elsewhere herein. Publicly available financial-disclosure records reflect approximately $25,000 in compensation from GoWest Media to defendant SHEAHAN during the period in which GoWest Media and affiliated entities were performing work associated with the Freedom Works Here campaign. The payment is alleged not as a standalone act of wrongdoing, but as documentary evidence of defendant SHEAHAN’s integration into the same South Dakota–Ohio political, vendor, and communications network through which Enterprise personnel, messaging operations, and financial relationships were coordinated.

484.Records maintained by the Stanley County Register of Deeds65 reflect that, in or about 2022, defendant SHEAHAN acquired residential property located at 133 Islay Avenue in Fort Pierre, South Dakota. The transaction occurred during the period in which defendant SHEAHAN was advancing through the South Dakota political apparatus described throughout this investigation. The available records identify TOBY MORRIS as a participant in the transaction. At the time, MORRIS had previously served within the Governor’s Office of Economic Development and was publicly associated with economic-development initiatives and tax-increment-financing projects throughout South Dakota, including projects involving individuals and entities discussed elsewhere herein.

485.Subsequent financial disclosures filed by defendant SHEAHAN in the State of Louisiana identified the Fort Pierre property as an asset. The disclosures reviewed during this investigation did not identify a corresponding liability associated with the property. The significance of the transaction, as alleged herein, arises from its placement within the broader chronology of relationships, appointments, financial disclosures, and governmental positions examined throughout this Section.

486.MORRIS declined to comment regarding the nature of the transaction when contacted during the course of this investigation.66

487.The Enterpris’e method of institutional control extended beyond appointments. While serving as Louisiana Attorney General, LANDRY sued The Advocate reporter ANDREA GALLO after she requested public records concerning sexual-harassment complaints against a senior official in his office. Rather than produce or formally withhold the records through the ordinary statutory process, LANDRY initiated litigation naming the requesting journalist as a defendant. Press-freedom organizations characterized the action as an attempt to deter reporting and public-records scrutiny.

488.In or about 2023, LANDRY’s office also sought extensive federal records identifying communications among the Environmental Protection Agency, environmental-justice advocates, attorneys, journalists, and residents of predominantly Black communities in Louisiana’s industrial corridor. The requests arose during an EPA civil-rights investigation into alleged racial disparities in state environmental regulation. Critics characterized the requests and resulting litigation as an effort to identify and intimidate residents, advocates, and journalists communicating with federal regulators. Those characterizations are alleged as attributed reporting, not as adjudicated findings concerning LANDRY’s intent.

489.The personnel network that subsequently entered Louisiana was already connected to LANDRY’s political operation. During LANDRY’s 2023 gubernatorial campaign, his campaign and an affiliated political committee retained defendant LEWANDOWSKI as a political adviser, paying him approximately $100,000 and reimbursing additional travel expenses. The campaign also employed PEOPLE WHO THINK LLC, the Louisiana political-consulting firm operated by JAY CONNAUGHTON. After LANDRY’s election, defendant LEWANDOWSKI publicly identified CONNAUGHTON as a member of the team that helped elect him. The records establish a direct professional relationship among LANDRY, LEWANDOWSKI, and CONNAUGHTON before LANDRY assumed executive authority; standing alone, they do not establish that either consultant controlled his subsequent appointments.

490.After assuming office in or about 2024, LANDRY appointed defendant MADISON SHEAHAN Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. Approximately twenty-seven years old, SHEAHAN had previously worked within the NOEM political organization in South Dakota but possessed no documented experience in wildlife or fisheries management, natural-resources administration, federal immigration enforcement, or command of a large law-enforcement organization. The appointment nevertheless placed her over a state department exercising regulatory, administrative, and commissioned law-enforcement authority.

491.The Rooster, citing multiple sources, subsequently reported that defendant LEWANDOWSKI devised or facilitated SHEAHAN’s appointment. That account is alleged as attributed reporting, not as an adjudicated finding. The documented chronology independently establishes that a member of the NOEM political network entered an administration whose successful campaign had retained both LEWANDOWSKI and CONNAUGHTON.

492.The appointment supplied the intermediary executive credentialing stage alleged throughout this Indictment. Although SHEAHAN lacked documented immigration-law training, federal statutory-administration experience, or command responsibility over a large federal enforcement organization, the Louisiana position supplied an executive-government credential and placed her over commissioned officers. That experience immediately preceded her elevation into federal immigration authority.

493.LANDRY simultaneously expanded the enforcement authority surrounding that appointment. In 2024, he signed Act 259, making it a criminal offense—punishable by a fine of up to $500, imprisonment for up to sixty days, or both—to remain within twenty-five feet of a law-enforcement officer after being ordered to retreat. The statute could reach journalists, witnesses, and members of the public attempting to observe or record police operations. On or about January 31, 2025, a federal court enjoined its enforcement, concluding that the law was unconstitutionally vague and conferred standardless discretion upon individual officers to transform otherwise lawful proximity into a criminal offense. The statute therefore supplied a potential mechanism for restricting observation and documentation of operations conducted through LANDRY’s expanded state-law-enforcement apparatus.

494.The authority exercised under SHEAHAN’s leadership extended beyond the Department’s traditional wildlife and fisheries functions. Beginning in or about October 2024, commissioned Department officers participated with the Louisiana State Police in LANDRY-directed operations clearing homeless encampments in New Orleans. During the January 2025 phase of the operation, officers relocated more than one hundred unhoused residents to a state-operated Transition Center housed in a former industrial warehouse approximately seven miles from downtown. Court filings alleged that some residents were threatened with detention or arrest, that personal property was destroyed or lost, and that officers compelled residents to board transportation to the facility. Those allegations were contested and are alleged herein as claims contained in the resulting litigation, not as adjudicated findings.

495.The Department’s participation was operational rather than incidental. According to subsequent reporting, approximately twelve Department officers confronted one plaintiff during the January operation. During SHEAHAN’s tenure, the Department also established a Special Operations Group trained by the Louisiana State Police and deployed in connection with major public events, including the Super Bowl. Although wildlife-and-fisheries officers ordinarily enforced hunting, fishing, and boating laws, the Department did not publicly explain why its officers had been assigned to relocate unhoused New Orleans residents.

496.The Louisiana operation also intersected with the federal officials who subsequently elevated SHEAHAN. According to The Appeal, citing a local official, NOEM visited the Transition Center in or about February 2025 and joined LANDRY and SHEAHAN for a briefing concerning Super Bowl security. DHS did not confirm the reported warehouse visit. On or about March 10, 2025, approximately one month after that briefing, SHEAHAN was selected as Deputy Director of United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”). The appointment placed her in the senior leadership of a federal law-enforcement agency employing approximately 20,000 personnel and later responsible for operations during which RENÉE NICOLE MACKLIN GOOD and ALEX JEFFREY PRETTI were killed. The position required no Senate confirmation. At the time, SHEAHAN possessed no documented federal immigration-enforcement experience, federal law-enforcement certification, graduate training in immigration law, or command experience over federal personnel.

497.The Louisiana consulting network later reappeared inside the Department of Homeland Security. After NOEM became Secretary and defendant LEWANDOWSKI emerged as an influential adviser concerning departmental personnel, access, and contracting, DHS selected CONNAUGHTON’s PEOPLE WHO THINK LLC to participate in a substantial federal advertising campaign. The Associated Press reported that DHS accelerated the procurement by invoking emergency authority and identified CONNAUGHTON’s earlier work with LEWANDOWSKI on LANDRY’s 2023 campaign. Without additional evidence, the transaction is not alleged as proof that LEWANDOWSKI selected the contractor. Its relevance is the recurrence inside DHS of the same consulting relationship previously documented in LANDRY’s Louisiana campaign.

498.Defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s reported DHS influence also extended to private technology contractors. According to The Wall Street Journal, LEWANDOWSKI arranged a departmental tour for PALANTIR executives, urged DHS officials to provide the company additional work, and advised NOEM on contracts despite holding no formal departmental leadership position. Weeks later, DHS awarded PALANTIR approximately $29.9 million in additional work under an existing contract involving immigration targeting, enforcement, and self-deportation tracking. The sequence is alleged as evidence of access and institutional influence, not, without further evidence, as proof that LEWANDOWSKI caused or unlawfully procured the award.

499.The resulting chronology—SHEAHAN’s progression from the Ohio political apparatus into NOEM’s South Dakota operation, through the GoWest Media and Freedom Works Here network, into LANDRY’s Louisiana cabinet, and finally into ICE leadership—documents her successive elevation through positions of increasing governmental authority. The progression is alleged as evidence of the Enterprise’s use of intermediary placements to supply executive credentials and facilitate entry into positions of federal operational significance.

500.On or about January 15, 2026—approximately eight days after the killing of RENÉE NICOLE MACKLIN GOOD and approximately nine days before the killing of ALEX JEFFREY PRETTI—defendant SHEAHAN announced her departure from ICE to commence a campaign for the United States House of Representatives from Ohio’s 9th Congressional District against incumbent Representative MARCY KAPTUR.

501.The transition from executive leadership within a federal law-enforcement agency directly into candidacy for federal elective office is alleged as further evidence of the fluid movement of Enterprise-affiliated personnel between governmental authority, political operations, and electoral activity. The chronology is further relevant because it demonstrates the continued intersection of federal institutional power and the political network alleged throughout this Indictment.

502.Defendant SHEAHAN’s departure from ICE occurred during the same period in which the killings of GOOD and PRETTI were the subject of public scrutiny, media attention, and law-enforcement review.

503.The proximity of defendant SHEAHAN’s departure to the departures of defendants McLAUGHLIN, NOEM, and LEWANDOWSKI alleged in Section 17 is relevant to the chronology examined throughout this Indictment.

504. Considered together, these personnel movements form part of the broader pattern of transitions, departures, and reassignments analyzed herein as evidence of the operational continuity and institutional relationships underlying the Enterprise’s federal-phase activities.

505.Louisiana later codified the enforcement framework. On or about June 9, 2026, LANDRY signed House Bill 211, making unauthorized public camping punishable by a fine of up to $500, imprisonment for up to six months, or both. The National Homelessness Law Center and its Housing Not Handcuffs campaign identified the legislation as a Louisiana version of model policies promoted by the CICERO INSTITUTE and reported that CICERO supported the bill. CICERO was founded by JOE LONSDALE, a co-founder of PALANTIR. That institutional relationship is alleged as evidence of policy proximity, not as proof that PALANTIR drafted the legislation or participated in Louisiana’s earlier enforcement operations.

Figure below is offered as demonstrative evidence of the summary of the personnel-progression sequence alleged in this Section concerning defendant MADISON SHEAHAN. The sequence reflects the Enterprise’s documented credential-laundering method through which politically aligned personnel originating within the Ohio–South Dakota operational network were routed through intermediary governmental and vendor-affiliated positions prior to rapid elevation into federal operational authority.

Defendant McLAUGHLIN and the Communications-Apparatus Placement

506.Defendant TRICIA McLAUGHLIN’s professional background prior to her federal appointment consisted of political communications and political-campaign positions, including, in or about 2024, service as senior communications adviser to the presidential campaign of VIVEK RAMASWAMY. Following the conclusion of the RAMASWAMY campaign, defendant McLAUGHLIN was placed into the position of Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Public Affairs — the position exercising authority over all official Department of Homeland Security communications, press relations, and public-facing institutional messaging — without documented prior federal communications experience, federal-agency administration experience, or statutory communications credentials.

507.The Assistant Secretary position administered the Department's official communications apparatus, including public attribution, press coordination, and institutional messaging concerning enforcement operations. The simultaneous placement of defendant SHEAHAN into operational authority at ICE and defendant McLAUGHLIN into authority over Department communications established the dual-command structure through which enforcement actions and their public characterization were coordinated during the period relevant to this Indictment. The substantive communications administered by defendant McLAUGHLIN are alleged with particularity in Section 15; the significance of her placement is alleged herein as part of the credential-laundering method.

508. On or about February 17, 2026, defendant McLAUGHLIN publicly announced her departure from the Department of Homeland Security. Independent reporting established that defendant McLAUGHLIN’s departure had been planned for in or about December 2025 but was delayed because of the killings of GOOD and PRETTI in January 2026 and the consequent public scrutiny of the Department’s communications apparatus. The delay of defendant McLAUGHLIN’s departure to permit her administration of the official communications regarding the GOOD and PRETTI killings, followed by departure once the immediate public-scrutiny period had passed, is consistent with the operational coordination alleged in Section 17.

Defendants NOEM and LEWANDOWSKI as the Apex of the Federal-Scale Method

509. The credential-laundering method alleged in this Section operated under the executive authority of defendant NOEM as Secretary of Homeland Security and under the extra-statutory operational authority of defendant LEWANDOWSKI alleged in Section 13. Defendant NOEM herself entered federal service through the same method. Her professional preparation for command of the Department of Homeland Security consisted of South Dakota agricultural and ranching enterprises, four terms in the United States House of Representatives, and one term as Governor of South Dakota — during which the conduct alleged in Sections 7, 8, and 9 occurred. Defendant NOEM held no documented experience in federal law-enforcement administration, immigration policy, transportation security, cybersecurity, counterterrorism, emergency management, or any of the principal mission areas of the Department of Homeland Security at the time of her confirmation on or about January 25, 2025.

510. Defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s professional background, as alleged with particularity in Section 5, consisted of campaign management, political consulting, and undisclosed lobbying activity on behalf of corporate interests including FirstEnergy Corp. Defendant LEWANDOWSKI held no federal law-enforcement credentials, no national-security credentials, no statutory federal-administrative qualifications, and no Senate confirmation to any position. Notwithstanding the absence of any statutory qualification or confirmation, defendant LEWANDOWSKI exercised de facto operational control over federal contracting, personnel, and enforcement decisions within the Department of Homeland Security as alleged in paragraph 2 and as alleged with particularity in Section 13.

511. The credential-laundering method alleged in this Section was not, therefore, a method through which subordinate Enterprise participants were elevated to positions for which they were unqualified while qualified principals supervised their conduct. The method operated at every level of the Enterprise’s federal-phase command structure. The apex principals — defendants NOEM and LEWANDOWSKI — were themselves the products of the same method, applied at the most senior levels of federal authority. The subordinate placements alleged in this Section replicated, at lower levels of the federal hierarchy, the qualification deficit that characterized the Enterprise’s federal-phase command structure as a whole.

Subordinate Federal Placements

512. The credential-laundering method was applied through additional placements at subordinate levels of federal authority, including the following:

a) CAMERON HAMILTON was appointed Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. HAMILTON’s professional background consisted of military and political-staff service rather than statutory emergency-management administration. The placement vested operational authority over federal disaster response in a principal whose prior experience did not include the administration of large-scale federal emergency-management operations of the character FEMA conducts.

b) PETE HEGSETH, principally alleged in this Indictment in connection with Department of Defense conduct outside the scope of this Section, exemplified the same method at a separate federal department. HEGSETH was confirmed as Secretary of Defense on or about January 24, 2025, by a tie-breaking vote of the Vice President, notwithstanding his lack of documented experience in the administration of any organization of comparable scale to the Department of Defense

c) CAMERON VOORHIES was placed into the Federal Emergency Management Agency in a senior advisory capacity. VOORHIES’s professional background consisted of political-operations and Republican-party-coordination work, including service in the South Dakota political infrastructure alleged in Section 1.

513. The placement constituted the importation of a state-political-operations professional into federal emergency-management administration without documented emergency-management credentials. SCOTT MAZZARA was placed into a senior position within U.S. Customs and Border Protection. MAZZARA’s background, like that of the principals above, consisted of political and political-adjacent positions rather than federal customs, immigration, or border-enforcement statutory credentials.

514.The placements alleged in this paragraph are pleaded as additional instances of the credential-laundering method documented above and as the operational pattern under which Enterprise-aligned but professionally unqualified personnel were installed across the federal-enforcement and emergency-management apparatus during the relevant period.

The Personnel-Database Predicate and the Documentary Pattern

515. The placements alleged in this Section were facilitated through the Project 2025 personnel-vetting database alleged elsewhere. The publicly stated purpose of the database was to identify, and pre-vet ideologically aligned candidates for federal positions. The functional effect of the database, as documented through the placements alleged in this Section, was the systematic substitution of political and ideological alignment for the statutory qualifications, professional credentials, and institutional experience the affected positions had previously required.

516. The pattern of placements alleged in this Section is incompatible with the ordinary administration of federal personnel authority across multiple agencies, multiple confirmation pathways, and multiple subject-matter portfolios. It is consistent only with the coordinated execution of a documented method, originated and validated at the state level through the conduct alleged in Sections 7 and 9, replicated at federal scale through the personnel infrastructure of Project 2025, and operationally administered through the apex authority of defendants NOEM and LEWANDOWSKI.

517. The consequences of the credential-laundering method for the conduct of federal law-enforcement authority during the period relevant to this Indictment — including the operational environment in which the killings of GOOD and PRETTI occurred — are alleged with particularity in Sections 13 through 16 below.

SECTION 11 — THE PRE-INVESTIGATIVE ATTRIBUTION METHOD: THE CONVERSION OF FEDERAL LAW-ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITY INTO AN INSTRUMENT OF EXTRAJUDICIAL ADJUDICATION

The Method

518. Beginning in or about 2019 and continuing through the period relevant to this Indictment, the Enterprise developed and deployed a documented method through which the institutional credibility of federal and state law-enforcement authority was used to adjudicate guilt against identified individuals in advance of, in lieu of, and frequently in direct contradiction to the evidentiary findings of competent investigative authorities. The method consisted of three operational components, deployed in sequence and replicated across successive enforcement incidents:

a) The dissemination, within hours of an enforcement event, of materially false or unsupported public characterizations attributing serious criminal conduct to the affected individuals — most commonly characterizations of terrorism, cartel affiliation, gang membership, organized criminal activity, or trafficking — issued through official communications channels and aligned media platforms with the presumptive credibility of governmental source attribution;

b) The deployment of those characterizations as the public predicate for the enforcement action that had already occurred or that was thereafter taken — converting governmental communications authority into a mechanism for retroactive legitimation of conduct lacking lawful predicate, rather than for accurate reporting of conduct supported by investigative findings; and

c) The continued public maintenance of the characterizations after they had been contradicted by video evidence, by the findings of competent investigative authorities, by judicial determinations, or by independent factual review — with no public retraction, no public correction, and no acknowledgment that the characterizations had been materially false at the time of dissemination.

519.The method inverted the ordinary relationship between law-enforcement evidence and public attribution. Rather than permitting investigative findings to determine public conclusions, the method alleged herein publicly attributed guilt before the development of evidence and maintained those attributions even after they had been contradicted by investigative findings, judicial determinations, or independent factual review. Through the communications apparatus alleged in Sections 10 and 15, law-enforcement authority was thereby used as an instrument of extrajudicial public adjudication rather than investigative fact-finding.

520.The method was first developed at the state level through the conduct alleged in Subsection B and was thereafter replicated through the federal enforcement incidents alleged in Subsections C through G. The sequence is alleged not as a series of independent attribution decisions, but as the continued deployment of a recurring operational method through the communications authority of defendants NOEM and McLAUGHLIN.

The Merrival State-Level Template

521.The state-level origin of the pre-investigative attribution method is documented in the matter of WILLIE MERRIVAL. In or about 2024, MERRIVAL, a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, was publicly identified by defendant NOEM, in her official capacity as Governor of South Dakota, as the perpetrator of a homicide before the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation had completed its investigation, before any charging document had been filed, and before any evidentiary determination had been made by a competent investigative authority. Defendant NOEM disseminated the attribution through the official communications channels of the Office of the Governor.

522.The attribution was subsequently contradicted by the findings of the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation. No public retraction or correction followed. The attribution remained in the public record as an official gubernatorial determination notwithstanding the subsequent investigative findings. The MERRIVAL matter established three features later replicated at federal scale: the use of official executive-branch communications to confer governmental credibility upon unsupported attributions; the targeting of members of identified ethnic or demographic communities; and the maintenance of those attributions after they had been contradicted by the investigative record.

523. The MERRIVAL state template was developed during the period in which defendant NOEM exercised executive authority over the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation, the Office of the Attorney General as administered by defendant JACKLEY alleged in Section 8, and the official communications apparatus of the Office of the Governor. The same executive authority structure — communications office controlled by the principal whose enforcement decisions the attribution was deployed to legitimate — was thereafter replicated at federal scale through the dual placement of defendants SHEAHAN and McLAUGHLIN alleged elsewhere herein.

The Abrego Garcia Matter and the Federal-Scale Activation of the Method

524. On or about March 2025, federal immigration-enforcement agents acting under the operational authority structure alleged in Sections 10 and 13 caused KILMAR ARMANDO ABREGO GARCIA, a Salvadoran national lawfully present in the United States under a 2019 immigration court order specifically prohibiting his removal to El Salvador, to be deported to El Salvador and confined in the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (”CECOT”), a maximum-security facility operated by the Government of El Salvador.

525. Within hours of the deportation, the Department of Homeland Security, acting through the communications apparatus administered by defendant McLAUGHLIN, publicly characterized ABREGO GARCIA as a member of the MS-13 transnational criminal organization. The characterization was disseminated through official Department channels, through aligned media platforms, and through the personal communications of senior administration officials. No evidentiary foundation for the MS-13 attribution was contemporaneously disclosed.

526. The attribution was contradicted by the subsequent record. ABREGO GARCIA had no documented MS-13 affiliation, no criminal conviction supporting the gang-membership characterization, and no investigative finding by competent federal authority establishing the affiliation the Department’s communications had asserted. The federal judiciary thereafter ordered the United States government to facilitate ABREGO GARCIA’s return from CECOT — a judicial determination that the deportation had been unlawful and that the underlying attribution had not been supported by the evidence the Department’s official communications had implied.

527. The Department of Homeland Security did not issue a public retraction of the MS-13 attribution. The characterization remained in the public record as an official Department determination, notwithstanding the judicial finding that the deportation it had been deployed to legitimate was unlawful. The maintenance of the attribution after judicial contradiction replicated, at federal scale, the absence-of-correction feature alleged at paragraph 301 with respect to the MERRIVAL state template.

528.The ABREGO GARCIA matter established that the pre-investigative attribution method, validated at the state level through the MERRIVAL template, was operationally available at the federal level within approximately two months of the inauguration of the second TRUMP administration. The speed of federal-scale activation — from inauguration on January 20, 2025, to the ABREGO GARCIA deportation and accompanying public attribution within approximately two months — is incompatible with the development of a federal communications method from inception during the post-inauguration period, and is consistent only with the pre-positioning of the method through the personnel-database infrastructure of Project 2025.

The Hernández Romero Matter and the Recurrence of the PatterICE identified 529.ANDRY JOSÉ HERNÁNDEZ ROMERO as a suspected member of Tren de Aragua based upon two crown tattoos on his wrists. Reuters reported that an ICE screening summary assigned five points to the tattoos and marked no other evidentiary category. One crown appeared beside the word “Mom” and the other beside “Dad.” His counsel explained that the images commemorated his parents, his hometown’s Three Kings celebration, and his work in beauty pageants.67

530.The publicly available record disclosed no corroborating evidence of gang membership. Government materials identified crowns among possible Tren de Aragua indicators, but separate federal guidance cautioned that tattoos were not definitive evidence of affiliation. HERNÁNDEZ ROMERO denied belonging to the organization, and the ICE screening summary identified no criminal conduct, association with known members, or other gang-related criterion supporting the attribution.68

531.On or about March 15, 2025, federal authorities transferred HERNÁNDEZ ROMERO to El Salvador, where he remained confined in CECOT for approximately 125 days while his asylum proceeding remained unresolved. He was released to Venezuela on or about July 18, 2025, as part of a prisoner exchange. Following his release, HERNÁNDEZ ROMERO alleged that CECOT guards subjected him and other detainees to physical abuse, psychological mistreatment, degrading conditions, and sexual abuse. Those allegations are alleged as his reported account, not as adjudicated findings.69

532.The matter demonstrates the consequences of applying an attribution before providing a meaningful opportunity to contest it. Removal to a third-country prison separated HERNÁNDEZ ROMERO from his attorneys, prevented ordinary communication, and substantially impaired timely review of the factual basis for his confinement. The Supreme Court subsequently held that persons designated for removal under the Alien Enemies Act were entitled to notice and an opportunity to challenge their designation through habeas proceedings. For HERNÁNDEZ ROMERO, however, the transfer occurred before that protection could be meaningfully exercised. The attribution therefore produced months of foreign confinement before evidentiary contradiction or judicial review could supply a practical remedy.

The Cross Jr. Matter and the Domestic Application of the Method

533. On or about 2025, federal authorities issued public characterizations of CHARLES CROSS JR., a United States citizen, attributing serious criminal conduct in advance of any judicial determination supporting the attribution. The characterizations were disseminated through the same communications apparatus, through aligned media platforms, and through the same three-phase escalation method alleged in paragraph 19 — Enterprise-affiliated political and donor networks, ostensibly independent influencers and aligned media outlets, and official governmental endorsement.70

534. The CROSS JR. attributions were contradicted by the subsequent factual record. The characterizations remained in the public record without retraction. The Department of Homeland Security and the affiliated communications apparatus did not issue corrective statements when the attributions were contradicted.

535. The CROSS JR. matter established that the pre-investigative attribution method was not constrained by United States citizenship. The method operated against citizens and non-citizens alike, against persons within United States jurisdiction and against persons subjected to deportation, against persons subject to judicial review and against persons subjected to third-country confinement. The unifying operational feature was not the legal status of the affected individual. It was the deployment of governmental communications authority to publicly adjudicate conduct in advance of, in lieu of, or in contradiction to the evidentiary findings of competent investigative authorities.

The Aurora Operation and the Baumgarten Pretext

536. In or about 2025, federal immigration-enforcement agents conducted a high-profile operation at an apartment complex in Aurora, Colorado, identified in public communications administered by defendant McLAUGHLIN as a site of Tren de Aragua-controlled criminal activity. The operation was publicly justified through reference to the Cedar Run apartment building, which Department communications characterized as a site of organized Venezuelan transnational gang activity.

537. The pre-operational characterization was disseminated through the same three-phase escalation method alleged in paragraph 19. The characterization originated through Enterprise-affiliated political networks; was thereafter amplified through ostensibly independent media figures and aligned outlets, including the influencer-amplification activity alleged with particularity in Subsection G below; and was thereafter ratified through official Department communications attributing the operation to documented Tren de Aragua activity at the site.

538. The factual predicate for the operation included video and photographic material that had been circulated through the influencer-amplification phase as documentary evidence of Tren de Aragua control over the apartment complex. The material was subsequently identified as having been produced in connection with the influencer-amplification activity itself, rather than as independent journalistic or law-enforcement documentation of conditions at the site. The Department’s official characterization of the operation thereby relied, in operationally significant part, upon documentary materials produced by the same political-influencer network through which the public predicate for the operation had been constructed.

539. The Aurora operation was further publicly tied to JOCELYN NUNGARAY and the matter of JONATHAN BAUMGARTEN, a Houston-area incident invoked by Department communications and aligned political figures as documentary evidence of Tren de Aragua threat.

540.The invocation of an unrelated criminal matter in a separate jurisdiction as the public predicate for an immigration-enforcement operation in Aurora, Colorado, is alleged herein as documented evidence of the Enterprise’s method of converting individual criminal incidents — selected for their emotional salience rather than for their evidentiary relevance — into the public predicate for broader enforcement activity.

541.The method replicated, at federal scale, the four-category messaging framework alleged elsewhere hrein, with particular reliance on Security Grievance combined with Parental Instinct Activation.

The Nick Shirley Architecture and the May 21, 2026 Oz Ratification

542.On or about January and February 2025, the Department of Homeland Security announced and implemented a multimillion-dollar social-media outreach initiative through which Department personnel would provide information, access, and promotional support to selected social-media influencers for the purpose of disseminating content relating to Department activities and immigration-enforcement operations.

543.Upon information and belief, contemporaneous with this anounnouncement the department partnered with influencers including NICHOLAS SHIRLEY and LAURA LOOMER.

544.ICE agents and other DHS officials leaked information to influencers including alleged e-mails from hotel staff in Minesota declining service to ICE agents, this information was subsequently disseminated online, contributing to escalation in rhetoric against Minnesota, and serving as pretext for enforcement operations as alleged elsewhere herein.

545.On or about February 7, 2025, defendant NIHOLAS SHIRLEY traveled to El Salvador and disseminated social-media content from the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (“CECOT”), a detention facility publicly utilized by Enterprise-affiliated federal officials in connection with immigration-enforcement messaging and deportation operations alleged elsewhere in this Indictment.

546.On or about March 26, 2025 — less than three weeks later — Enterprise participants including defendants NOEM, LEWANDOWSKI, and SHEAHAN traveled to the same facility and participated in a coordinated Department of Homeland Security media operation promoting the immigration-enforcement framework alleged herein.

547.The operation generated substantial public dissemination and directed federal advertising and media expenditures to Enterprise-affiliated vendors, including entities associated with The Strategy Group.

548.On or about December 26, 2025, defendant NICHOLAS SHIRLEY disseminated to social media a video targeting Somali-owned businesses in Minnesota and alleging widespread fraud involving daycare and related business operations. The video was disseminated to millions of viewers notwithstanding the absence, at the time of publication, of adjudicated findings substantiating multiple categories of misconduct alleged in the video, and in furtherance of the Enterprise’s goal of removing imigrants in particular those of a Muslim faith per the request of foreign influencers.

549.The influencer-amplification phase of the three-phase escalation method alleged in paragraph 19 operated, with respect to immigration-enforcement and threat-framing narratives, through a documented network of political content creators publicly presented as independent investigators, journalists, or civic commentators. The principal amplification structure alleged herein operated through defendant NICK SHIRLEY and affiliated content creators.

550.SHIRLEY operated a content-distribution network through which video material depicting immigration-enforcement operations, alleged criminal activity within identified communities, and asserted threat conditions in identified geographic locations was disseminated through social-media platforms in a format presented to viewers as independent reporting and investigation. As alleged herein, the content was produced with documented federal cooperation, including pre-operational access to enforcement activities, on-scene access to enforcement operations, and access to enforcement-derived information and materials unavailable to ordinary members of the public.

551.The federal cooperation described herein was not disclosed within the content itself. Viewers were presented with material bearing the appearance of independent investigation, firsthand reporting, and autonomous fact-gathering, without disclosure of the governmental access, operational assistance, and coordinated cooperation through which the content had been obtained. The existence, nature, and extent of that cooperation were material to any reasonable assessment of the content’s independence, credibility, and evidentiary reliability.

552.The SHIRLEY architecture constituted the second phase of the three-phase escalation method alleged at Paragraph 19. Narratives originating within Enterprise-affiliated political, advocacy, and messaging networks were introduced into the public information environment through channels presented as independent inquiry and investigative reporting before being subsequently reinforced through official governmental communications and institutional authority.

553.The operational function of the architecture was to obscure the origin of Enterprise-generated narratives by reintroducing those narratives to the public through ostensibly independent intermediaries before their subsequent adoption, amplification, and validation through official governmental channels. The sequence created the appearance that the underlying assertions had been independently developed, separately investigated, and corroborated through multiple sources when, in fact, they originated from a common Enterprise-aligned messaging stream.

554.In or about April 2026, SHIRLEY traveled to Cuba and produced content concerning conditions within that country. The content was disseminated within the same messaging architecture alleged herein and advanced themes consistent with Enterprise narratives concerning enforcement, border security, migration, and governmental authority.

555.Through the operation of the three-phase escalation method, audiences encountered narratives first generated within Enterprise-affiliated networks, then amplified through ostensibly independent channels, and finally reinforced through official governmental communications. At no point in the sequence were audiences informed of the operational relationships, coordination mechanisms, or common-source origins underlying the successive stages of dissemination.

556.On or about April 23, 2026, SHIRLEY published a series of communications on X accusing Representative ILHAN OMAR of fraud and attributing widespread fraudulent conduct to Minnesota and, specifically, to migrant communities residing within the state. 71

557.The messaging was materially consistent with narratives previously disseminated by other Enterprise participants and aligned entities. The communications were published approximately four months after Representative OMAR had been targeted during a public town-hall confrontation, rendering the foreseeable risk of further targeting, harassment, or escalation readily apparent.

558.To conceal the nature and extent of the coordination described herein, defendant SHIRLEY publicly denied governmental involvement while simultaneously accepting financial support, access, material assistance, or other benefits from organizations advocating positions aligned with Department of Homeland Security enforcement priorities, defense-industry interests, and pro-Israel policy objectives. The support was transmitted through layered organizational and financial structures substantially similar to those alleged elsewhere in this Indictment and served to obscure the relationship between the content produced and the interests benefiting from its dissemination.

559.On or about May 21, 2026, MEHMET OZ—alleged elesewhere herein in connection with the CASEY CONTRES nominal-director relationship and the broader Enterprise messaging-amplification network—publicly ratified and amplified SHIRLEY-generated content through communications issued in his official federal capacity. The ratification constituted the third phase of the escalation architecture alleged herein, whereby narratives originating within Enterprise-affiliated networks and amplified through ostensibly independent channels were subsequently reinforced through the authority and credibility of official governmental office.

[SEE EXHIBIT K]

560.The May 21, 2026 ratification is alleged as the documented endpoint of the influencer-amplification-to-official-ratification sequence: content originated through the Enterprise’s political and donor networks was amplified through the SHIRLEY architecture, and thereafter ratified through the official communications of a federal principal whose campaign manager had served as nominal director of the Enterprise shell entity ARDLEIGH IMPACT CORPORATION.

561. The OZ ratification closed the documentary loop alleged in this Section. The same Enterprise-aligned political network through which ARDLEIGH IMPACT CORPORATION had been organized — and through which approximately $2,575,000 in political contributions had been disbursed within three months of incorporation as alleged elsewhere herein — operated in 2026 to ratify, through federal communications authority, the influencer-amplification content through which the Enterprise’s enforcement narratives were laundered into the public sphere. In continuance of this messaging architectureand to serve as pretext for enhanced enforcement activity.

The Pattern and Its Consequence

562. The pre-investigative attribution method alleged in this Section was deployed across at least the following incidents during the period relevant to this Indictment: the MERRIVAL state-level matter; the ABREGO GARCIA deportation and CECOT confinement; the HERNÁNDEZ ROMERO deportation, confinement, and death; the CROSS JR. domestic attribution; the Aurora operation and the BAUMGARTEN-NUNGARAY pretext; and the killings of RENÉE NICOLE MACKLIN GOOD and ALEX JEFFREY PRETTI alleged with particularity in Section 16 below. The method was the same in each incident.

563.The communications apparatus was the same. The absence-of-correction feature was the same. The recurrence of the method across multiple incidents, jurisdictions, categories of affected individuals, and operational contexts reflected a coordinated communications structure administered through the dual-command arrangement alleged elsewhere herein operating under the authority of defendants NOEM and LEWANDOWSKI.

564. The operational consequence of the method alleged in this Section was the creation of an enforcement environment in which pre-investigative public attribution routinely preceded and publicly justified enforcement actions before independent evidentiary review had occurred.

565.The killings of RENÉE NICOLE MACKLIN GOOD and ALEX JEFFREY PRETTI by federal agents acting outside the statutory chain of command, as alleged with particularity in Section 16, occurred within that environment. Within hours of the killings, both decedents were publicly characterized as terrorists through the same communications apparatus and attribution method alleged throughout this Section. No corrective public attribution followed.

566. The conduct alleged in this Section constitutes, among other predicate offenses:

a) A scheme to defraud the public of the intangible right to honest services of federal communications officials, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1343 and 1346;

b) The deployment of materially false official governmental communications to deprive identified individuals of rights, privileges, and immunities secured by the Constitution and laws of the United States, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 242;

c. A conspiracy to deprive identified individuals of those rights, privileges, and immunities, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 241; and

d) A conspiracy to defraud the United States by impairing the lawful operation of the federal investigative and adjudicative processes through the systematic substitution of pre-investigative public attribution for evidentiary determination, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371.

SECTION 12 — IRAN PRE-POSITIONING, THE CONCEALED-CONSEQUENCE FRAMEWORK, AND THE OBSTRUCTION OF CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT

567.The Iran-policy framework alleged in Section 4 was developed before the second Trump Administration assumed office and was thereafter implemented through military, diplomatic, and communications actions during 2025 and 2026. Its pre-positioned character is evidenced by the statements of MARK DUBOWITZ under section 4 and the resignation of JOSEPH KENT alleged at paragraph 78. The conduct alleged herein concerns implementation of that framework, concealment of its foreseeable consequences, obstruction of congressional oversight, and the removal of officials whose continued service threatened its execution.

568. On or about March 2025, senior officials within the second TRUMP administration — including then-National Security Advisor MICHAEL G. WALTZ, alleged elsewhere herein, then-Secretary of Defense PETE HEGSETH, alleged at paragraph 292(b), and additional senior principals — conducted classified and operationally sensitive communications regarding planned United States military operations against the Houthi armed forces in Yemen through the Signal commercial messaging platform. Long before the military operations alleged herein, government agencies, agricultural organizations, energy analysts, and academic institutions had repeatedly identified disruption of maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz as a foreseeable consequence of military escalation involving Iran.

569.Those materials documented the Strait's role in global oil, liquefied natural gas, fertilizer, and agricultural-input markets and were publicly available before the operational decisions alleged herein. The significance of the literature is not that it predicted the precise timing of subsequent events, but that it placed policymakers on notice of the foreseeable economic consequences associated with disruption of the Strait.

570. The communications were not conducted through the secure channels statutorily required for the conduct of classified operational planning. They were conducted on a commercial messaging platform installed on personal mobile devices. The Atlantic magazine subsequently obtained the contents of the communications after JEFFREY GOLDBERG, the editor of The Atlantic, was inadvertently included in the communications by the operational principals the intended recipient was RICHARD GOLDBERG of the FDD.

571.The communications, as reported by The Atlantic, contained specific operational planning for strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen that were thereafter executed. The communications further reflected the principals' contemporaneous understanding that the strikes would foreseeably disrupt commercial shipping through the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, with measurable consequences for global oil supply, commodity prices, and agricultural-input costs.

572.The communications therefore document that the operational principals possessed actual knowledge of the foreseeable economic consequences of the strikes at the time they were authorized.

573. Those consequences were not disclosed to the public or to Congress through the official communications that accompanied the operations. Instead, the foreseeable secondary and tertiary consequences of the strikes were omitted from public messaging disseminated through Department of Homeland Security, Department of Defense, and White House communications channels. The non-disclosure is alleged herein as a predicate of the concealed-consequence framework through which foreseeable consequences known to operational principals were withheld from public and congressional consideration.

574.During the same period, PHILIP HEGSETH, brother of Secretary of Defense PETE HEGSETH, occupied a senior position within the Department of Homeland Security. Travel records and operational documents referenced in related civil litigation reflect recurring interactions among PHILIP HEGSETH, defendant SHEAHAN, and other Department principals.

575.The participation of a member of the HEGSETH family within the domestic-enforcement apparatus while Secretary HEGSETH simultaneously participated in the foreign-policy execution alleged herein further connected the domestic and foreign-policy components of the Enterprise's operational structure.

576. On or about March 2025, WALTZ engaged in direct coordination with Israeli Prime Minister BENJAMIN NETANYAHU concerning military options against Iran. As alleged at paragraph 74 and as reported by The Washington Post on or about May 3, 2025, that coordination occurred without the knowledge of President TRUMP and preceded a state visit by Netanyahu.

577. The WALTZ-Netanyahu coordination is alleged in this Section not as an isolated breach of internal administrative discipline but as documentary evidence of the operational integration of foreign-government interests with the federal-policy execution alleged in Section 4. A sitting National Security Advisor coordinating military options against a third country with the head of government of a foreign state, without the knowledge of the President of the United States, in advance of a state visit by that foreign head of government, constitutes the substantive subordination of United States policy decision-making to foreign-government direction.

578. WALTZ was terminated from the position of National Security Advisor on or about May 1, 2025, after 101 days of service — the second-shortest non-acting tenure in the history of the office. The termination is alleged in this Section not as evidence of internal administrative discipline producing accountability, but as evidence of the boundary the Enterprise’s federal-policy execution would not tolerate being publicly crossed.

579. WALTZ was terminated when his foreign-government coordination became public. The substantive policy framework WALTZ had been advancing — the maximum-pressure framework adopted as NSPM-2 on or about February 4, 2025, as alleged at paragraph elsewhere herein— continued in force after his removal. The personnel had become a public liability; the policy had not.

580.The continuity of the policy framework following WALTZ’s removal is alleged as documentary evidence that the framework’s institutional foundation was not WALTZ personally. The institutional foundation was the FDD personnel and policy network alleged in Section 4, which continued to operate within the administration after WALTZ’s departure through GOLDBERG’s service as senior counselor to the White House National Energy Dominance Council, alleged at paragraph 70.

581. In or about June 2025, the United States conducted military operations against Iranian nuclear facilities. The operations were not preceded by the congressional authorization the War Powers Resolution, 50 U.S.C. § 1541 et seq., requires for the introduction of United States Armed Forces into hostilities, into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, or in such manner as to involve hostilities outside the territorial United States.

582. The War Powers Resolution requires the President to consult with Congress before introducing Armed Forces into such situations and to terminate such use of Armed Forces within sixty calendar days unless Congress has declared war, enacted specific statutory authorization, or extended the sixty-day period by law. The substantive military operations conducted against Iranian nuclear facilities in or about June 2025 fell within the operational categories the Resolution governs.

583. Following the June 2025 operations, members of Congress invoked the War Powers Resolution and the constitutional framework governing the use of military force, seeking debate, deliberation, and the statutory authorization the Resolution requires. The procedural mechanisms through which the Senate’s consideration of the War Powers Resolution invocation would have proceeded were obstructed.

584. Defendant JOHN THUNE — alleged in this Indictment as Senate Majority Leader and as the principal whose son-in-law, defendant LINDBERG, was advanced through the credential-laundering method alleged in Section 10 — exercised the procedural authority of the Senate Majority Leader to obstruct the consideration of the War Powers Resolution invocation following the June 2025 Iran operations.

585.The substantive content of defendant THUNE’s procedural actions, as reflected in the Congressional Record and in contemporaneous reporting, included the use of the Majority Leader’s scheduling and motion authority to prevent floor consideration of resolutions that would have required the cessation of military operations against Iran absent affirmative congressional authorization.

586. The obstruction is alleged not as ordinary Senate procedure, but as the use of procedural authority to prevent congressional consideration of the statutory framework governing the use of military force against Iran.

587. The obstruction alleged herein is further evidenced by defendant THUNE’s contrasting response to the August 2021 withdrawal of United States Armed Forces from Afghanistan. On or about September 28, 2021, THUNE co-sponsored the Afghanistan Counterterrorism, Oversight, and Accountability Act, legislation expressly designed to strengthen congressional oversight of the withdrawal. The measure imposed oversight mechanisms, required executive-branch strategies and reviews, restricted certain assistance, and sought information necessary to hold the administration accountable. THUNE later co-sponsored legislation requiring the State Department to provide Congress with classified and unclassified versions of an internal dissent cable concerning the withdrawal.72 73

588.By contrast, during the June 2025 Iran-related military operations alleged herein, defendant THUNE declined to employ comparable procedural mechanisms notwithstanding the existence of statutory authorities through which Congress could review, debate, or restrict executive military action.

589. The contrast between defendant THUNE’s August 2021 and June 2025 procedural positions, considered together with the intervening elevation of defendant LUKE LINDBERG to positions of federal trade and international-affairs authority as alleged in Section 10, is alleged as evidence that the procedural conduct described herein was not solely the product of a consistent institutional philosophy regarding congressional oversight, but reflected the alignment of Senate leadership authority with the foreign-policy objectives advanced by the Enterprise.

590.Defendant THUNE and defendant LUKE LINDBERG occupied positions within the foreign-policy, advocacy, donor, and policy-development architecture alleged elsewhere in this Indictment, including relationships involving organizations such as the Republican Jewish Coalition and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Those organizations, together with affiliated policy institutions, publicly disseminated extensive analysis concerning the strategic and economic consequences of military confrontation involving Iran, including the potential disruption of maritime commerce through the Strait of Hormuz and the resulting effects on global energy, shipping, and commodity markets. Accordingly, the foreseeability of significant economic consequences arising from military escalation with Iran was neither speculative nor unknown to participants operating within those policy and advocacy networks.

591.The significance of that knowledge is reflected in the contemporaneous messaging conduct alleged herein. Public officials and Enterprise participants repeatedly framed military operations in terms of trade protection, economic necessity, and national-security imperatives while minimizing or omitting discussion of foreseeable downstream economic consequences.

592.As alleged elsewhere in this Indictment, contemporaneous communications among senior governmental officials demonstrate active consideration of how military operations would be publicly justified and politically presented.

593.The resulting communications strategy is alleged as evidence of a coordinated effort to shape public understanding of the military actions while limiting scrutiny of their anticipated economic effects.

594.In furtherance of that broader messaging architecture, defendant LUKE LINDBERG, acting in his official capacity, publicly attributed increases in fertilizer prices to alleged corporate price-gouging conduct prior to the completion of any comprehensive investigative determination supporting that attribution. Shortly thereafter, legislative proposals addressing price-gouging concerns were publicly advanced by defendant THUNE.

595.The temporal relationship between the public attribution, the legislative response, and the broader economic consequences alleged herein is relevant to the Enterprise’s communications strategy and its efforts to frame public understanding of inflationary pressures arising during the relevant period.

596.Taken together, the facts alleged herein support the inference that defendant THUNE understood that Congress possessed constitutional and statutory mechanisms through which military operations could be reviewed, debated, or constrained; that significant economic consequences arising from escalation with Iran were foreseeable; and that the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, and Enterprise-affiliated policy networks were operating within an increasingly integrated political, communications, and funding architecture. The conduct alleged herein is relevant to motive, knowledge, intent, and the obstruction of the congressional oversight mechanisms described throughout this Section.

597.The obstruction had the practical effect of preventing the statutory mechanisms enacted by Congress to govern military operations involving Iran from constraining the military actions advanced by the Enterprise. The mechanisms remained in existence as a matter of law. Their operation, however, was materially impaired by the conduct alleged herein.

598.The June 2025 military operations involving Iran, considered together with the maximum-pressure framework alleged elsewhere in this Indictment and the personnel and policy structures described in Section 4, produced foreseeable consequences for global commodity and agricultural-input markets. Among those consequences were increases in the cost of fertilizer inputs derived from natural gas, including ammonia, urea, and ammonium nitrate, upon which commercial agricultural production throughout the United States substantially depends.

599.The conclusion that defendant THUNE possessed substantial knowledge regarding Iran, the strategic significance of the Strait of Hormuz, the foreseeable consequences of military escalation in the region, and the constitutional oversight mechanisms available to Congress is further supported by a pattern of documented exposure to intelligence assessments, national-security briefings, congressional proceedings, and public oversight activities. These examples demonstrate that defendant THUNE repeatedly encountered information concerning both the risks associated with conflict involving Iran and Congress's institutional responsibility to obtain, review, and act upon national-security information, including but not limited to the following;

a) On or about January 2008 following a highly publicized standoff where Iranian speedboats aggressively maneuvered around U.S. Navy warships in the Strait of Hormuz, defendant THUNE joined congressional congressional colleagues in strongly condemning the provocation and emphasized the U.S military must maintain firm posture to protect vital international shipping lanes.

b) On or about April 10, 2010 defendant JOHN THUNE attended a Committee on Armed Services hearing titled U.S. Policy on the Islamic Republic of Iran where Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Ronald L. Burgess stated “In contrast to Iran’s aggressive foreign policy is its conventional military posture, which is largely defensive. It is intended to protect the regime from external and internal threats. While DIA currently assesses that Iran is unlikely to initiate a conflict intentionally or launch a preemptive attack, it does have the capability to restrict access to the Strait of Hormuz with naval forces temporarily and threaten U.S. forces in the region and our regional allies with ballistic missiles.”

c)On or about April 2, 2015, following announcement of the framework that would ultimately become the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action ("JCPOA"), defendant THUNE publicly stated that any final nuclear agreement with the Islamic Republic of Iran required congressional review and approval, asserting that "the American people deserve a voice in this process now more than ever" and that congressional approval of any final agreement was "critical." Defendant THUNE further warned that the proposed framework raised substantial concerns regarding Iranian nuclear capability and the security implications for the United States and its regional allies. Through those statements, defendant THUNE demonstrated his understanding that matters involving Iran, nuclear policy, and regional security implicated Congress's constitutional and statutory oversight responsibilities and were not matters properly insulated from congressional review.

d)During 2020, following the United States operation that killed Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani and the resulting congressional debate concerning the scope of presidential war powers, defendant THUNE publicly participated in discussions concerning Congress's authority to review, debate, and constrain military operations involving Iran. The ensuing Senate consideration of a bipartisan War Powers Resolution constituted one of the most significant congressional examinations of executive military authority involving Iran in recent decades. Defendant THUNE's participation in and public commentary concerning those events further demonstrate his knowledge of the constitutional framework governing military action against Iran, including Congress's ability to invoke statutory war-powers mechanisms to review, restrict, or terminate unauthorized hostilities. Accordingly, defendant THUNE cannot plausibly be characterized as unfamiliar with either the existence or operation of congressional war-powers authorities when the June 2025 Iran-related military operations and subsequent Senate proceedings alleged herein occurred.

e) After the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal, Thune repeatedly called for congressional investigation, accountability, disclosure of internal warnings, and Senate oversight. For example, he publicly called for Congress to conduct a thorough investigation of the withdrawal and criticized the administration for ignoring warnings and withholding information from Congress. Stating “Congress and the American people" deserved answers regarding warnings that were allegedly ignored before the collapse in Afghanistan.

600.From in or about June 2025 through in or about June 2026 — a period spanning approximately twelve months — defendant THUNE exercised the procedural authority of the Senate Majority Leader to prevent the consideration, advancement, or enactment of resolutions invoking the War Powers Resolution with respect to United States military operations against Iran on no fewer than nine separate occasions.

601. The first such occasion occurred on or about June 27, 2025, when the Senate, on a vote of 47 to 53, rejected the motion to discharge Senate Joint Resolution 59 from the Committee on Foreign Relations. The resolution, introduced by Senator TIM KAINE and cosponsored by Senator RAND PAUL, would have directed the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities against the Islamic Republic of Iran absent authorization by Congress. The discharge motion was defeated through the procedural mechanism the Majority Leader administered. Seven additional War Powers Resolution votes followed during the subsequent eleven months, each defeated through substantially the same procedural mechanism, including votes on or about March 4, 2026, April 15, 2026, and May 19, 2026.

602. During the period of the sustained procedural obstruction alleged in paragraphs 386 and 387, President TRUMP, on or about May 1, 2026, transmitted a letter to Congress asserting that a “ceasefire” with Iran had “extended the 60-day window” the War Powers Resolution provides for the continued use of Armed Forces absent congressional authorization.

603.The statutory text of the War Powers Resolution at 50 U.S.C. § 1544(b) does not provide for unilateral executive extension of the 60-day period through executive characterization of operational circumstances. The Resolution provides that the President shall terminate the use of Armed Forces within 60 calendar days unless Congress has declared war, enacted specific authorization, extended the period by law, or is physically unable to meet. None of the four enumerated statutory conditions for extension occurred during the relevant period. The May 1, 2026 letter constituted, in substantive operational effect, the unilateral executive assertion of authority Congress had reserved to itself by statute.

604. The combined operational effect of defendant THUNE’s sustained procedural obstruction and President TRUMP’s unilateral assertion of extended authority was the de facto nullification, with respect to the Iran operations alleged in this Section, of the statutory framework Congress enacted at 50 U.S.C. § 1541 et seq. to govern the use of military force.

605.The framework’s text remained in force. Its operation was systematically defeated through the coordinated exercise of Senate procedural authority by defendant THUNE and unilateral executive characterization by President TRUMP. The defeat operated not through the enactment of authorizing legislation — which would have required affirmative congressional action — but through the prevention of the statutory mechanism through which Congress had reserved its constitutional war-power authority from operating.

606. The sustained character of the obstruction is further documented by the contrasting Republican procedural conduct concerning a comparable War Powers Resolution introduced earlier during the same period with respect to potential United States military operations against Venezuela. During that earlier consideration, four Republican senators — Senators PAUL, COLLINS, MURKOWSKI, and CASSIDY — voted to advance the resolution, before subsequent administration pressure caused several to reverse their positions. The contrast between the four-Republican advancement of the Venezuela resolution and the sustained single-Republican (Senator PAUL only) opposition to the Iran resolutions establishes that the procedural blockade alleged in this Section was specific to the Iran-policy framework alleged in Section 4 and Subsection A above, and was not the product of generally applicable Republican opposition to War Powers Resolution exercises.

607.During 2025 and 2026, defendant LINDBERG, in his capacity as Under Secretary of Agriculture for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs, publicly attributed fertilizer-input-cost increases and related agricultural disruption to causes including general inflation, Chinese trade practices, supply-chain conditions, and prior administrative policy. Those attributions were disseminated through official Department of Agriculture communications, congressional testimony, and public statements directed to agricultural producers. The attributions omitted the operationally contributory role of the maximum-pressure framework adopted as NSPM-2, the disruption of Iranian energy exports, the resulting instability in Persian Gulf energy markets, and the June 2025 military operations against Iranian nuclear facilities.

608.During the same period that defendant LINDBERG publicly attributed fertilizer-input-cost increases and related agricultural disruption to alternative causes, contemporaneous agricultural, economic, governmental, and industry analyses identified disruption of maritime commerce through the Strait of Hormuz as an operationally contributory factor affecting fertilizer availability, energy costs, and agricultural-input markets within the United States.

609.On or about March 9, 2026, the American Farm Bureau Federation transmitted a formal communication to President TRUMP warning that the Iran conflict and resulting disruption of maritime commerce through the Strait of Hormuz threatened fertilizer availability, farm operating costs, and the domestic food supply. The Federation emphasized that Gulf producers export substantial volumes of urea, ammonia, phosphates, sulfur, petroleum, and other agricultural inputs through the Strait and urged federal action to preserve shipping access and stabilize fertilizer supplies.

610.Subsequent economic analysis quantified that exposure. The University of Kentucky Department of Agricultural Economics reported that approximately twenty million barrels of oil per day, nearly all liquefied-natural-gas exports from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, and approximately one-third of global seaborne fertilizer volumes ordinarily transit the Strait. The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City separately reported that more than one-third of global urea exports pass through the waterway and that urea prices had increased approximately fifty-five percent since the beginning of 2026, rising sharply with the onset of the conflict with Iran.

611.Those sources did not identify the Strait’s disruption as the sole cause of elevated fertilizer prices. The Federal Reserve also cited persistent natural-gas costs, the Russia–Ukraine war, and Chinese export restrictions as preexisting sources of pressure. The evidence nevertheless identified the conflict-related interruption of maritime commerce as a substantial additional supply shock affecting fertilizer, fuel, freight, and other agricultural inputs. The disruption therefore constituted a direct and foreseeable channel through which the Iran-policy framework alleged herein imposed measurable costs upon American agricultural producers.

612.The resulting impact upon agricultural producers was contemporaneously documented through testimony before the United States Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry on or about May 12, 2026. Eddie Melton, President of the Kentucky Farm Bureau, testified that between February and May 2026 anhydrous fertilizer prices increased approximately 33 percent, urea approximately 55 percent, liquid nitrogen approximately 25 percent, diammonium phosphate approximately 5 percent, potash approximately 3 percent, and farm diesel approximately 72 percent. The testimony further documented 86 Chapter 12 farm bankruptcies during the first quarter of 2026, including 25 in the Southeastern United States, and reported that the American Farm Bureau Federation’s April 2026 Fertilizer Availability Survey found that approximately 78 percent of Southern producers and 72 percent of Kentucky producers were unable to afford all fertilizer required for the growing season.

613.The omission alleged herein is not that the Iran-policy framework was the sole cause of the resulting fertilizer-market conditions. Rather, it is that defendant LINDBERG, despite occupying the position of Under Secretary of Agriculture for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs, did not disclose to agricultural producers, congressional oversight committees, or the public that the Iran-policy framework constituted an operationally contributory cause that was, during the same period, being publicly identified by the American Farm Bureau Federation, the University of Kentucky, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City as a significant driver of the conditions he attributed to other causes.

614.The non-disclosure completed the concealed-consequence framework alleged in this Section. As alleged elsewhere herein, the foreseeable economic consequences of the Iran-policy framework had been documented in publicly available literature and contemporaneous operational planning communications before the relevant military operations occurred. Those consequences were thereafter omitted from official public messaging and replaced with alternative attributions disseminated by personnel advanced through the placement and credentialing structure alleged throughout this Indictment. The concealment became operationally significant once the resulting economic effects materially impacted agricultural producers, energy consumers, and retirement-fund beneficiaries dependent upon commodity-market performance.

615. The information-amplification structure operated in coordinated relationship with the Stagwell Global audience-research analysis alleged at paragraph 17, commissioned by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which purportedly measured and validated messaging strategies portraying targeted communities as jihadist threats and framing criticism of Israeli government policy as terrorism. The amplification structure supplied the substantive threat content. The Stagwell analysis allegedly validated the content’s projected behavioral effect. The Enterprise’s domestic fundraising and federal communications apparatus thereafter disseminated the resulting narratives through the channels alleged in paragraphs 9 through 21 and Section 11.

616.The continued execution of the Iran-policy framework alleged in this Section depended, in operationally significant part, upon the absence of independent national-security personnel whose statutory responsibilities required them to assess, document, and report the framework’s factual basis and operational consequences. Two documented removals during 2025 reflected the Enterprise’s method of eliminating independent national-security assessment capacity that threatened the framework’s continued execution.

617.In or about July 2025, the Defense Intelligence Agency (”DIA”), the principal Department of Defense intelligence component responsible for producing all-source military intelligence assessments concerning foreign military capabilities and threats, completed and disseminated preliminary battle-damage assessments concerning the June 2025 military operations against Iranian nuclear facilities alleged herein. Those assessments reportedly concluded that the operations had inflicted substantial damage upon portions of the Iranian nuclear infrastructure but had not eliminated the entirety of Iran’s nuclear capability and had delayed the program by a period measured in months rather than decades. The assessments therefore materially differed from contemporaneous public assertions that the facilities had been “completely and totally obliterated” and that Iran’s nuclear program had effectively ceased to exist.

618.At all times relevant herein, LIEUTENANT GENERAL JEFFREY KRUSE served as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and occupied the most senior position within the Department of Defense component responsible for producing the assessments described above. On or about August 22, 2025, LIEUTENANT GENERAL KRUSE was removed from that position. Contemporaneous public reporting by Reuters, the Associated Press, ABC News, and other national-security correspondents identified the removal as occurring in direct temporal and operational proximity to the dissemination and public disclosure of the DIA assessments that diverged from the administration’s publicly advanced characterization of the Iran operations.

619.The significance of the removal alleged herein is not that LIEUTENANT GENERAL KRUSE personally disagreed with any particular policy objective. Rather, it is that the Director of the Department of Defense intelligence component charged with producing independent military-intelligence assessments concerning Iran was removed after the production of assessments that failed to support the threat and success narratives publicly advanced in connection with the Iran-policy framework alleged throughout this Section.

620.The removal is therefore alleged as evidence of the Enterprise’s method of reducing or eliminating independent national-security assessment capacity when such assessments threatened the continued execution or public justification of the framework.

621. GENERAL TIMOTHY HAUGH was confirmed by the Senate in or about April 2024 as Director of the National Security Agency and Commander of United States Cyber Command, the most senior signals-intelligence and military-cyber position within the United States government. GENERAL HAUGH was removed from those positions on or about April 3, 2025, within approximately seventy-three days of the second TRUMP inauguration, through executive action that contemporaneous public reporting attributed to the influence of Laura Loomer, alleged elsewhere herein in connection with the SCHWARTZ pardon-advocacy operation.

622. The removal of the Senate-confirmed official responsible for the principal signals-intelligence capacity of the United States government through the documented intervention of a political activist operating outside formal national-security personnel procedures is alleged as evidence of the Enterprise’s method of subordinating Senate-confirmed national-security command to political-intermediation channels operating outside ordinary federal personnel processes.

623. The KRUSE and HAUGH removals, considered together with the WALTZ termination alleged at paragraph 341 and the KENT resignation alleged elsewehre herein reflected a concentrated pattern of departures from senior national-security positions during 2025, including the National Security Advisor, the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Director of the National Security Agency and Commander of United States Cyber Command, and the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center. Each departure occurred in operationally significant relationship to the Iran-policy framework alleged herein and involved personnel whose continued service threatened the framework’s continued execution.

624. The conduct alleged in this Section operated through five integrated mechanisms: the pre-positioning of the operational decision in advance of the administration’s assumption of office as alleged in Subsection A; the contemporaneous documentation and subsequent concealment of foreseeable economic and security consequences as alleged in Subsection B; the obstruction of statutory congressional oversight under the War Powers Resolution as alleged elsewhere herein, the systematic public attribution of the framework’s consequences to alternative causes through federal officials advanced through the Enterprise’s credential-laundering pipeline as alleged in Subsection F; and the coordinated removal of independent national-security personnel whose statutory duties threatened the framework’s continued execution as alleged in Subsection H.

625. The five mechanisms operated together to convert United States foreign and military policy decision-making — a domain the Constitution allocates between the Executive and Congress under enumerated procedural frameworks — into the operational execution of a private foreign-policy advocacy network’s institutional program, executed through federal officials concurrently compensated by that network as alleged in Section 4, ratified by the Senate Majority Leader’s procedural obstruction of the statutory oversight framework, and concealed from the United States public through systematic substitution of alternative attributions for the framework’s actual operational consequences.

626. The conduct alleged in this Section constitutes, among other predicate offenses:

a) A scheme to defraud the United States and to deprive the public of the intangible right to the honest services of federal national-security and federal-trade officials, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1343 and 1346;

b) A conspiracy to defraud the United States by impairing the lawful operation of the federal national-security decision-making process and the statutory congressional-oversight framework, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371 as construed in Hammerschmidt v. United States, 265 U.S. 182 (1924);

c) Acts and omissions by federal employees having financial interests in particular matters in which they participated personally and substantially in their official capacities, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 208 and the regulatory framework of 5 C.F.R. Part 2635;

d) The failure to register as foreign agents while engaging in political and quasi-political activities on behalf of foreign principals, in violation of 22 U.S.C. § 612 of the Foreign Agents Registration Act; and

e) Obstruction of congressional proceedings, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1505.

SECTION 13 — DEFENDANT LEWANDOWSKI’S EXTRA-STATUTORY AUTHORITY, THE GEO GROUP EXTORTION OPERATION, AND THE CONVERSION OF FEDERAL ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITY INTO PRIVATE FINANCIAL INSTRUMENT

Figure below is offered as demonstrative evidence depicting Lewandowski’s federal authority conversion into financial stream as alleged below

627. The conduct alleged in this Section concerns the federal-phase execution of the personnel-placement framework described in Sections 2 and 10 of this Indictment, specifically the placement of defendant COREY LEWANDOWSKI into a position of operational authority within the Department of Homeland Security despite the absence of Senate confirmation, public financial-disclosure review, or the ordinary accountability mechanisms governing the conferral of executive power under Article II of the Constitution.

628.Witness 1 described discussions at the 2019 FRIESS retreat concerning the future placement of defendant LEWANDOWSKI within the Department of Homeland Security. During 2025 and 2026, that contemplated placement materialized. Public reporting, witness accounts, congressional investigative records, and Department personnel statements consistently described defendant LEWANDOWSKI not as a temporary advisor operating within the limited scope of a Special Government Employee designation, but as the Department's de facto chief of staff, principal gatekeeper, and operational decision-maker across contracting, personnel, enforcement, and communications functions.

629.The significance of the conduct alleged herein is not merely that defendant LEWANDOWSKI occupied an influential advisory role. Rather, it is that federal executive authority was exercised through an individual who had not undergone Senate confirmation, had not submitted to the public financial-disclosure process, and was operating through a statutory classification designed for temporary and intermittent service while simultaneously directing matters ordinarily reserved to confirmed officials and accountable federal employees.

630.The conversion of that extra-statutory authority into private financial benefit, as alleged below through the GEO Group solicitation scheme, the Salus contracting arrangement, and the related enforcement and personnel actions, constitutes the operational mechanism through which the personnel-placement framework alleged elsewhere in this Indictment was translated into federal action.

631. The Constitution of the United States provides at Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 that the President “shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint . . . all other Officers of the United States.” The constitutional appointment-and-confirmation framework operates as the principal mechanism through which the public, through its elected representatives in the Senate, exercises informed consent over the conferral of federal executive authority upon identified individuals.

632. Defendant LEWANDOWSKI was not nominated to any office requiring Senate confirmation during the period relevant to this Indictment. Defendant LEWANDOWSKI was not subjected to Senate confirmation. Defendant LEWANDOWSKI did not submit to the public financial-disclosure requirements applicable to Senate-confirmed federal officials under the Ethics in Government Act, 5 U.S.C. App. § 101 et seq. Defendant LEWANDOWSKI did not subject his prior commercial relationships — including the FirstEnergy relationship alleged in Section 5 and the additional commercial relationships alleged below — to the conflict-of-interest review the Senate confirmation process operates to require.

633.The mechanism through which defendant LEWANDOWSKI exercised federal authority during 2025 and 2026 was the Special Government Employee (”SGE”) designation under 18 U.S.C. § 202(a). The SGE designation is a statutorily defined classification limited to individuals expected to perform services for the federal government “for not to exceed one hundred and thirty days during any period of three hundred and sixty-five consecutive days,” whether on a full-time or intermittent basis.

634.The classification is exempt from the public financial-disclosure requirements applicable to ordinary federal officials. The classification is exempt from Senate confirmation. The classification was not designed to confer, and on its statutory terms cannot confer, the substantive operational authority defendant LEWANDOWSKI exercised within the Department of Homeland Security during the period relevant to this Indictment.

635. The 130-day statutory limitation governing SGE service operates to constrain the duration of the public-disclosure and ethics-review exemption the classification confers. The limitation reflects the congressional determination that the conferral of federal authority for sustained periods requires the institutional accountability mechanisms — financial disclosure, Senate confirmation, conflict-of-interest review — that the SGE classification is designed to bypass for genuinely intermittent service.

636. Defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s exercise of authority within the Department of Homeland Security was not, in operational substance, intermittent. Defendant LEWANDOWSKI maintained continuous operational involvement in federal contracting decisions, federal personnel decisions, federal enforcement decisions, and federal communications decisions throughout the period from in or about January 2025 through in or about March 2026, when his departure from the Department was publicly confirmed.

637. The continuous character of defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s involvement was reconciled with the 130-day statutory limitation through a documented day-count evasion method. Defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s federal-service days were counted, for purposes of the 130-day limitation, on a basis that did not correspond to the operational days during which defendant LEWANDOWSKI exercised federal authority. Days on which defendant LEWANDOWSKI participated in federal meetings, federal communications, federal contracting decisions, federal personnel decisions, and federal enforcement-coordination activity were not counted against the limitation when defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s participation was characterized as occurring in a private capacity rather than under formal SGE designation.

638. The characterization was operationally fictitious. Defendant LEWANDOWSKI exercised the same authority, communicated with the same federal personnel, directed the same operational decisions, and operated through the same Department-of-Homeland-Security communications channels regardless of whether the day in question was being counted against his 130-day limitation.

639. The distinction between “SGE days” and “private days” was a documentary artifact maintained to permit defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s continuous federal involvement to be reconciled with a statutory limitation Congress had enacted to prevent precisely that involvement from occurring without the accountability mechanisms the SGE classification bypasses.

The Statutory Consequence of Exceeding the 130-Day Limit

640.Under 18 U.S.C. § 202(a), the 130-day annual limitation is not an administrative guideline or discretionary personnel designation. It is the statutory definition of the Special Government Employee (“SGE”) classification itself. Section 202(a) defines a Special Government Employee as an officer or employee retained, designated, appointed, or employed by the United States “to perform, with or without compensation, for not to exceed one hundred and thirty days during any period of three hundred and sixty-five consecutive days, temporary duties either on a full-time or intermittent basis.” By the plain operation of the statute, an individual who performs federal duties for more than 130 days during any rolling 365-day period no longer falls within the SGE classification.

641.Defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s operational involvement within the Department of Homeland Security substantially exceeded the statutory limitation imposed by § 202(a). From in or about January 2025 through in or about March 28, 2026 — a continuous period of approximately fourteen months, or approximately 420 calendar days — defendant LEWANDOWSKI exercised operational authority over Department contracting decisions, federal personnel matters, enforcement operations, and Department communications functions.

642.LEWANDOWSKI’s federal activity is established through documentary records and contemporaneous witness accounts, including: reporting by CNN, The New York Times, ABC News, The Washington Post, Politico, Reuters, and other outlets identifying defendant LEWANDOWSKI as the Department’s “de facto chief of staff,” “shadow chief of staff,” and “the chief” within the Department’s internal personnel culture; contemporaneous accounts from Department personnel describing defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s involvement in operational decision-making on essentially daily bases; the gatekeeping structure alleged elsewhere herein, defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s effective approval for Department contracts exceeding approximately $100,000; and defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s documented participation in Department events throughout 2025 and into 2026, including the inaugural Americas Counter Cartel Conference at United States Southern Command Headquarters in Doral, Florida, on or about March 5, 2026.

643.The operational conduct alleged herein is incompatible with the characterization that defendant LEWANDOWSKI performed fewer than 130 days of federal service within any rolling 365-day period during the relevant timeframe. The fourteen-month duration of defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s involvement, the daily operational functions he exercised, the contracting and personnel gatekeeping authority he administered, and the Department’s contemporaneous treatment of defendant LEWANDOWSKI as its operational “chief” establish that defendant LEWANDOWSKI substantially exceeded the statutory limit governing the SGE classification.

644.Upon defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s exceeding of the 130-day statutory limitation during 2025, the SGE classification defined by 18 U.S.C. § 202(a) no longer applied to defendant LEWANDOWSKI. For each day thereafter during which defendant LEWANDOWSKI continued to exercise federal authority within the Department of Homeland Security, defendant LEWANDOWSKI occupied one of two legal statuses, each carrying distinct criminal exposure: (a) an ordinary federal employee subject to the full ethics, disclosure, and conflict-of-interest framework applicable to non-SGE federal personnel, including the public financial-disclosure requirements of the Ethics in Government Act, 5 U.S.C. App. § 101 et seq., and the continuous application of 18 U.S.C. § 208 to all matters under the Department’s jurisdiction; or (b) a private citizen exercising federal executive authority outside the constitutional appointment framework of Article II, Section 2, Clause 2, including conduct alleged herein under 18 U.S.C. § 912 governing the false assumption or exercise of federal office or authority.

645. Defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s conduct alleged in this Section is incompatible with the first characterization. Defendant LEWANDOWSKI did not file the public financial-disclosure documents the Ethics in Government Act requires of federal employees exceeding the SGE limit. Defendant LEWANDOWSKI did not subject his prior commercial relationships, including the FirstEnergy relationship alleged in Section 5, the Salus subcontract relationship alleged at paragraphs 405 through 407, and the additional commercial relationships alleged elsewhere herein, to the public conflict-of-interest review the disclosure framework would have required. Defendant LEWANDOWSKI did not submit to any documented institutional process through which his transition from SGE status to ordinary-federal-employee status was administratively recognized, processed, or publicly acknowledged. The absence of those documentary records establishes that defendant LEWANDOWSKI did not, at any point during the relevant period, operate as a federal employee whose status had transitioned from SGE to ordinary federal service.

647. Defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s conduct is therefore alleged in this Indictment as falling within the second characterization for the portion of the relevant period extending from the date upon which defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s actual federal service exceeded 130 days within a rolling 365-day window through the date of defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s documented departure from the Department on or about March 28, 2026. During that period, defendant LEWANDOWSKI exercised federal executive authority within the Department of Homeland Security as a private citizen operating outside the constitutional appointment framework, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 912.

648. The conduct alleged in this Section that occurred during the post-130-day period — including but not limited to the GEO Group extortion sequence alleged in Subsection D, the gatekeeping function , the personnel direction alleged throughout this Section, the Salus subcontract solicitation conduct , and the integration of defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s authority with the killings of GOOD and PRETTI alleged in Section 16 — is alleged in this Indictment under the legal framework applicable to a private citizen exercising federal executive authority outside the constitutional appointment process, rather than under the legal framework applicable to a Special Government Employee operating within the statutory limitations of that classification.

649.The legal predicates available under the post-130-day framework include, among others, 18 U.S.C. § 912 (false assumption of federal office), 18 U.S.C. § 208 in its full continuous application to all matters under the Department’s jurisdiction, the public financial-disclosure framework of the Ethics in Government Act, and a substantially strengthened predicate under 18 U.S.C. § 371 for conspiracy to defraud the United States by impairing the lawful operation of the federal personnel framework.

650. The manipulation of the Special Government Employee (“SGE”) designation and associated day-count limitations is alleged herein as documentary evidence of a scheme to defraud the United States and to deprive the public of the intangible right to honest services through the systematic circumvention of the statutory and ethical restrictions Congress enacted to limit the conferral and exercise of federal executive authority by individuals not subject to Senate confirmation, ordinary federal-employment requirements, or full-time federal ethics oversight.

651.By operating defendant LEWANDOWSKI through the SGE framework while permitting the exercise of authority substantially exceeding the scope contemplated by that classification, Enterprise participants concealed from Congress, federal regulators, and the public the true nature, duration, and extent of defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s operational control within the Department of Homeland Security.

652. During 2025 and 2026, defendant LEWANDOWSKI exercised operational authority within the Department of Homeland Security across four principal domains, none of which the Special Government Employee classification was statutorily designed to confer. Those domains included:

a) Federal contracting decisions, including the contracts alleged with particularity in Section 14, and including the GEO Group contract-protection conduct alleged in Subsection D below;

b) Federal personnel decisions, including the placement of defendants SHEAHAN and McLAUGHLIN alleged in Section 10, and including the removal of career federal personnel whose continued performance of office threatened Enterprise-aligned operational outcomes;

c) Federal enforcement decisions, including the operational direction of federal agents conducting immigration-enforcement activity under which the killings of RENÉE NICOLE MACKLIN GOOD and ALEX JEFFREY PRETTI alleged in Section 16 occurred; and

d) Federal communications coordination, including the integration of the official communications apparatus administered by defendant McLAUGHLIN with the pre-investigative attribution method alleged in Section 11.

653.Defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s contemporaneous understanding of the authority he exercised is documented through statements made during the period of his federal service and reflected in contemporaneous reporting and witness accounts, including defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s statement that he could “do whatever the fuck I want” because President TRUMP would pardon him. The statement is alleged herein as documentary evidence that defendant LEWANDOWSKI understood the authority he was exercising exceeded the statutory limitations governing his Special Government Employee classification, and that he anticipated executive clemency as protection against subsequent legal accountability. The contemplated use of presidential pardon authority as a shield for anticipated misconduct is further alleged as evidence of the Enterprise’s integration of executive clemency into its operational framework, parallel to the conduct alleged in Section 8 concerning defendant SCHWARTZ.

654.The statement is alleged as evidence of the mens rea underlying the conduct charged in this Section. Defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s conduct was not the product of administrative oversight, institutional confusion, or good-faith disagreement concerning the scope of the SGE designation. Rather, defendant LEWANDOWSKI exercised operational federal authority with the contemporaneous understanding that the statutory limitations governing that authority did not constrain his conduct because anticipated executive clemency would foreclose prosecutorial consequence.

655.The authority defendant LEWANDOWSKI exercised across the contracting, personnel, enforcement, and communications functions alleged herein was not the limited role of an informal advisor consulted on discrete matters. Federal personnel acted pursuant to defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s directives across multiple operational domains notwithstanding that defendant LEWANDOWSKI held no Senate-confirmed office vesting him with the authority he exercised. Defendant LEWANDOWSKI therefore functioned, in operational substance, as a principal directing Department conduct rather than as a temporary advisor operating within the limited scope of the SGE classification.

656.The arrangement under which Secretary NOEM held formal statutory authority while defendant LEWANDOWSKI exercised operational control within the Department replicated the enforcement-command structure concerning THOMAS HOMAN’s publicly described “border czar” role. The use of personnel exercising operational federal authority outside the ordinary Senate-confirmation structure operated at multiple levels of the federal immigration-enforcement apparatus during the period relevant to this Indictment.

657. GEO Group, Inc. is a publicly traded corporation headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida, and the nation’s largest private operator of immigration detention facilities. During the period relevant to this Indictment, GEO Group held contracts with the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement under which GEO Group operated detention facilities housing federal immigration detainees. GEO Group’s revenue stream from federal immigration-detention contracts was material to its commercial operations and to its public market valuation.

658. GEORGE ZOLEY is the founder, executive chairman, and principal officer of GEO Group. ZOLEY’s compensation and equity position in GEO Group made the company’s federal contract revenue stream material to his personal financial interests during the period relevant to this Indictment.

659. Beginning in or about late 2024 and continuing into the spring of 2025, defendant LEWANDOWSKI engaged in a series of meetings with ZOLEY. The meetings occurred during the same period in which defendant LEWANDOWSKI was exercising the operational authority over Department of Homeland Security contracting decisions alleged in Subsection C — including authority that would, in the ordinary administration of federal contracting, determine the continuation, expansion, or termination of GEO Group’s federal immigration-detention contracts.

660. During the meetings alleged at paragraphs 445-447 defendant LEWANDOWSKI solicited personal financial compensation from ZOLEY. The substantive content of the solicitation, as documented through the March 23, 2026 letter from Ranking Member ROBERT GARCIA of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to ZOLEY and through contemporaneous reporting by NBC News and other outlets, included the following operational sequence.

661.During the presidential transition period preceding the second TRUMP administration, defendant LEWANDOWSKI communicated to ZOLEY that defendant LEWANDOWSKI “wanted to be paid in exchange for protecting and growing GEO Group’s DHS contracts.”

662.During a second meeting in or about late February or early March 2025 — following defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s appointment as a Special Government Employee — ZOLEY offered to “put [defendant] LEWANDOWSKI on retainer” with GEO Group. Defendant LEWANDOWSKI refused the retainer offer and instead demanded a kickback structured as “a success fee” calculated as a percentage of the value of GEO Group’s new and renewed federal contracts with the Department of Homeland Security.

663.The retainer-versus-success-fee distinction is alleged in this Indictment as documentary evidence of the operational substance of defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s solicitation: a retainer is the customary commercial arrangement under which lobbyists, consultants, and advisors are compensated for service; the “success fee” defendant LEWANDOWSKI demanded was, in operational substance, a contingent payment tied directly to the federal contracting outcomes defendant LEWANDOWSKI was simultaneously positioned to determine through the gatekeeping function , and is the precise structure 18 U.S.C. § 201(b) prohibits.

664.ZOLEY declined the solicitation. Following his refusal, GEO Group experienced documented adverse consequences within the federal contracting environment controlled by defendant LEWANDOWSKI. Those consequences included delays in the processing of pending contract matters, the redirection of detention-capacity allocations to alternative providers, and the imposition of operational conditions that materially impaired GEO Group’s commercial position despite the absence of any documented performance deficiency warranting such measures.

665.The foregoing actions are alleged not as the good-faith exercise of federal contracting authority, but as the deployment of governmental power in furtherance of defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s personal financial interests. By leveraging authority over the federal immigration-detention apparatus, defendant LEWANDOWSKI converted the contracting process into an enforcement mechanism for the demand ZOLEY had refused. During the same period, defendant LEWANDOWSKI maintained ongoing financial relationships with private entities operating in the federal-government-services marketplace, including Salus, a private firm that received subcontracted work flowing from federal contracts within the apparatus over which defendant LEWANDOWSKI exercised authority.

666. The Salus subcontract relationship operated as the documentary anchor through which the financial benefit of defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s federal contracting authority was rendered traceable. The flow of subcontracted work to Salus during the period of defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s federal service, considered together with defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s pre-federal-service consulting relationships and his contemporaneous private commercial activity, is alleged as documentary evidence of the financial interest that the SGE classification’s exemption from public financial disclosure was designed to permit defendant LEWANDOWSKI to maintain undisclosed.

667. The conduct alleged at paragraphs 436 through 440 constitutes, among other predicate offenses, the solicitation of bribes by a federal public official in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 201(b)(2), the participation in particular matters by a federal employee having a financial interest in those matters in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 208, and Hobbs Act extortion under color of official right in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1951.

668.GREGORY BOVINO, an official within the federal-immigration-enforcement apparatus operating under the operational authority defendant LEWANDOWSKI exercised, transmitted an electronic-mail communication during the relevant period that reflected the substantive content of the contracting arrangements defendant LEWANDOWSKI was operating. The communication, subsequently obtained through litigation discovery, contained documentary evidence of the operational integration of defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s contracting authority with the personal financial interests alleged above.74

669. In subsequent deposition testimony given under oath during litigation arising from the federal-immigration-enforcement operations of the relevant period — specifically, during three days of sworn deposition testimony in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in connection with the civil action arising from Operation Midway Blitz — BOVINO testified concerning the substantive content of the communications, the operational conduct of federal agents under his command, and the use-of-force decisions for which he was personally responsible.

670.Portions of BOVINO’s sworn testimony were materially inconsistent with the documentary record reflected in body-camera footage, contemporaneous photographs, and BOVINO’s own subsequent statements. The presiding district judge, United States District Judge SARA ELLIS, issued a 233-page preliminary-injunction opinion on or about November 20, 2025, in which Judge ELLIS found, as a matter of judicial fact-finding upon the record, that BOVINO had been “evasive” during his three-day deposition, “either providing ‘cute’ responses to Plaintiffs’ counsel’s questions or outright lying,” and that BOVINO “admitted that he lied” concerning the circumstances under which he deployed tear gas against a crowd in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago on or about October 23, 2025. Judge ELLIS further found that BOVINO had falsely denied, under oath, having used physical force against a specific protester, notwithstanding video evidence reviewed by the court establishing that BOVINO had tackled the protester to the ground. The court characterized the broader record of federal-agent testimony arising from the Operation Midway Blitz litigation as “simply not credible,” and found that it was “difficult, if not impossible, to believe almost anything that Defendants represent.”75

671. The inconsistency between the documentary record and the sworn testimony — established not by the allegations of this Indictment but by the contemporaneous fact-finding of an Article III federal district court upon a developed evidentiary record — is alleged herein as documentary evidence of false declaration before a court of the United States in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1623, and as evidence of the broader institutional pattern alleged throughout this Indictment under which federal officials operating within the Enterprise’s command structure made materially false representations to investigative and adjudicative authorities concerning the substantive content of the conduct alleged herein.

672. The contemporaneity of BOVINO’s false sworn testimony with his documented operational integration into defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s extra-statutory command structure, considered together with the synchronized post-killing departure cluster alleged elsewhere herein, is alleged as documented evidence that the false-testimony conduct was not the product of individual administrative error but of the operational requirement that federal personnel administering the Enterprise’s enforcement framework defend that framework through testimony materially inconsistent with the documentary record their own conduct had generated.

673.During the period relevant to this Indictment, defendant NOEM required that all Department of Homeland Security grants and contracts exceeding approximately $100,000 receive her personal approval. The $100,000 threshold did not correspond to any established procurement-review requirement administered through ordinary Department contracting procedures or through the Federal Acquisition Regulation. In practice, the requirement centralized contract approval within the Department’s apex command structure — defendant NOEM as formal signatory and defendant LEWANDOWSKI as the de facto principal directing the contracting process alleged herein. Through that approval structure, Enterprise-aligned vendors received favorable contract disposition in connection with the conduct alleged in Section 14. The approval requirement is documented through contemporaneous reporting by The New York Post citing sources familiar with the matter and supporting records, and through witness accounts from Department personnel whose contract-review workflow operated through that channel.

674. The approval structure functioned as the mechanism through which defendant LEWANDOWSKI exercised practical control over Department contracting outcomes. Contracts benefiting Enterprise-aligned vendors proceeded through the approval channel and received favorable disposition. Contracts adverse to Enterprise-aligned interests — including matters affecting GEO Group following ZOLEY’s refusal to comply with the solicitation alleged in Subsection D — encountered delays, adverse disposition, or the diversion of contract benefits to alternative providers through the same process.

675. The conduct alleged in Subsections D through G occurred in temporal and operational relationship to the conduct — the South Dakota Investment Council’s accumulation of approximately 113,500 additional shares of GEO Group equity during the same fiscal quarter (Q2 2025, April through June) in which defendant LEWANDOWSKI was exercising the contracting authority alleged in this Section.

678. The Investment Council’s accumulation of GEO Group shares during the same quarter in which defendant LEWANDOWSKI was operationally directing the federal contracting environment determining GEO Group’s revenue stream is alleged in this Section, considered together with the documented termination of the Senior Investment Manager who had attempted to surface internal-control concerns within the Council a, as documentary evidence of the convergence of the Enterprise’s state-level financial conduct with its federal-level contracting conduct in a single operational period and a single corporate target.

679. The convergence is incompatible with independent investment decision-making by the South Dakota Investment Council and independent federal contracting decision-making by the Department of Homeland Security. It is consistent only with the operational coordination of state and federal Enterprise-aligned authority directed toward the same corporate beneficiary, in the same operational period, while the principal Enterprise federal official directing the federal contracting authority was simultaneously soliciting personal financial compensation from that beneficiary’s chief executive.

680. The conduct alleged in this Section did not occur in operational isolation from the Iran-policy framework alleged in Section 12. The Department of Homeland Security under defendant NOEM’s executive authority and defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s operational authority functioned during the relevant period as the principal federal-enforcement apparatus through which the domestic operational consequences of the Iran-policy framework were administered.

681. The same federal enforcement apparatus that conducted the immigration-enforcement operations alleged in Section 11 — operations conducted against Latin American, Somali-American, Muslim, and Venezuelan communities through the pre-investigative attribution method documented therein — was the apparatus through which the Iran-policy framework’s domestic-security narrative was operationally expressed. The threat-framing language disseminated through Enterprise fundraising channels and Stagwell-validated messaging and replicated through official Department of Homeland Security communications under defendant McLAUGHLIN’s authority as alleged in Section 11, was operationally executed through enforcement actions defendant LEWANDOWSKI directed and through contracting decisions defendant LEWANDOWSKI controlled.

682.The structural integration of the Iran-policy framework alleged in Section 12 with the Department of Homeland Security enforcement apparatus alleged in this Section is alleged as documentary evidence of the enmeshment between foreign-policy advocacy networks identified in Section 4, federal-personnel-placement infrastructure alleged in Section 10, federal communications authority alleged in Section 11, and federal contracting authority alleged in this Section. The four operational dimensions converge on a single federal department, administered by a single Cabinet principal, operated under the direction of a single SGE-designated principal exercising authority outside the statutory framework governing federal command.

683. The conduct alleged in this Section operated through six integrated mechanisms: the placement of defendant LEWANDOWSKI through the pre-positioned SGE designation as alleged in Subsection A; the day-count evasion under which the 130-day statutory limitation was systematically circumvented as alleged in Subsection B; the exercise of operational authority across federal contracting, personnel, enforcement, and communications domains as alleged in Subsection C; the GEO Group extortion operation and the retaliatory consequences imposed upon ZOLEY’s refusal as alleged in Subsection D; the financial integration through the Salus subcontract relationship as alleged in Subsection E; the BOVINO documentary record and subsequent false deposition statement as alleged in Subsection F; and the $100,000 contract-gatekeeping function through which the operational authority was institutionally expressed as alleged in Subsection G.

684. The six mechanisms operated together to convert federal contracting and enforcement authority into a private financial instrument — operated by an unconfirmed principal, outside the constitutional appointment process, outside the public financial-disclosure framework, and outside the statutory contracting-review mechanisms — for the benefit of defendant LEWANDOWSKI personally and for the benefit of the Enterprise-aligned vendors and beneficiaries alleged elsewhere in this Indictment.

685. The conduct alleged in this Section constitutes, among other predicate offenses:

a)Solicitation of bribes by a federal public official, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 201(b)(2);

b) Hobbs Act extortion under color of official right, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1951;

c) Participation in particular matters by federal employees having financial interests in those matters, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 208 and the regulatory framework of 5 C.F.R. Part 2635;

d) A scheme to defraud the United States and to deprive the public of the intangible right to honest services, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1343 and 1346;

e) False declaration before a court of the United States, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1623;

f) A conspiracy to defraud the United States by impairing the lawful operation of the federal contracting, personnel, and enforcement processes, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371 as construed in Hammerschmidt v. United States, 265 U.S. 182 (1924); and

g) The systematic circumvention of the Ethics in Government Act, 5 U.S.C. App. § 101 et seq., and the constitutional appointment framework of Article II, Section 2, Clause 2, through the operational misuse of the Special Government Employee classification under 18 U.S.C. § 202(a).

h) The false assumption or pretense of holding office or place of authority under the United States, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 912, with respect to the conduct alleged at paragraphs 426-427 occurring after defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s federal service exceeded the 130-day statutory limit under 18 U.S.C. § 202(a) for the SGE classification.

686. The conduct further constitutes predicate acts for the racketeering enterprise alleged in this Indictment. The Federal Criminal Investigation, the Congressional Inquiries, and the Documented Obstruction of Oversight

687. The conduct alleged in this Section is the subject of a federal criminal investigation. In or about March 2026, the Office of Inspector General of the United States Department of Homeland Security (”DHS OIG”), under Inspector General JOSEPH CUFFARI, opened a criminal investigation into the contracting conduct of defendant NOEM and defendant LEWANDOWSKI, including the no-bid contracting arrangements through which approximately $220,000,000 in Department advertising contracts featuring defendant NOEM were awarded to politically connected vendors, and including the contracting conduct alleged with particularity in this Section and in Section 14. DHS OIG instructed Department employees to preserve all records related to fiscal year 2025 grants and contracts. The investigation is separate from a previously announced DHS OIG audit of Department grants and contracts awarded “by any means other than full and open competition” during fiscal year 2025.

688. The Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General criminal investigation described herein is corroborated by parallel congressional investigative activity conducted across both chambers of Congress and involving members of both political parties. As of the date of this Indictment, formal investigative actions concerning the contracting conduct alleged in this Section had been initiated by multiple congressional offices and committees, including: (a) the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, through Ranking Member ROBERT GARCIA, which issued document-preservation and production demands to GEO Group, Inc. and Salus Worldwide Solutions; (b) the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, through Senator RUBEN GALLEGO, which issued a formal records-demand letter to Salus Worldwide Solutions Chief Executive Officer WILLIAM A. WALTERS III concerning the conduct alleged herein; (c) the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, through Senators ADAM SCHIFF, PETER WELCH, and RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, which issued document-preservation demands to GEO Group and Salus Worldwide Solutions; and (d) Representative NANCY MACE of South Carolina, a Republican member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, who on or about April 28, 2026 publicly requested that Committee Chairman JAMES COMER initiate a formal corruption investigation into defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s conduct at the Department of Homeland Security. The bipartisan and bicameral nature of the investigative activity is alleged herein as evidence that the conduct described in this Section generated contemporaneous institutional concern independent of the Enterprise itself.

689. The subcontracting arrangement between Salus Worldwide Solutions and Enterprise-affiliated consulting entities, as alleged in paragraphs 439 through 440, is further corroborated by testimonial evidence developed during an NBC News investigation publicly reported in or about March 2026 following approximately seven months of investigative reporting and interviews with approximately twenty-four individuals possessing direct or indirect knowledge of the contracting conduct. According to the reporting, the owner of a marketing firm with no prior federal-contracting experience was contacted by a representative of Salus Worldwide Solutions regarding participation in a Department-affiliated advertising contract valued at approximately $20,000,000.

690.During a subsequent communication, the Salus representative stated, in substance: “We are guaranteed this contract, but we need to make sure we are properly thanking the person who gave it to us.” The representative identified defendant LEWANDOWSKI as the individual who had secured the contract and stated that the marketing firm would be required to retain one of several consulting entities affiliated with defendant LEWANDOWSKI as a condition of participation. The reporting further established that a separate Salus-administered contract opportunity, valued in the aggregate at approximately $40,000,000 to $50,000,000, was structured so that approximately $20,000,000 would be directed to the marketing firm while approximately $20,000,000 to $30,000,000 would be directed to a consulting entity tied to defendant LEWANDOWSKI, concerning which the Salus representative stated, in substance: “We will make sure the consultant is handled.” The marketing-firm owner declined participation in the arrangements and, approximately two months later, reported the solicitations to an official within the TRUMP administration. NBC News further reported that the administration official independently confirmed the substance of the marketing-firm owner’s account.

691. Salus Worldwide Solutions, the corporate vehicle through which the subcontract-solicitation conduct was administered, was incorporated in 2023 and held no prior federal contract awards before, in or about May 2025, receiving a fast-tracked Department of Homeland Security contract — administered without standard competitive-bidding procedures — valued at approximately $1,000,000,000 for services administering the second TRUMP administration’s “self-deportation” initiative. Salus is operated by WILLIAM A. WALTERS III, identified in public reporting as a donor to the America First Policy Institute, the policy organization affiliated with the federal-personnel-placement and policy-framework infrastructure alleged in Section 3 in connection with Project 2025.

692.A subsequent civil action filed against the Department alleges that Department officials shared non-public information with Salus to support its bid, that Salus held an unfair advantage in designing the contract upon which it bid, and that Department employees exchanged approximately forty pre-award electronic-mail communications with Salus concerning the contract’s budget and program specifications. The award of an approximately $1,000,000,000 federal contract — through procedures bypassing competitive bidding, to a corporate entity organized two years earlier with no prior federal contracting experience, operated by a donor to a Project 2025-affiliated policy organization — is alleged as documentary evidence of the operational integration of the federal-personnel-placement infrastructure alleged in Section 3, the federal contracting authority alleged in this Section, and the political-donor network through which the Enterprise’s federal-phase conduct was financed.

693. The conduct of the DHS OIG investigation has itself been the subject of documented obstruction. In or about early 2026, Inspector General CUFFARI communicated to congressional committees that the DHS OIG had been “systematically obstructed” in the pursuit of certain ongoing investigations, and that one such investigation was a federal criminal probe with national-security implications. Independent reporting established that defendant NOEM, during her tenure as Secretary of Homeland Security, sought to cause Inspector General CUFFARI to be removed from his position, and that the White House declined to authorize the removal. The attempted removal of the Inspector General investigating the conduct alleged in this Section — by the Cabinet principal whose conduct that investigation was examining — is alleged in this Indictment as documented evidence of the Enterprise’s method of attempting to extinguish independent oversight authority that threatened the continued execution of the framework alleged herein.

694. The obstruction-of-oversight conduct alleged at paragraph 462 occurred after the killings of GOOD and PRETTI alleged in Section 16 and after the public disclosure of the contracting conduct alleged in this Section. The temporal relationship is alleged as documentary evidence that the Enterprise’s conduct continued to operate, through attempted suppression of independent investigative authority, beyond the operational period in which the killings occurred and into the period during which federal investigative authority began to reach the conduct alleged in this Indictment.

The Voorhies Parallel Structure at FEMA

695. The operational structure alleged with particularity in Sections 10 and 13 — under which extra-statutory federal authority was exercised by individuals not subjected to the constitutional appointment process, public financial-disclosure requirements, or Senate confirmation — operated at the apex of the Department of Homeland Security through defendant LEWANDOWSKI. The same operational structure operated, during the same period, at the Federal Emergency Management Agency through KARA VOORHIES.

696. KARA VOORHIES was a private contractor brought into the Federal Emergency Management Agency in or about spring 2025 through the operational direction of defendant LEWANDOWSKI. VOORHIES held no documented prior emergency-management experience, no documented prior federal-administration experience, and no statutory qualifications for the operational authority she exercised within the agency. VOORHIES was not nominated to any office requiring Senate confirmation. VOORHIES was not subjected to Senate confirmation. VOORHIES did not submit to the public financial-disclosure requirements applicable to Senate-confirmed federal officials under the Ethics in Government Act, 5 U.S.C. App. § 101 et seq.76

697. Contemporaneous public reporting by The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, CNN, and ABC News, based upon witness accounts of six current and former senior officials who worked with VOORHIES at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, established that VOORHIES, during her tenure, functioned as the “shadow administrator” of the agency.

688.The operational conduct VOORHIES exercised, as documented through those witness accounts, included reviewing and approving or denying federal grants administered through the agency; directing agency personnel to cancel grants she opposed; viewing proprietary federal information to which contractors are not statutorily entitled; weighing in on and, in documented instances, deciding agency personnel matters including hiring, firing, and supervision of federal civil-service employees; and exercising operational authority over agency conduct that the Federal Acquisition Regulation reserves to federal contracting officers and federal employees.77

698. VOORHIES received compensation through the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency contracting framework at a documented rate of approximately $19,000 per week — equivalent to approximately $1,000,000 in annualized compensation — for the period of her service. The documentary record of the contract under which VOORHIES received this compensation has, as of the date of this Indictment, not been located by Federal Emergency Management Agency officials.

699.The Wall Street Journal reporting, as of in or about March 2026, established that “FEMA officials have been unable to locate her contract, and investigators are still seeking it.” The absence of the documentary contract under which VOORHIES received approximately $1,000,000 in federal compensation, as administered through an agency operating under the executive authority of defendant NOEM and the operational direction of defendant LEWANDOWSKI, is alleged in this Indictment as documentary evidence of the operational character of the arrangement under which VOORHIES exercised extra-statutory federal authority.78

700. The substantive content of VOORHIES’s exercise of agency authority reflected the operational priorities of defendants NOEM and LEWANDOWSKI as alleged throughout this Indictment. VOORHIES specifically targeted, for cancellation or impairment, federal disaster-response funding allocated to identified Muslim community organizations; diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives; climate-change-related agency programs; and the State of California.

701.The selective targeting of federal disaster funding by an unaccountable private contractor — operating outside the constitutional appointment process, outside the public financial-disclosure framework, and outside the statutory grant-administration procedures the Federal Emergency Management Agency operates under — is alleged in this Indictment as the operational expression, within the Federal Emergency Management Agency, of the four-category messaging framework created by foreign influence and of the discriminatory enforcement framework alleged throughout this Indictment.

702. The operational consequences of the VOORHIES shadow-administrator structure included documented impairment of federal disaster-response capacity during actual disaster events. Specifically, during the Texas flooding events of approximately July 4, 2025, VOORHIES was unreachable during the early operational period of the floods. Senior Federal Emergency Management Agency personnel were required to conduct emergency-response operations without obtaining the approval VOORHIES had institutionally required for routine agency conduct.

703.The operational paralysis the shadow-administrator structure produced during an actual disaster event is alleged in this Indictment as documentary evidence of the harm the extra-statutory authority structure caused to the public the Federal Emergency Management Agency is statutorily required to protect.

704. Following defendant NOEM’s removal from office on or about March 5, 2026, VOORHIES was terminated from her contractor role at the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The administration’s lawyers acknowledged in a court filing in connection with civil litigation challenging Federal Emergency Management Agency staff reductions that “Ms. Voorhies is no longer employed by or serving as a contractor with DHS or FEMA.” The synchronization of VOORHIES’s departure with the broader synchronized departure cluster of defendants NOEM, LEWANDOWSKI, SHEAHAN, and McLAUGHLIN alleged in Section 17 is alleged in this Indictment as additional documentary evidence of the association-in-fact coordination of the Enterprise’s federal-phase personnel network.

705. Following VOORHIES’s termination, investigators from the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General seized VOORHIES’s government-issued equipment and documents as part of the OIG’s broader probe into Department of Homeland Security contracting practices under defendants NOEM and LEWANDOWSKI. The Department’s own lawyers, in court filings in the same civil litigation, acknowledged that they “have been unable to forensically image VOORHIES’s work phones because the device is in the custody of the watchdog office.” The OIG’s seizure of VOORHIES’s communications devices, the missing-contract evidentiary anchor , and the broader OIG investigationogether establish that VOORHIES is a federal-investigation subject within the scope of the same criminal investigation that encompasses defendants NOEM and LEWANDOWSKI.

SECTION 14 — FEDERAL PROCUREMENT CORRUPTION: THE REPLICATION OF THE FREEDOM WORKS HERE METHOD AT FEDERAL SCALE

706.The procurement-corruption method alleged in Section 9 and documented through the Freedom Works Here contracting sequence was thereafter replicated at federal scale through Department of Homeland Security advertising, recruitment, and operational-support contracts during 2025 and 2026.

707.The method included pre-solicitation coordination with politically connected vendors, procurement structures designed to create documentary justification for predetermined award outcomes, the unauthorized use of competing bidders’ proprietary work product, retaliatory action against officials who refused to provide procedural approval for those outcomes, and the deployment of resulting contracts and media products in furtherance of Enterprise participants’ political and operational objectives.

708.The federal implementation of the method was carried out under the contracting authority held by defendant Lewandowski, designated as a Special Government Employee. This included a gatekeeping and vendor-access system that funneled contract opportunities and operational access to vendors with established financial, operational, and personal ties to Enterprise principals, some of which stemmed from the state-level activities described in Section 9. The actions in this section represented a scaled-up and more costly continuation of the same procurement approach used at the state level, involving the same network of Enterprise-aligned vendors, principals, consultants, and approving officials mentioned throughout the indictment.

The $220,000,000 Department of Homeland Security Advertising Contracts

709.During 2025 and continuing into 2026, the procurement model first deployed through South Dakota’s Freedom Works Here campaign reappeared at the Department of Homeland Security—this time at federal scale. On or about February 13, 2025, DHS awarded two advertising contracts totaling approximately $220,000,000: approximately $143,000,000 to SAFE AMERICA MEDIA LLC and approximately $77,000,000 to PEOPLE WHO THINK LLC. Each award independently dwarfed the entire state campaign alleged in Section 9.

710.The resemblance was operational, not merely thematic. As alleged above, Freedom Works Here used public funds to finance a communications campaign prominently featuring defendant NOEM, relied upon accelerated or restricted procurement, directed public money through politically connected private firms, and obscured portions of the resulting financial relationships behind contractors and subcontractors. The DHS campaign reproduced those features while replacing workforce recruitment with immigration deterrence and federal-enforcement messaging. SAFE AMERICA MEDIA had been organized in Delaware only days before receiving its initial award; PEOPLE WHO THINK was the Louisiana consulting firm previously employed by Governor JEFF LANDRY’s campaign alongside defendant LEWANDOWSKI; and SAFE AMERICA MEDIA subsequently retained THE STRATEGY GROUP COMPANY, whose chief executive was married to DHS spokesperson TRICIA McLAUGHLIN.

711.The progression alleged herein was therefore one of scale and institutional migration. A procurement method tested through South Dakota’s economic-development apparatus—publicly financed messaging centered upon NOEM, politically connected vendors, compressed competition, and limited transparency concerning downstream recipients—was transferred into DHS and expanded from a multimillion-dollar state initiative into a $220,000,000 federal campaign. These parallel features are alleged as evidence of continuity in method and personnel, not, standing alone, as proof that the state and federal procurements constituted a single unlawful transaction.

712. On or about February 13, 2025 — twenty-four days after defendant NOEM assumed office as Secretary of Homeland Security — the Department of Homeland Security executed two no-bid advertising contracts on the same day: an approximately $143,000,000 contract to Safe America Media, LLC, and an approximately $77,000,000 contract to People Who Think, LLC. Safe America Media had been incorporated approximately seven days earlier and, at the time of award, maintained no documented operational history, no commercial office, no website, and no public-facing advertising infrastructure. The simultaneous award of approximately $220,000,000 in noncompetitive contracts to operationally connected entities, including one newly formed entity lacking established infrastructure, is alleged herein as evidence that the contracting outcomes had been determined prior to the formal execution of the procurement process.

713. Safe America Media, LLC is a limited-liability company that, prior to its receipt of federal contracts within the relevant period, possessed no documented commercial history in federal advertising work of the scale and character the awarded contracts encompassed. The entity’s principal officers maintained documented operational and personal relationships with BENJAMIN YOHO, alleged with particularity in Section 9 in connection with The Strategy Group for Media, Inc. and GoWest Media. The same operational network that had been awarded the Freedom Works Here contract under defendant NOEM’s gubernatorial authority received, under defendant NOEM’s federal authority as Secretary of Homeland Security, federal contracts within an order-of-magnitude greater value range.

714. People Who Think, LLC is a limited-liability company that maintained documented operational relationships with the same advertising and political-communications network. People Who Think operated, during the relevant period, in operational coordination with the official Department of Homeland Security communications apparatus administered by defendant TRICIA McLAUGHLIN as alleged at paragraphs 285 through 287 and in Section 15 below. The contractual relationship between the Department and People Who Think placed the firm in a position to receive direction, coordination, and contract-execution decisions from the same federal principal — defendant McLAUGHLIN — whose prior professional relationships included documented overlap with the principals and vendors of the Safe America Media and People Who Think networks.

715. Defendant TRICIA McLAUGHLIN, during the period in which the $220,000,000 in DHS advertising contracts were executed and administered, was married to or engaged to BENJAMIN YOHO, Chief Executive Officer of The Strategy Group for Media, Inc. Yoho’s firm received subcontracted work under the Safe America Media prime contract. The DHS Office of Public Affairs — the office funding the advertising contracts — was administered by defendant McLAUGHLIN as Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Public Affairs throughout the relevant contracting period.

716.The relationship between defendant McLAUGHLIN, BENJAMIN YOHO, and the associated vendor network predated the February 13, 2025 federal contract awards by multiple years. In 2023, YOHO attended defendant NOEM’s gubernatorial inauguration and was seated adjacent to defendant LEWANDOWSKI. Between 2023 and 2024, The Strategy Group received approximately $8,500,000 through the South Dakota “Freedom Works Here” contract alleged in Section 9 to produce media featuring then-Governor NOEM. During the same period, YOHO and The Strategy Group additionally received compensation in connection with the promotion of defendant NOEM’s published memoir and from defendant NOEM’s American Resolve PAC. The overlapping political, commercial, and media relationships alleged herein preceded the subsequent federal contracting relationships involving Safe America Media, People Who Think, and associated subcontractors.

717. Financial records further reflect that approximately $25,000 in compensation flowed from The Strategy Group to Madison Sheahan during the period in which Sheahan held senior roles within defendant NOEM’s gubernatorial administration and political operation. Defendant NOEM thereafter appointed Sheahan, as Secretary of Homeland Security, to serve as Deputy Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, where Sheahan exercised authority relating to the procurement matters alleged elsewhere in this Section.

718. During the period in which the Safe America Media and People Who Think contracts were executed and administered, defendant McLAUGHLIN served as Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Public Affairs and exercised authority over the Department office funding the contracts. During that same period, YOHO’s firm received subcontracted work associated with the contracting flow. Defendant McLAUGHLIN participated in communications, coordination, and operational matters affecting the vendor network while maintaining documented personal and professional relationships with principals associated with those entities. No contemporaneously documented written recusal, ethics-review determination, or formal authorization permitting such participation has been identified.

719.In or about November 2025, when questioned by investigative reporters regarding her relationship to the Safe America Media and Strategy Group contracting flows, defendant McLAUGHLIN publicly stated that she had "fully recused" herself from the contracts and that "my marriage is one thing and work is another. I don't combine them." As of the date of this Indictment, investigators have identified no contemporaneously executed written recusal memorandum relating to the February 13, 2025 contract awards, nor any documented ethics determination authorizing defendant McLAUGHLIN's continued participation in Department offices administering contracts connected to YOHO's vendor network.

720. The Safe America Media and People Who Think contracts, considered together, document the federal-scale execution of the same vendor-direction method documented at the state level in Section 9. The state-level procurement of a $5,000,000 workforce-marketing contract through a directed outcome and the federal-level procurement of approximately $220,000,000 in advertising contracts through directed outcomes are alleged not as discrete incidents but as the deliberate replication of the same procurement-corruption method across two scales of public expenditure, two jurisdictions, and two administrations of governmental authority by the same network of Enterprise-aligned vendors, principals, and approving officials.

The Hendrick Motorsports Sole-Source Award and the ICE Marked Fleet

721. During 2025, the Department of Homeland Security caused federal contracting authority to be exercised in connection with Hendrick Motorsports, LLC, a North Carolina-based motorsports organization. The contracting arrangement involved the production, branding, and deployment of marked vehicles for use by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including the production of an ICE-branded operational fleet bearing the visual presentation of motorsports-branded vehicles.

722. The contracting arrangement was conducted on a sole-source basis, notwithstanding the absence of documented sole-source justification under the Federal Acquisition Regulation governing sole-source procurement at 48 C.F.R. Subpart 6.3. The regulatory framework permits sole-source procurement only upon documented findings that the contracted goods or services are available from only a single responsible source, that compelling urgency precludes competitive procurement, or that other enumerated statutory exceptions apply. None of the regulatory exceptions was documented in connection with the Hendrick Motorsports arrangement.

723. The Hendrick Motorsports arrangement followed in temporal sequence the approximately $130,000 NASCAR vehicle-wrap expenditure alleged at paragraph 257 in connection with the Freedom Works Here state procurement, which had featured defendant NOEM on a motorsports-branded vehicle during the period preceding her federal selection. The federal-scale Hendrick Motorsports arrangement is alleged in this Section as the operational continuation of the political-branding-through-motorsports pattern documented at the state level — replicated, at federal scale, through the marking of an operational federal law-enforcement fleet conducting the immigration-enforcement activity under which the killings of RENÉE NICOLE MACKLIN GOOD and ALEX JEFFREY PRETTI alleged in Section 16 occurred.

724. The use of federal law-enforcement vehicle markings derived from motorsports-branded commercial visual presentation, deployed in the operational conduct of federal immigration-enforcement activity, is alleged as documentary evidence of the operational integration of the Enterprise’s political-branding apparatus with the substantive conduct of federal law-enforcement authority. The marked fleet was not, in operational substance, an immigration-enforcement asset designed in accordance with the institutional traditions of federal law-enforcement vehicle marking. It was the federal-operational expression of the political-branding method , deployed in the operational environment in which the killings alleged in Section 16 thereafter occurred.

725. On or about August 2025, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement executed a sole-source contract with Hendrick Motorsports, LLC, for the procurement of twenty-five Chevrolet Tahoe sport-utility vehicles, with an authorization ceiling of approximately $2,250,00079 and an executed contract value of approximately $1,500,000. The contract was awarded on a noncompetitive basis under a written justification asserting “urgent and compelling need” and asserting that Hendrick Motorsports was “uniquely positioned to fulfill this requirement within the necessary timeframe.” Hendrick Motorsports is owned by Joseph Riddick “Rick” Hendrick III, a documented major contributor to Republican political committees and candidates. An additional $174,000 to $230,000 in federal funds was thereafter expended across three additional vendors for the application of ICE branding wraps to the twenty-five vehicles. The vehicles were thereafter incorporated into a $1.5 million dollar fleet-acquisition program directed by Deputy Director Sheahan as alleged elsewhere herein.

726. During the second half of 2025, Deputy Director Sheahan directed the procurement of approximately 2,500 marked vehicles bearing ICE branding, dark-navy paint, red horizontal stripes, gold “ICE” lettering, the “Defend the Homeland” motto, and a gold decal bearing the name of President Donald Trump on the rear window.

727.The procurement was directed without consultation with ICE’s career Executive Assistant Directors, who would, if consulted, have advised that ICE’s institutional operational practice is to deploy unmarked vehicles in the field — and that conspicuously marked vehicles would compromise the operational integrity of immigration-enforcement activity in the field.

728.After Sheahan’s January 2026 departure from ICE to commence a congressional campaign in Ohio, ICE headquarters initiated a process to amend the remaining undelivered portion of the 2,500-vehicle order to strip the agency markings before delivery and is, as of the date of this Indictment, storing previously delivered marked vehicles in facilities across the country because field agents have declined to operate them.

729. The 2,500-vehicle marked-fleet procurement is alleged in this Indictment as documentary evidence that the operational marking of federal immigration-enforcement vehicles was not, in substance, an immigration-enforcement decision made by the career law-enforcement leadership of ICE. It was a political-branding decision made by Enterprise-aligned political appointees — defendant NOEM, special government employee Lewandowski, and Deputy Director Sheahan — over the objections of the career law-enforcement leadership whose statutory operational responsibility it was to direct the agency’s fleet composition. The marked fleet served the political-presentation interests of the Enterprise and the political careers of defendant NOEM and Sheahan; it actively compromised the operational interests of the agency and the safety of its agents in the field.

The $100,000,000 Wartime Recruitment Contract

730. During 2025, the Department of Homeland Security caused approximately $100,000,000 in federal contracting authority to be deployed in connection with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel recruitment activity. The contracting arrangement, publicly designated through internal documents reviewed in contemporaneous reporting as a “wartime recruitment” strategy, was directed to the recruitment of additional ICE personnel through targeted advertising, content-creator engagement, and geo-targeted communications campaigns directed at identified demographic populations.

731. In or about August 2025, an ICE employee proposed awarding the $100,000,000 ICE recruitment advertising contract to a contractor offering to perform the work for a lower price than Safe America Media and People Who Think — the same two entities that had received the February 13, 2025 $220,000,000 contracts. Then-Deputy Director Madison Sheahan, in internal communications later reviewed by NBC News 80and characterized in contemporaneous reporting by three administration officials, informed the employee that the contract award was “a decision made by the secretary.” Sheahan thereafter summoned the employee to her office, where she berated him until he withdrew his recommendation. The contract was thereafter awarded to Safe America Media and People Who Think — the same network of Enterprise-aligned vendors that had received the February 13, 2025 contracts.

732. The August 2025 Sheahan-employee confrontation is alleged in this Indictment as documentary evidence of three operative facts. First, the contract was not, as the Department thereafter publicly represented, the product of a competitive procurement decision made by career contracting officers. Second, the contract had been directed in advance to specified vendors by defendant NOEM personally, prior to the operation of any procurement-evaluation process. Third, the ICE second-in-command was deployed to coerce a career federal employee into ratifying the directed outcome notwithstanding the employee’s identification of a lower-priced alternative — converting the procurement evaluation, in operational substance, from a competitive process into a directed-disbursement process.

733. The Sheahan coercion of the August 2025 procurement decision is further alleged as documentary evidence of the conflict-of-interest framework at the heart of this Section. Sheahan, who had previously received approximately $25,000 in compensation from YOHO’s Strategy Group while serving in defendant NOEM’s gubernatorial operation as alleged elsewhere herein, was deployed to direct the federal contracting outcome in favor of a contracting network that included YOHO’s firm as a subcontracted beneficiary, on behalf of a federal principal — defendant NOEM — who had selected the contracting network personally.

734. Approximately $8,000,000 of the $100,000,000 recruitment contracting was allocated to influencer and content-creator engagement, including engagement with content creators characterized in the internal contracting documents as “former agents, veterans and pro-ICE creators.” The contracting structure was designed to identify, engage, and compensate content creators whose existing audiences corresponded to the demographic profile from which ICE personnel recruitment was targeted.

735. The $100,000,000 recruitment contracting was authorized within the broader $170,000,000,000 funding allocation for border and interior enforcement appropriated through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, including approximately $75,000,000,000 specifically appropriated for ICE operations over a four-year period. The scale of the recruitment contracting, considered together with the documented integration of content-creator engagement into the federal-enforcement-communications apparatus alleged in Section 11 and Section 15, established the institutional infrastructure under which the influencer-amplification phase of the three-phase escalation method alleged at paragraph 19 was financially supported through federal appropriations.

736. The “wartime recruitment” characterization of the contracting strategy — in connection with personnel recruitment for a federal law-enforcement agency conducting interior immigration-enforcement operations against United States residents and communities — is alleged in this Indictment as documentary evidence of the operational framing through which the Enterprise’s federal-enforcement apparatus was institutionally characterized by its own contracting authority during the relevant period. The framing replicated, at the institutional-procurement level, the four-category messaging framework alleged at paragraphs 11 through 16 — particularly Category Two (Security Grievance) — under which the populations subject to federal immigration enforcement were characterized as the equivalent of wartime adversaries.

737. The $100,000,000 wartime-recruitment contract was, as alleged at paragraphs 497 through 498 above, directed in advance by defendant NOEM personally to Safe America Media and People Who Think — the same two entities that had received the $220,000,000 in self-deportation advertising contracts on February 13, 2025. The same network of Enterprise-aligned vendors, having received approximately $220,000,000 in directed-outcome federal advertising contracts in February 2025, received an additional $100,000,000 in directed-outcome federal recruitment contracts in or after August 2025. The aggregate documented federal contracting flow to the Safe America Media / People Who Think / Strategy Group / Strategic Media Services / Smart Media Group network during calendar year 2025 thereby exceeded $320,000,000 — approximately sixty-four times the value of the state-level Freedom Works Here procurement that the same network had received under defendant NOEM’s gubernatorial authority and that is alleged in Section 9 as the predicate-pattern procurement.

The Camp East Montana / Acquisition Logistics / Disaster Management Group / Amentum Sequence

738. During 2025 and 2026, the Department of Homeland Security caused federal contracting authority to be exercised in connection with detention-capacity expansion and operational-logistics support for federal immigration-enforcement activity. The contracting sequence operated through four principal entities whose successive engagement is alleged in this Section as documentary evidence of the layered subcontracting architecture through which the federal-enforcement apparatus was financially expanded during the relevant period.

739. Camp East Montana was constructed and operated through layered federal contracting arrangements. In July 2025, the United States Army awarded Acquisition Logistics LLC an approximately $1.3 billion contract to construct, operate, and maintain the 5,000-bed facility. Acquisition Logistics thereafter relied upon subcontractors, including Disaster Management Group LLC, to perform portions of the work. Contract-administration responsibility subsequently transferred from the Army to ICE. In April 2026, ICE terminated the Acquisition Logistics contract and selected Amentum Services, Inc. under a separate contract to assume detention, medical, transportation, and facility-management operations.81

740. Acquisition Logistics is a federal-services contractor whose engagement in the detention-capacity-expansion sequence operated to channel a portion of the federal funding through a single corporate intermediary before its further subcontracting to operational performers. The intermediary structure converted a single federal contracting decision into a multi-tier subcontracting arrangement under which the operational performers were structurally removed from the federal contracting officers whose statutory oversight authority would otherwise govern their conduct.

741.Disaster Management Group operated as an additional intermediary within the same subcontracting architecture. The entity’s contracting position within the sequence is alleged in this Section as documentary evidence of the use of disaster-response and emergency-management contracting categories — categories carrying expedited-contracting authorities under the Federal Acquisition Regulation and related emergency-procurement frameworks — to channel federal funding through procurement pathways structured to reduce the institutional-oversight requirements applicable to ordinary federal contracting.

742. Amentum functioned, during the relevant period, as the principal operational contractor performing the on-the-groundwork associated with the Camp East Montana project. The subcontracting structure through which the project operated converted a single federal award into a multi-layered disbursement chain in which federal contracting authority was first vested in Acquisition Logistics, LLC, thereafter routed through Disaster Management Group and additional intermediary entities, and only subsequently translated into operational performance by Amentum personnel and subcontracted labor. The arrangement created a four-tier contracting structure under which multiple intermediary entities received portions of federal funds before the underlying operational services were performed.

743. On or about July 18, 2025, the United States Army awarded the prime Camp East Montana contract to Acquisition Logistics, LLC, a Virginia-based entity operating during the relevant period from a residential-address registration associated with its founder and employing approximately eight to fifty personnel. Prior to the Camp East Montana award, Acquisition Logistics had accumulated approximately $48,000,000 in federal contracting awards across approximately thirty contracts over a seventeen-year period, the largest of which had been approximately $16,000,000. The Camp East Montana task order alone carried an estimated value of approximately $1,300,000,000 — more than eighty-one times larger than the largest prior contract administered by Acquisition Logistics — while the associated indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract ceiling totaled approximately $2,700,000,000. Acquisition Logistics additionally was not registered during the relevant period to conduct business within the State of Texas as required under Texas law governing the registration of foreign business entities.

744. On or about July 28, 2025, Gemini Tech Service, LLC filed a timely bid protest before the United States Government Accountability Office pursuant to the Competition in Contracting Act, 31 U.S.C. § 3553. Under the statute, the filing of the protest triggered an automatic stay of contract performance pending adjudication by the Government Accountability Office. The United States Army nevertheless directed Acquisition Logistics to proceed with performance and did not notify the Government Accountability Office of its override decision until on or about July 31, 2025, approximately three days after performance had already been authorized to continue. In an Opinion and Order publicly released on or about September 18, 2025, the United States Court of Federal Claims expressly determined that the Army “violated the statute by failing to comply with the CICA stay which was in place.”82

745. On or about July 21, 2025 — approximately three days after commencement of the Acquisition Logistics contract and approximately seven days before the Gemini Tech Service protest was filed — Hector Gonzalez, a subcontract laborer working at the Camp East Montana construction site, died in an industrial-truck-related incident. Gonzalez was publicly identified as having been employed by Disaster Management Group, a subcontractor operating under Acquisition Logistics. Disaster Management Group was owned and controlled by Nathan (“Nate”) Albers.

746.Between approximately 2021 and 2024, the United States Department of Labor imposed approximately $17,700,000 in aggregate fines against Disaster Management Group in connection with six separate wage-and-hour enforcement actions. In or about 2019, TentLogix, an additional entity controlled by Albers, was charged by the United States Department of Justice with conspiracy to conceal and harbor approximately ninety-two unauthorized aliens for commercial advantage.

747.TentLogix thereafter entered a four-year corporate-compliance probation agreement, and multiple Albers business associates received federal prison sentences in connection with the matter. Kimberly Albers, spouse of Nathan Albers, subsequently co-chaired a March 2026 fundraising event at Mar-a-Lago alongside Lara Trump.

748. Between approximately December 2025 and January 2026, three immigration detainees died while in custody at Camp East Montana within an approximately forty-four-day period.83 On or about December 3, 2025, FRANCISCO GASPAR-ANDRES, age forty-eight and originally from Guatemala, died at an El Paso hospital after detention at the facility. On or about January 3, 2026, GERALDO LUNAS CAMPOS, age fifty-five and originally from Cuba, died while detained at Camp East Montana. On or about January 14, 2026, VICTOR MANUEL DIAZ, age thirty-six and originally from Nicaragua, died at the facility after having initially been apprehended by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the same operational jurisdiction in which the killings of RENÉE NICOLE MACKLIN GOOD and ALEX JEFFREY PRETTI alleged in Section 16 thereafter occurred. The El Paso County Medical Examiner subsequently ruled the death of LUNAS CAMPOS a homicide and identified the cause of death as “asphyxia due to neck and torso compression.” Contemporaneous detention-oversight reporting cited the homicide determination as the first medical-examiner ruling in at least fifteen years identifying an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainee death connected to staff conduct as homicide.

749. Following the homicide determination, the body of detainee Diaz was transported not to the El Paso County Medical Examiner’s office — which had ruled the Lunas Campos death a homicide — but to the William Beaumont Army Medical Center at Fort Bliss, which, as a military medical facility, does not publicly release autopsy findings. The redirection of forensic-examination authority from the civilian medical examiner that had ruled the prior detention death a homicide to a military medical facility that does not publicly release findings is alleged in this Indictment as documentary evidence of the operational mechanism by which the Enterprise’s federal-detention apparatus, when confronted with adverse forensic findings, restructured the forensic-examination pathway to prevent further adverse findings from reaching the public record.

750. In or about mid-March 2026, the Department of Homeland Security terminated the Acquisition Logistics prime contract and awarded the prime contracting authority on a no-bid, sole-source basis to Amentum Services, Inc. — which had been operating throughout the relevant period as a subcontractor under Acquisition Logistics. Amentum and its affiliated entities have been respondents in not fewer than forty federal-court lawsuits in the preceding eight years and have accumulated not fewer than 112 documented violations of federal regulatory frameworks, including workplace-safety, false-claims, wage-and-hour, employment-discrimination, nuclear-safety, family-medical-leave, labor-relations, and environmental violations. Amentum’s Chief Executive Officer, John Heller, met personally with President Trump in or about September 2025 during the President’s state visit to the United Kingdom — approximately six months prior to Amentum’s elevation from subcontractor to prime contractor at Camp East Montana.

751. The four-tier subcontracting architecture is alleged in this Indictment not as the ordinary operation of the federal-services contracting marketplace, but as documentary evidence of the Enterprise’s method of structuring federal contracting flows to maximize the number of intermediary entities receiving federal funding while minimizing the institutional accountability applicable to any single entity in the chain. The method replicated, at the federal-procurement level, the layered-financial-routing method documented at paragraphs 94 through 154 in connection with the Enterprise’s domestic political-finance architecture.

752. The contracting sequence alleged in this Section — the February 13, 2025 simultaneous execution of two no-bid contracts totaling $220,000,000 to a seven-day-old shell entity and an associated firm; the August 2025 directed-outcome procurement of an additional $100,000,000 to the same network through the coerced acquiescence of a career ICE employee; the August 2025 sole-source procurement of motorsports-affiliated branded vehicles from a Republican-donor-owned entity; the directed procurement during the second half of 2025 of 2,500 marked vehicles that the career law-enforcement leadership of the agency rejected and refused to operate; the July 18, 2025 award of a $1,300,000,000 detention-construction contract, in violation of the Competition in Contracting Act, to an eight-to-fifty-employee Virginia entity unregistered to operate in Texas; the July 21, 2025 on-site death of a subcontract worker employed by an entity whose owner’s spouse co-chaired a March 2026 Mar-a-Lago fundraiser with Lara Trump; the deaths of three detainees in a forty-four-day period at the resulting facility; the homicide ruling against ICE staff in the death of one of those detainees; the redirection of subsequent forensic-examination authority from civilian to military jurisdiction; and the March 2026 elevation of a subcontractor with 112 documented regulatory violations to the prime-contracting position — together constitute the federal-scale execution of the same directed-disbursement, layered-routing, accountability-displacement procurement-corruption method tand at the political-finance level.

The Operational Consequence and the Integration with the Enforcement Apparatus

752. The federal contracting conduct alleged in this Section did not operate in isolation from the federal-enforcement operations alleged in Sections 11 and 13. The procurement architecture supplied the operational capacity through which the federal-enforcement apparatus expanded its personnel base, marked its operational fleet, communicated its institutional narrative, constructed its detention capacity, and performed the operational logistics of the immigration-enforcement activity under which the killings alleged in Section 16 occurred.

753. The procurement architecture is therefore alleged in this Section as the financial infrastructure of the federal-enforcement environment whose construction and operational consequences are alleged throughout this Indictment. The advertising contracts supplied the messaging apparatus through which the pre-investigative attribution method alleged in Section 11 was institutionally administered.

753.The motorsports-branded vehicle marking supplied the visual presentation through which the operational fleet conducting interior immigration enforcement was deployed in the public sphere.

754.The wartime recruitment contracting supplied the personnel expansion through which the federal-enforcement apparatus more than doubled its operational capacity during the relevant period. The detention-capacity contracting sequence supplied the physical and operational infrastructure through which the federal-enforcement apparatus held the individuals subjected to its enforcement activity.

755. The integration of the procurement architecture with the enforcement apparatus is alleged as documentary evidence of the coordinated character of the conduct alleged throughout this Indictment.

756.The financial mechanisms, the personnel mechanisms, the communications mechanisms, and the enforcement mechanisms operated as an integrated apparatus, administered through the apex authority of defendants NOEM and LEWANDOWSKI, executed through the credential-laundered subordinate personnel alleged in Section 10, and financially expanded through the federal procurement conduct alleged in this Section.

757. The procurement-corruption scheme described at the state level in Section 9 and at the federal level in this section followed the same basic patterns in both settings. The pre-solicitation coordination tied to Freedom Works Here showed up again in the federal advertising contracts mentioned in Subsection B. The directed vendor selection was repeated in the sole-source and limited-competition contracts described in Subsections B and C. The political branding tactics, like the NASCAR vehicle wrap and the zero-placement campaign result, resurfaced in the Hendrick Motorsports deal noted in Subsection C. The repeated use of the same approaches, vendors, key players, approving officials, and contracting methods across different jurisdictions and larger public spending is presented as evidence of an ongoing procurement-corruption scheme carried out through the authority structures in Sections 9 and 13, ultimately directed by defendants NOEM and LEWANDOWSKI.

758.The state-federal continuity alleged herein is pleaded as evidence of the continuity element required under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1961 et seq. The conduct did not consist of isolated procurement irregularities occurring independently within separate agencies or jurisdictions. Rather, it consisted of the repeated application of the same procurement method across multiple administrative periods, funding streams, and governmental entities through a common network of vendors, consultants, principals, and approving officials whose participation recurs throughout this Indictment.

759.The conduct alleged in this Section operated through seven integrated mechanisms: (a) the replication of the Freedom Works Here procurement method at federal scale as alleged in Subsection A; (b) the directed award of approximately $220,000,000 in advertising contracts to Enterprise-aligned vendors as alleged in Subsection B; (c) the sole-source Hendrick Motorsports arrangement and marked-fleet deployment as alleged in Subsection C; (d) the $100,000,000 wartime recruitment contracting and content-creator engagement alleged in Subsection D; (e) the four-tier subcontracting architecture alleged in Subsection E; (f) the integration of the procurement architecture with the federal-enforcement apparatus alleged in Subsection F; and (g) the state-federal continuity of method, personnel, and contracting practices alleged throughout this Section.

760. The seven mechanisms operated together to convert federal procurement authority — a domain Congress has subjected to extensive statutory and regulatory constraint to maintain the integrity of federal contracting decisions — into a mechanism for the financial expansion of the federal-enforcement apparatus alleged throughout this Indictment, for the financial benefit of Enterprise-aligned vendors and principals, and for the operational construction of the enforcement environment in which the killings alleged in Section 16 thereafter occurred.

761. The conduct alleged in this Section constitutes, among other predicate offenses:

a) A scheme to defraud the United States and to deprive the public of the intangible right to the honest services of federal contracting officials, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1343 and 1346;

b) Participation in particular matters by federal employees having financial interests in those matters, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 208 and the regulatory framework of 5 C.F.R. Part 2635;

c) False statements and false claims in connection with federal contracting, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1001 and 287;

d) A conspiracy to defraud the United States by impairing the lawful operation of the federal contracting process and the institutional-oversight frameworks Congress has enacted to govern federal procurement, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371 as construed in Hammerschmidt v. United States, 265 U.S. 182 (1924);

e) Violations of the Federal Acquisition Regulation governing sole-source procurement at 48 C.F.R. Subpart 6.3 and competitive procurement at 48 C.F.R. Subpart 6.1; and

f) Theft of, conversion of, and improper application of federal funds, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 641 and 666.

762. The conduct further constitutes predicate acts for the racketeering enterprise alleged in this Indictment.

SECTION 15 — THE McLAUGHLIN COMMUNICATIONS APPARATUS, THE FURY “STRINGS ATTACHED” DOCTRINE, AND THE CREATIVE MISAPPROPRIATION OF AMERICAN CULTURAL OUTPUT

The Apparatus, the Authority, and the Doctrinal Continuity

763.The conduct alleged in this Section concerns the operational execution, through the federal communications authority of the Department of Homeland Security during 2025 and 2026, of the messaging framework alleged at paragraphs 9 through 21, the pre-investigative attribution method alleged in Section 11, and the procurement architecture alleged in Section 14. The federal communications apparatus administered by defendant TRICIA McLAUGHLIN, in her capacity as Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Public Affairs, operated during the relevant period as the institutional mechanism through which the Enterprise’s messaging methodology was converted into official governmental communications carrying the presumptive credibility of federal source attribution.

764.The communications apparatus did not operate in administrative isolation. It operated in coordinated relationship with the operational enforcement authority exercised by defendant MADISON SHEAHAN at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as alleged in Section 10, with the extra-statutory operational authority exercised by defendant COREY LEWANDOWSKI as alleged in Section 13, and with the federal contracting authority through which the $220,000,000 advertising contracting financially sustained the communications apparatus itself. The four institutional dimensions — enforcement, command, contracting, and communications — operated as an integrated apparatus, administered through the apex authority of defendants NOEM and LEWANDOWSKI, and executed through the credential-laundered subordinate personnel alleged in Section 10.

765.The substantive content of the communications defendant McLAUGHLIN administered during her tenure operated through three interlocking categories. First, the pre-investigative attribution method documented in Section 11 — under which enforcement actions were publicly characterized as having been directed against persons engaged in serious criminal conduct in advance of, in lieu of, and frequently in contradiction to the evidentiary findings of competent investigative authorities. Second, the recruitment and institutional-narrative communications through which the federal-enforcement apparatus was publicly characterized in operational and adversarial terms as alleged at paragraphs 412 through 415. Third, the cultural-misappropriation conduct alleged in Subsections C through F below, under which the visual, musical, and narrative work product of unaffiliated cultural figures was appropriated for the operational benefit of the Department’s institutional messaging without authorization, attribution, or compensation. Each of the three categories is alleged with particularity in the paragraphs that follow.

The Fury “Strings Attached” Doctrine

Figure below is offered as demonstrative evidence to depict Fury’s role at state level in preventing federal investigation and concealing the activity of Noem and Lewandowski / making press in accessible

767.The operational principle governing the integration of the Department of Homeland Security communications apparatus with private commercial, cultural, and political-operative relationships was articulated during the relevant period by Enterprise-aligned operative IAN FURY. FURY operated within the broader political-communications network supplying the personnel, vendor relationships, strategic direction, and operational support upon which defendant McLAUGHLIN’s communications apparatus depended. As documented through contemporaneous reporting, witness accounts, and internal coordination communications, FURY repeatedly described such relationships as carrying “strings attached” to the political and operational interests of Enterprise principals.

768.The “strings attached” doctrine functioned as the governing principle through which the communications apparatus administered vendor relationships, cultural engagements, recruitment partnerships, and public-facing communications during the period relevant to this Indictment. Under that doctrine, commercial and cultural relationships were not treated as neutral governmental public-affairs functions. Rather, they were administered in a manner intended to advance the political, operational, and institutional objectives of Enterprise principals, with participation conditioned upon alignment with those objectives.

769.The doctrine is alleged herein as evidence of the knowledge and intent underlying the conduct charged elsewhere herein. The conduct alleged therein did not occur because apparatus personnel failed to understand that commercial brands, cultural figures, copyrighted works, and audience identities were ordinarily subject to authorization, licensing, attribution, consent, and compensation requirements. Rather, the conduct occurred because the governing operational principle of the apparatus treated those requirements as subordinate whenever the deployment of culturally resonant branding, imagery, music, audience identity, or creative work product advanced the institutional interests of the federal-enforcement apparatus.

770.During 2025 and 2026, the federal communications apparatus administered by defendant McLAUGHLIN deployed visual imagery, branding elements, and associative cultural material derived from the IndyCar Series in official Department of Homeland Security communications, recruitment materials, and public-affairs presentations.

771. The deployment leveraged the audience recognition, cultural legitimacy, and demographic reach cultivated by American motorsports to promote recruitment objectives and to normalize the institutional identity of the federal-enforcement apparatus among the target populations identified in the recruitment strategy.

772.The deployment occurred without the formal licensing arrangement, partnership agreement, or institutional authorization that ordinarily governs the commercial use of IndyCar brand material and associative imagery. The Department communications apparatus nevertheless utilized the material in a manner conveying implied institutional association and endorsement through the presumptive authority carried by official federal communications channels.

773.The significance of the IndyCar deployment alleged herein is not limited to the unauthorized use of commercially protected branding material. The deployment converted culturally recognizable elements of American motorsports identity into instruments of federal-enforcement recruitment, institutional branding, and operational normalization. Through official Department communications carrying the authority of federal source attribution, the communications apparatus leveraged the cultural legitimacy and audience recognition cultivated by the IndyCar organization for operational and political purposes unrelated to the ordinary commercial licensing framework through which such associations are typically administered.

The Theo Von Misappropriation

774.THEO VON is a comedian, podcast host, and cultural figure whose principal operational platform during the relevant period was the podcast “This Past Weekend with Theo Von.” The platform’s audience profile — substantially male, substantially under the age of forty, substantially distributed across the cultural and political demographic that the federal-enforcement recruitment contracting identified as the principal recruitment target — corresponded materially to the audience profile the Department of Homeland Security recruitment strategy was institutionally directed to engage.

775.During 2025 and 2026, the federal communications apparatus administered by defendant McLAUGHLIN deployed associative cultural material drawn from Von’s platform, his audience identity, and his cultural positioning in connection with official Department communications, recruitment material, and content-distribution arrangements. The deployment included references to Von’s platform, associative imagery drawing on his cultural presentation, and content-strategy decisions calibrated to the audience profile his platform had cultivated.

776. The associative use of Von’s platform identity was conducted without the formal licensing arrangement, the partnership agreement, or the institutional consent that the commercial use of a cultural figure’s platform identity would ordinarily require. The Department’s communications apparatus thereby appropriated the audience-engagement capital Von had developed through his own commercial and creative investment, deploying that capital in service of federal-enforcement recruitment and institutional-messaging objectives without entering into the arrangements through which Von’s commercial licensees had access to that capital.

777.The appropriation took place during the same period when the federal enforcement apparatus was carrying out interior immigration operations targeting the Latin American, Somali-American, Muslim, and Venezuelan communities mentioned in Section 11, while also showcasing a marked-fleet operational style. The blend of these operational and communication elements — inspired by American motorsports, podcast and comedy culture, and law enforcement aesthetics — created a cultural backdrop in which the federal enforcement apparatus was presented to its recruitment audience as a culturally valid space for male competitive identity.

The Sabrina Carpenter Misappropriation

778. SABRINA CARPENTER is a recording artist whose 2024 and 2025 commercial output produced substantial cultural impact within the United States and globally, including the album “Short n’ Sweet” and associated singles. The artist’s musical work product — including the lyrical content, melodic structure, and associative cultural positioning of her releases during the relevant period — constituted creative work product protected under federal copyright law and the associated framework of musical-licensing and brand-protection authorities.

779. During 2025 and 2026, the federal communications apparatus administered by defendant McLAUGHLIN deployed musical material, lyrical references, and associative cultural content drawn from CARPENTER’s commercial output in connection with official Department of Homeland Security communications, social-media content, and recruitment-adjacent material. The deployment included the use of CARPENTER’s musical work in connection with federal-enforcement imagery, lyrical references to her musical content in official Department communications, and the broader associative use of her cultural positioning as a contemporary cultural figure to lend cultural currency to the federal-enforcement narrative.

780. The use of CARPENTER’s musical work product in connection with federal-enforcement communications was conducted without the licensing agreement, the synchronization license, the master-use license, or the associated artist consent that the commercial use of her work would ordinarily require under the framework of 17 U.S.C. § 101 et seq. The artist publicly objected to the use of her musical work in connection with federal-enforcement communications. The objection was reported in contemporaneous public communications. The federal communications apparatus did not cease the appropriation following the public objection.

781. The conduct alleged hereindid not constitute isolated instances of unauthorized cultural appropriation. Rather, it reflected the continued application of a method repeatedly utilized by Enterprise participants at both the state and federal levels. As alleged in Section 9, Enterprise participants previously obtained competitive advantages through the acquisition, replication, adaptation, or deployment of proprietary work product, creative content, audience-development capital, branding assets, research products, and other commercially valuable intangible property generated through the labor and investment of third parties.

782.The federal communications conduct alleged herein reflected the same operational pattern. Rather than independently creating the cultural capital necessary to engage the targeted audiences identified in federal recruitment and messaging strategies, the apparatus appropriated existing audience trust, brand identity, creative work product, and cultural legitimacy developed by unaffiliated creators and organizations and redeployed those assets in furtherance of Enterprise objectives without obtaining the licenses, permissions, commercial arrangements, or other authorizations ordinarily required.

The Convergence with the Foreign-Policy Information Pipeline

783.The recurring acquisition, appropriation, deployment, and monetization of intellectual, creative, branding, audience-development, and other commercially valuable intangible assets created by third parties appears repeatedly throughout this Indictment, including the procurement conduct , the communications conduct alleged herein, and the political-finance conduct. Across otherwise distinct operational domains, Enterprise participants repeatedly derived value not through the independent creation of substantial original work product, but through the acquisition, repackaging, deployment, and monetization of assets, audiences, branding, research, content, and commercial goodwill developed through the labor and investment of others.

784.The recurrence of that method across multiple jurisdictions, administrative periods, and subject-matter areas is alleged as evidence of Enterprise continuity, common purpose, knowledge, and the existence of a shared operational methodology. The pattern further explains the recurring role of politically connected media, consulting, and communications entities whose principal function was the administration, distribution, and monetization of third-party assets and audience capital rather than the independent production of substantial original work product. Through that method, Enterprise participants converted third-party creative, commercial, and informational value into political, operational, and financial benefit while externalizing much of the underlying development cost and risk.

785.The same communication channels, approval processes, personnel, and messaging systems that circulated cultural material during the relevant period also spread and endorsed the foreign policy threat narratives. The overlap of these roles under a single authority is presented as evidence of a unified operational approach within the communications system and its integration into the broader Enterprise methodology described in this indictment.

The Departure and the Operational Coordination

786.As alleged at paragraph 288, defendant McLAUGHLIN announced her departure from the Department of Homeland Security on or about February 17, 2026. As further alleged therein, contemporaneous reporting established that the departure had been planned for in or about December 2025 but was delayed because of the killings of RENÉE NICOLE MACKLIN GOOD and ALEX JEFFREY PRETTI in January 2026 and the consequent public scrutiny of the Department’s communications apparatus.

787. The delay of defendant McLAUGHLIN’s departure to permit her administration of the official communications regarding the GOOD and PRETTI killings is alleged in this Indictment as documentary evidence that the communications apparatus’s role in the immediate post-killing period was not the administration of accurate governmental information concerning the killings. It was the administration of the pre-investigative attribution method alleged in Section 11, applied to the GOOD and PRETTI killings specifically — the application of which is alleged with particularity in Section 16.

788. The undisclosed financial integration of defendant McLAUGHLIN’s spouse into the Department’s contracting apparatus. During the period of defendant McLAUGHLIN’s tenure as Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, defendant McLAUGHLIN’s spouse BENJAMIN YOHO operated The Strategy Group for Media, Inc., a political consulting and media-production firm. As alleged with particularity in Section 9, YOHO had previously received the Freedom Works Here state-level workforce-marketing contract through the directed-procurement method documented therein. During defendant McLAUGHLIN’s federal service, YOHO’s firm was retained, through subcontract, in connection with the approximately $220,000,000 Department of Homeland Security advertising campaign featuring defendant NOEM — the same advertising campaign that is presently the subject of the federal criminal investigation . The subcontract arrangement is documented in reporting by ProPublica.

789.Defendant McLAUGHLIN represented to ProPublica that the Department “had no visibility into which subcontractors were selected” and that she had “recused herself because of the conflict of interest.” The recusal representation, if accurate, constitutes defendant McLAUGHLIN’s contemporaneous acknowledgment of the disqualifying financial conflict 18 U.S.C. § 208 prohibits.

790.The representation that the Department lacked visibility into subcontractor selection is materially inconsistent with the documented operational structure under which defendant NOEM personally required sign-off on all Department contracts and grants exceeding approximately $100,000 in value, and is presently the subject of the federal Inspector General investigation.

791. The Assistant Secretary administering the Department’s official communications apparatus during the period relevant to the killings of GOOD and PRETTI was, during that same period, married to the principal of a firm receiving subcontracted revenue from the Department’s largest contemporaneous contracting decision.84

792. In an interview published by The New York Times in or about January 2026 — the same month in which RENÉE NICOLE MACKLIN GOOD was killed — defendant McLAUGHLIN described herself as “in charge of everything” disseminated through the Department of Homeland Security’s social-media communications channels. The statement is alleged herein as evidence of defendant McLAUGHLIN’s direct operational responsibility over Department public-messaging activity during the period in which the post-killing communications concerning GOOD and PRETTI were issued.

793. The departure of defendant McLAUGHLIN, announced on or about February 17, 2026 and made effective on or about February 27, 2026, occurred within the synchronized departure cluster of defendants SHEAHAN, NOEM, and LEWANDOWSKI alleged in Section 17 below, and within the contemporaneous reassignment and announced retirement of U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commander-at-Large GREGORY BOVINO alleged at paragraph 290.

794. The ten-day interval between defendant McLAUGHLIN’s announcement and her effective departure permitted continued administration of the Department’s communications apparatus during the immediate post-killing public-scrutiny period. Defendant McLAUGHLIN’s own contemporaneous parting statement — that she was “not leaving the fight,” that she was “not going anywhere,” and that her continued involvement would “just look different” — is alleged as documentary evidence that her departure from formal Department service was not the cessation of her operational participation in the framework alleged in this Indictment, but the relocation of that participation outside the institutional accountability mechanisms applicable to federal officeholders.

795.The circumstances of defendant McLAUGHLIN’s departure did not stand alone. Her exit coincided with the broader departure cluster alleged herein and followed the killings of GOOD and PRETTI and the resulting scrutiny of the Department’s operations. At the same time, McLAUGHLIN possessed acknowledged authority over Department communications; her husband, YOHO, held a contemporaneous financial interest arising from subcontracted Department work; and McLAUGHLIN publicly stated that her participation in the administration’s work would continue after she left federal office.

796.Considered together, these facts are alleged as evidence of coordinated withdrawal, not independent career movement. Formal titles changed, but the underlying relationships, financial interests, communications functions, and common objectives persisted. Enterprise participants thereby continued operating through a network that crossed the boundary between public office and private activity and did not depend upon any participant’s continued federal employment.

797.The coordinated departure is further alleged to have served three related purposes: preserving the Enterprise’s federal-phase operations outside the accountability structure governing federal officeholders; limiting investigative access to the conduct alleged in Sections 11, 13, and 16; and relocating personnel, communications, and financial activity into private channels subject to fewer employment-related disclosure, ethics-review, records-preservation, and internal-investigative requirements. The departure itself is not alleged as unlawful. Its evidentiary significance arises from its timing, its coordination with the broader departure cluster, McLAUGHLIN’s continuing operational commitment, and the persistence of the personal and financial relationships through which the alleged conduct could continue after her formal government service ended.

The Conduct, the Pattern, and the Statutory Predicates

798. The conduct alleged in this Section operated through seven integrated mechanisms: the placement of defendant McLAUGHLIN into command of the federal communications apparatus through the credential-laundering method alleged in Section 10; the operational integration of the apparatus with the enforcement, contracting, and command authorities alleged in Sections 10, 13, and 14; the institutional administration of the apparatus under the “strings attached” doctrine alleged in Subsection B; the unauthorized appropriation of cultural work product from the IndyCar Series, THEO VON, SABRINA CARPENTER, and additional cultural figures alleged in Subsections C through E; the convergence of the domestic cultural-appropriation conduct with the foreign-policy information-laundering pipeline alleged in Subsection F; the undisclosed financial integration of defendant McLAUGHLIN’s spouse into the Department’s contracting apparatus and the materially inconsistent public recusal representation alleged in Subsection G; and the coordination of the apparatus’s role in the immediate post-killing period as alleged elsewhere herein.

799. The seven mechanisms operated together to convert the federal communications authority of the Department of Homeland Security — authority Congress and the public have invested in the production of accurate governmental information and the lawful administration of agency public affairs — into an integrated cultural-and-political-messaging instrument operated for the substantive political and operational interests of the Enterprise principals, and administered through the systematic appropriation of cultural and creative work product produced by figures who had not authorized that appropriation and who, in documented instances, publicly objected to it.

800. The conduct alleged in this Section constitutes, among other predicate offenses:

a) A scheme to defraud the United States and to deprive the public of the intangible right to honest services of federal communications officials, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1343 and 1346;

b) Unauthorized use of copyrighted material in violation of the federal copyright framework at 17 U.S.C. § 501 et seq., where such use was conducted for the financial and operational benefit of the Enterprise and its principals;

c) False or misleading official governmental communications deployed to deprive identified individuals and communities of rights, privileges, and immunities secured by the Constitution and laws of the United States, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 242, in coordinated operation with the pre-investigative attribution method alleged in Section 11;

d) Participation in particular matters by federal employees having financial interests in those matters, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 208 and the regulatory framework of 5 C.F.R. Part 2635, including with respect to the contracting matters alleged at paragraphs 405 through 407; and

e) A conspiracy to defraud the United States by impairing the lawful operation of the federal communications and public-affairs processes, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371 as construed in Hammerschmidt v. United States, 265 U.S. 182 (1924).

SECTION 16-MINNESOTA AS A PRESELECTED OPERATIONAL THEATER

801. The federal enforcement activity subsequently designated Operation Metro Surge did not arise in response to a sudden or unforeseen public-safety emergency developing in Minnesota during January 2026. Rather, the operation occurred within a political, communications, and organizational environment in which Minnesota had been repeatedly identified by Enterprise participants as a symbolic and operational target for years before the deployment occurred.

802.Beginning no later than 2020 and continuing through the period relevant to this Indictment, Enterprise participants repeatedly utilized Minnesota, its elected officials, and identifiable Minnesota communities as recurring subjects of coordinated messaging, fundraising, recruitment, and political mobilization campaigns. The communications alleged herein did not merely criticize specific policy decisions. They repeatedly portrayed Minnesota as a jurisdiction characterized by governmental illegitimacy, public disorder, fraud, criminal infiltration, failed governance, and diminished public safety.

803.The messaging served multiple operational objectives simultaneously. It generated financial contributions, reinforced donor engagement, created audience segmentation opportunities, supported recruitment initiatives, and established a continuing public narrative portraying Minnesota as an exceptional jurisdiction requiring extraordinary governmental intervention.

804.Enterprise participants thereafter expanded the narrative beyond criticism of elected officials and governmental institutions to include repeated public characterization of specific Minnesota communities, immigrant populations, and Somali American populations as subjects of fraud, criminality, security concern, or governmental failure. These characterizations were disseminated through political communications, media appearances, fundraising appeals, social-media campaigns, governmental communications, and influencer-amplification mechanisms alleged elsewhere herein.

805.Simultaneously, Enterprise participants publicly advanced policy frameworks asserting that immigration-enforcement activity was not limited to traditional border jurisdictions and that every state constituted a potential immigration-enforcement theater. Those frameworks were developed, published, advocated, and operationalized before the events giving rise to Operation Metro Surge and before any claimed January 2026 emergency condition.

806.Enterprise participants possessed prior knowledge that extraordinary law-enforcement deployments, checkpoint-style enforcement operations, and emergency security measures implicate questions of jurisdiction, governmental authority, and intergovernmental consent. Before entering federal office, defendant NOEM publicly challenged checkpoint operations conducted by the Oglala Sioux Tribe and Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, asserting that roadway-enforcement authority was constrained by jurisdictional limits. Defendant NOEM likewise publicly acknowledged, in connection with National Guard deployment decisions during periods of civil unrest, that military deployments ordinarily required requests, consent, or coordination from affected governmental authorities. These prior statements are alleged as evidence that Enterprise participants understood the jurisdictional and consent-based implications of extraordinary governmental interventions before the events giving rise to Operation Metro Surge.

807.The significance of the Minnesota-focused communications alleged herein is not that any single communication independently caused subsequent governmental action. Rather, the communications collectively portrayed Minnesota to donors, supporters, governmental personnel, and the public as a jurisdiction uniquely associated with fraud, disorder, criminality, governmental illegitimacy, and immigration-related threats. The repeated dissemination of those narratives is alleged as evidence of a sustained effort to establish a factual predicate for the governmental actions that followed.

808.By the time federal personnel commenced Operation Metro Surge, the public predicate necessary to justify extraordinary federal intervention had already been constructed. The communications architecture, personnel architecture, policy architecture, and donor architecture alleged throughout this Indictment had been developed and deployed over a period of years. The operation therefore occurred not as the beginning of the Enterprise’s Minnesota-focused activities, but as the operational culmination of those activities.

809.The temporal convergence of the Minnesota-focused messaging campaigns, the repeated public promotion of Somali-community fraud narratives, the advocacy of nationwide interior-enforcement frameworks, the placement of Enterprise-aligned personnel within federal decision-making positions, and the subsequent deployment of Operation Metro Surge within the same geographic jurisdiction supports the inference that Minnesota functioned as a preselected operational theater rather than a jurisdiction selected solely in response to emergent conditions arising in January 2026

810.Accordingly, Operation Metro Surge is alleged herein not as an isolated enforcement initiative, but as the operational implementation of objectives for which Enterprise participants had previously constructed political support, bureaucratic alignment, donor activation, and perceived public necessity through years of coordinated messaging and organizational activity.

Knowledge and foreseeability of consequences

811. The allegations in this Section are not offered to establish that defendants were legally responsible for every subsequent act committed by independent third parties. Rather, they are offered to establish knowledge, intent, and state of mind. During the period relevant to this Indictment, defendants repeatedly acknowledged through litigation positions, public statements, security practices, threat assessments, and enforcement decisions that rhetoric, public identification of individuals, targeted communications, and threat-framing narratives could foreseeably contribute to harassment, intimidation, reputational injury, public hostility, threats, and violence.

812. Defendants’ own conduct reflected that understanding. On multiple occasions, defendants and aligned officials characterized public disclosure of personal information, publication of addresses, identification of government personnel, online criticism, protest activity, and targeted communications as conduct capable of producing foreseeable security risks. Defendants responded to such activity with extraordinary protective measures, including enhanced security details, expanded protection for family members, military housing accommodations, threat investigations, and law-enforcement intervention.

813. In or about 2019, the administration of defendant KRISTI NOEM defended South Dakota’s so-called “riot boosting” statute in federal litigation. The statute imposed civil liability upon persons alleged to have directed, advised, encouraged, or solicited participation in protest activity that later became violent. In defending the statute, the State necessarily advanced the proposition that speech encouraging protest activity could foreseeably contribute to subsequent unlawful conduct and therefore justify legal consequences. The significance of the litigation is not that defendants adopted every legal position advanced therein, but that defendant NOEM’s administration affirmatively engaged the constitutional, evidentiary, and practical question of when rhetoric may contribute to violence and public disorder.

814. The proceedings further provided defendants actual notice that governmental determinations concerning speech, encouragement, identification, and public advocacy carry foreseeable consequences extending beyond the communications themselves. Defendants therefore possessed direct experience with the proposition that rhetoric can influence subsequent conduct and may produce consequences requiring governmental response.

815. Defendants thereafter repeatedly acted in accordance with that understanding. Beginning in or about 2025, defendant NOEM relocated into federally provided military housing following public disclosure of her address, online criticism, public targeting, and related security concerns. During the same period, STEPHEN MILLER relocated his family following publication of personal information, demonstrations near his residence, and public targeting. Other senior officials, including PAM BONDI, PETE HEGSETH, and MARCO RUBIO, likewise received enhanced protective measures following threats, demonstrations, public criticism, or public identification. In each instance, defendants treated rhetoric, identification, and targeted communications as conduct capable of producing foreseeable danger notwithstanding the absence of any completed physical attack.

816. Defendants further publicly asserted that publication of identifying information concerning federal personnel created foreseeable risks of harassment, intimidation, threats, and violence. Through official statements concerning immigration-enforcement personnel and related operations, defendants repeatedly argued that disclosure of identities, locations, and personal information could expose individuals to real-world harm. The significance of these statements is not the accuracy of the underlying threat assessments. Rather, the statements constitute direct evidence that defendants themselves understood the causal relationship between public communications and foreseeable consequences.

817. Defendants likewise demonstrated awareness of the consequences associated with public attribution of criminality prior to adjudication. In the matters involving CHARLES CAIN MERRIVAL and KILMAR ARMANDO ABREGO GARCIA, governmental officials and aligned communications channels publicly associated identified individuals with criminal, cartel-adjacent, gang-adjacent, trafficking-related, terrorism-adjacent, or public-safety threat narratives before the completion of judicial proceedings. Subsequent litigation, defense objections, factual disputes, and public controversy provided additional notice that public threat attribution may influence public perception, generate hostility, create reputational injury, and produce consequences extending beyond the courtroom.

818.On or about January 7, 2026, a social-media user operating under the handle “@CLAWSON” posted on the social-media platform X: “Watertown, SD (where Kristi Noem is from) is only a 3.5 hour drive from Minneapolis. In case any pissed off Americans were curious.”

819.The post appeared within ongoing online discussions concerning locations at which demonstrators could protest federal immigration-enforcement activity and locations associated with defendant NOEM outside the Minneapolis metropolitan area.

820.On or about January 8, 2026, LINDSEY RIES SCHWINGER, a lifelong resident of Watertown, South Dakota, responded to the post, stating: “I’ve unfortunately had a few encounters with her in town, usually with her grandkids. Watertown has been her safe space for too long. I invite you all to make her feel as welcome as you want here! Her son-in-law is also on our city council,” accompanied by emojis expressing disapproval or concern.

821.On or about January 20, 2026, personnel assigned to the United States Secret Service visited the residence of SCHWINGER in Watertown, South Dakota, and questioned her concerning the social-media comment described above. The visit occurred notwithstanding the absence of any identified violent act, criminal conduct, or express threat of violence contained within the comment itself.

822.During the encounter, Secret Service Agent RANDY WALKER advised SCHWINGER that he was assigned to protective responsibilities associated with defendant NOEM and further represented that protective resources had been extended to members of defendant NOEM’s immediate and extended family, including adult children, spouses, and grandchildren.

823.WALKER further advised SCHWINGER that investigative inquiries had been conducted concerning multiple individuals associated with her, including persons within her neighborhood and social-media network.85

824.On or about April 3, 2026, Eyewitness 10 reported encountering conduct he perceived as intimidation while photographing defendant NOEM in Yankton, South Dakota. According to the witness, the encounter was immediately followed by the approach of multiple masked individuals whom he believed, based upon their appearance and conduct, to be federal immigration-enforcement personnel.

825.The photographing of public officials performing public functions is not, standing alone, unlawful conduct. The significance of the incident alleged herein is not the act of photography itself, but the disparate treatment of individuals engaged in documenting defendant NOEM’s public appearances. As alleged elsewhere in this Indictment, defendant NOEM routinely participated in extensive professional photography, videography, media-production, and publicity campaigns funded through governmental, political, and commercial channels.

826.Those activities demonstrate defendant NOEM’s longstanding awareness that her image, likeness, public appearances, and associated media content possessed substantial political, promotional, fundraising, and economic value. The incident alleged herein is offered as evidence that defendant NOEM distinguished between authorized exploitation of that value and unauthorized documentation by members of the public.

827.At the time of the encounter, SCHWINGER had not been charged with any criminal offense arising from the comment, had no identified history of violent conduct known to the interviewing agent, and had made no express threat of violence against defendant NOEM or any member of her family.

828.The allegations set forth herein are offered not to challenge the authority of the United States Secret Service to conduct protective investigations, but as evidence concerning the scope of protective resources deployed in connection with defendant NOEM and members of her family, including individuals residing within the Watertown, South Dakota community. The relationship between such protective measures, the governmental positions held by family members, and the exercise of governmental authority is alleged elsewhere in this Indictment.

829. Through the litigation, security practices, public controversies, threat assessments, enforcement actions, and official statements described herein, defendants acquired actual knowledge that rhetoric, public identification, targeted communications, and threat-framing narratives may foreseeably contribute to harassment, intimidation, threats, public hostility, reputational injury, and violence. Notwithstanding that knowledge, defendants continued deploying materially similar messaging methods against identified immigrant, Muslim, Somali-American, Latin American, Venezuelan, political, and protest communities through governmental communications, political messaging, influencer amplification, fundraising appeals, and enforcement-related public statements.

830.The allegations in this Section are offered solely on the questions of knowledge, intent, and foreseeability. They establish that defendants possessed actual notice, derived from their own conduct and prior experience, that the messaging methods alleged elsewhere in this Indictment carried foreseeable consequences extending beyond political persuasion and into the real-world treatment of the individuals and communities toward whom those methods were directed.

SECTION 17 — THE KILLINGS OF RENÉE NICOLE MACKLIN GOOD AND ALEX JEFFREY PRETTI

The Constructed Enforcement Environment

831. The killings alleged in this Section did not occur as the product of independent operational decisions by individual federal agents responding to immediate exigent circumstances. They occurred within an enforcement environment the Enterprise had constructed and sustained over years through the coordinated mechanisms alleged throughout this Indictment.

832. That environment was constituted by the convergence of six documented elements, each alleged with particularity in the preceding Sections: the credential-laundering placement of federal command personnel without statutory law-enforcement qualifications, alleged in Section 10; the extra-statutory operational authority exercised by defendant LEWANDOWSKI outside the constitutional appointment process, alleged in Section 13; the pre-investigative attribution method through which federal enforcement actions were publicly characterized in advance of evidentiary findings, alleged in Section 11; the procurement architecture through which the federal-enforcement apparatus was financially expanded and visually marked, alleged in Section 14; the communications apparatus through which the Enterprise’s messaging framework was converted into official governmental authority, alleged in Section 15; and the four-category messaging framework through which identified communities were institutionally characterized as security threats, alleged at paragraphs 9 through 21.

833.The convergence of those six elements produced an enforcement environment in which federal agents conducted interior immigration-enforcement activity under the documented institutional understanding that public attribution of criminality, terrorism, or threat status would precede and survive independent evidentiary review, and in which the constitutional, statutory, and administrative safeguards ordinarily governing the exercise of federal law-enforcement authority were operationally subordinated to the political and enforcement objectives of the Enterprise.

834.The killings of RENÉE NICOLE MACKLIN GOOD and ALEX JEFFREY PRETTI by federal agents in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in January 2026 occurred within that enforcement environment and under the same command, communications, and operational framework alleged throughout this Indictment.

The January 7, 2026 Killing of RENÉE NICOLE MACKLIN GOOD

835. RENÉE NICOLE MACKLIN GOOD was a thirty-seven-year-old mother and a resident of the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metropolitan area. At the time of her death she was a citizen of the United States with no documented criminal history supporting the characterization subsequently disseminated by the federal communications apparatus.

836. On or about January 7, 2026, federal agents operating under the command structure alleged in Sections 10 and 13 conducted an enforcement operation in Minneapolis, Minnesota, designated as “Operation Metro Surge” and identified by the Department of Homeland Security in contemporaneous public communications as the largest interior immigration-enforcement operation ever conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. During the operation, federal immigration-enforcement agent JONATHAN ROSS shot and killed RENÉE NICOLE MACKLIN GOOD by discharging his firearm into her vehicle while GOOD was seated in the driver’s seat of her Honda Pilot sport-utility vehicle. Contemporaneous bystander video evidence subsequently disclosed through litigation established that agent ROSS fired three rounds into GOOD’s vehicle from the side of the vehicle, that GOOD was struck and fatally wounded, and that immediately following the discharge of his firearm, agent ROSS exclaimed words to the effect of “f---ing b----” as GOOD’s vehicle crashed into a parked vehicle. The contemporaneous verbal characterization of GOOD by agent ROSS, made within seconds of the discharge of his firearm and the resulting fatal wounding of a thirty-seven-year-old United States citizen mother, is alleged in this Indictment as documentary evidence of the operational and psychological environment within which the killing occurred — an environment in which the person killed was treated, by the federal agent who killed her, not as a member of the public whose life federal authority is statutorily required to protect, but as an object of contempt to be verbally degraded at the moment of her death.

837. The video evidence of the encounter, subsequently disclosed through litigation arising from the killing, did not support the institutional characterization disseminated by the Department of Homeland Security communications apparatus in the hours and days following the killing. The video evidence reflected an encounter in which GOOD did not present the threat condition the apparatus’s subsequent attribution implied; in which agent ROSS positioned himself in front of and beside GOOD’s stationary vehicle before discharging his firearm; and in which the operational decision to discharge a firearm at GOOD was not supported by the evidentiary predicate the apparatus’s official communications subsequently attributed. Following the disclosure of the video evidence, the State of Minnesota and the cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, through Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, filed a federal civil action on or about January 12, 2026 challenging Operation Metro Surge as a violation of the First Amendment, the Tenth Amendment, and the Administrative Procedure Act, and seeking immediate termination of the operation. The American Civil Liberties Union and ACLU of Minnesota thereafter filed Hussen v. Noem, challenging the operation’s documented practice of warrantless arrests and racial profiling, and Tincher, challenging the documented federal retaliation against protesters and observers of the enforcement activity.

838. Within hours of the killing, the Department of Homeland Security communications apparatus administered by defendant McLAUGHLIN, alleged with particularity in Section 15, publicly characterized GOOD in terms drawing on the four-category messaging framework alleged at paragraphs 9 through 21, including characterizations associating GOOD with terrorism. The characterization was disseminated through official Department channels, through aligned media platforms, and through the three-phase escalation method alleged at paragraph 19. No evidentiary foundation for the characterization was contemporaneously disclosed, and the subsequent disclosure of video evidence did not support it.

839. The pre-investigative public attribution of terrorism against a thirty-seven-year-old citizen mother killed by federal agents in the course of interior immigration-enforcement activity, disseminated through the official communications apparatus within hours of the killing and before any competent investigative authority had developed an evidentiary record, was the documented application of the pre-investigative attribution method alleged in Section 11 to the GOOD killing specifically. The attribution was not corrected following the subsequent disclosure of video evidence that did not support it. No public retraction was issued. The characterization remained in the public record as an official Department determination, replicating the absence-of-correction feature alleged at paragraphs 300 through 306 in connection with the MERRIVAL, ABREGO GARCIA, and HERNÁNDEZ ROMERO matters.

840. On or about January 24, 2026 — seventeen days after the killing of RENÉE NICOLE MACKLIN GOOD — federal U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents operating within Operation Metro Surge and under the same command structure conducted an enforcement operation in Minneapolis during which ALEX JEFFREY PRETTI was shot and killed. At the time he was killed, PRETTI was engaged in the documented activity of filming federal immigration-enforcement operations on a public Minneapolis street using a recording device. The filming of public law-enforcement activity by a private citizen is protected expressive activity under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution as construed by the federal courts of appeals. PRETTI’s documented engagement in First Amendment-protected expressive activity at the moment of his killing is alleged in this Indictment as the predicate condition under which the killing occurred. The agents who killed PRETTI operated, at the time, under the same operational direction of defendant LEWANDOWSKI alleged in connection with the GOOD killing as alleged elsewhere herein.

The January 24, 2026 Killing of ALEX JEFFREY PRETTI

841. ALEX JEFFREY PRETTI was a thirty-seven-year-old registered nurse employed by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs and a citizen of the United States. Prior to the events alleged herein, PRETTI had no documented criminal history supporting the threat-based characterizations subsequently disseminated through the Department of Homeland Security communications apparatus following his death. PRETTI's status as a federal healthcare employee is relevant because the public-attribution method alleged in this Indictment was deployed against him notwithstanding his membership in the very federal workforce defendants publicly claimed to support, protect, and defend.

842. On or about January 24, 2026 — seventeen days after the killing of RENÉE NICOLE MACKLIN GOOD — federal agents operating under the same command structure conducted an enforcement operation in Minneapolis during which ALEX JEFFREY PRETTI was shot and killed. The agents who killed PRETTI operated, at the time, under the same operational direction of defendant LEWANDOWSKI alleged in connection with the GOOD killing at paragraph 465.

843. The video evidence of the encounter, subsequently disclosed through litigation, did not support the institutional characterization disseminated by the Department of Homeland Security communications apparatus in the hours and days following the killing. PRETTI’s identity as a Department of Veterans Affairs nurse — an identity that placed him within the population of federal employees whose service was statutorily protected — was not protective against the operational and communications conduct alleged in this Section.

844. The video evidence of the PRETTI encounter, subsequently disclosed through litigation and contemporaneously available through bystander recordings disseminated in the immediate post-shooting period, established that the firearm PRETTI lawfully possessed on his person was not visible to federal agents until after federal agents had placed their hands on PRETTI; that the firearm was taken from PRETTI’s possession by federal agents approximately seconds before PRETTI was shot; and that PRETTI was therefore not “brandishing” a firearm at the moment he was killed, notwithstanding defendant NOEM’s public attribution to the contrary disseminated through the Department’s official communications apparatus within hours of the killing. The disclosed video evidence directly contradicts the substantive factual predicate upon which defendant NOEM’s public attribution of “domestic terrorism” against PRETTI was constructed.

845. The institutional consequence of the disclosed video evidence. The contradiction between the institutional characterizations disseminated by the Department’s communications apparatus and the video evidence subsequently disclosed produced, in the period from January 7, 2026 through approximately March 5, 2026, sustained public scrutiny of the Department of Homeland Security, of defendant NOEM personally, and of the federal-enforcement framework alleged throughout this Indictment. The scrutiny culminated in defendant NOEM’s appearance, on or about March 3, 2026, before the Senate Judiciary Committee — defendant NOEM’s first congressional appearance following the killings of GOOD and PRETTI. During the hearing, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, including Senator RICHARD DURBIN, Senator ADAM SCHIFF, and Senator THOM TILLIS, separately questioned defendant NOEM concerning her public attributions of “domestic terrorism” to GOOD and PRETTI. Senator DURBIN asked defendant NOEM whether it was “so hard to say you were wrong.” Defendant NOEM declined to retract her public attributions of “domestic terrorism” against GOOD and PRETTI, declined to apologize for the public attributions, and declined to acknowledge that the attributions were unsupported by the video evidence subsequently disclosed. Senator SCHIFF, pressing defendant NOEM on the absence of evidentiary basis for the “domestic terrorism” characterizations, asked, “How is the public supposed to believe anything your agency says or finds?” Senator TILLIS, a Republican member of the Senate, characterized the Department of Homeland Security under defendant NOEM’s leadership as “a disaster” and “a failure” during approximately ten minutes of floor questioning, and called for defendant NOEM’s resignation.

846.The conduct of defendant NOEM at the March 3, 2026 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing is alleged herein as documentary evidence of the operational completion of the pre-investigative attribution method alleged in Section 11 as applied to the GOOD and PRETTI killings. As alleged at paragraphs 300 through 306, the method depended not merely upon the initial public attribution, but upon the maintenance of that attribution after the underlying evidentiary record became available. During sworn testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, defendant NOEM declined to retract the Department’s public characterizations of GOOD and PRETTI notwithstanding the disclosure of video evidence, the filing of contemporaneous federal civil actions, sustained bipartisan congressional criticism, and the absence of publicly disclosed evidentiary support for the attributions.

847.The significance of defendant NOEM’s testimony is not that she defended departmental conduct before Congress, but that she maintained the public attributions after the contradictory evidentiary record had become available.

848.The maintenance of those attributions by the Cabinet principal responsible for the communications apparatus that disseminated them is alleged as documentary evidence of the institutional preservation of the pre-investigative attribution method following public challenge to its factual basis. The testimony is further alleged as evidence relevant to defendants’ knowledge, intent, and state of mind with respect to the conduct alleged in this Section.

849. Within hours of the killing, the Department of Homeland Security communications apparatus publicly characterized PRETTI in terms drawing on the same four-category messaging framework deployed against GOOD, including characterizations associating PRETTI with terrorism.

850.The characterization was disseminated through the same official Department channels, the same aligned media platforms, and the same three-phase escalation method. No evidentiary foundation for the characterization was contemporaneously disclosed, and the subsequent disclosure of video evidence did not support it. No public retraction was issued.

851. The killing of PRETTI seventeen days after the killing of GOOD, under the same command structure, through the same operational mechanisms, followed by the same pre-investigative attribution method, is incompatible with the characterization of either killing as an isolated operational decision by individual federal agents. The temporal proximity, the operational consistency, and the communications consistency between the two killings establish that the conditions producing each were the documented operational consequence of the constructed enforcement environment alleged in Subsection A.

The False Immunity Assurances Given to ICE Personnel

852. The operational conduct of the federal agents who killed GOOD and PRETTI did not occur in institutional isolation from the command authority under which they operated. During the period preceding the killings, defendants NOEM, LEWANDOWSKI, and SHEAHAN, individually and in coordination with one another, communicated to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel — through internal Department channels, through operational briefings, and through institutional-messaging communications — that ICE personnel conducting interior immigration-enforcement activity would be protected from accountability for operational consequences arising from their enforcement conduct.

853. The communications were not framed as accurate institutional guidance concerning the statutory immunity framework governing federal law-enforcement personnel. They were framed as assurances of institutional protection extending beyond the framework Congress and the federal judiciary had established. The substantive content of the assurances, as documented through contemporaneous witness accounts and through subsequent litigation disclosures, included representations that operational decisions made in the course of enforcement activity would not be subjected to the ordinary internal-affairs, professional-responsibility, prosecutorial, and civil-liability review mechanisms applicable to federal law-enforcement personnel.

854. The false immunity assurances are alleged in this Indictment as documentary evidence of the institutional environment in which the federal agents who killed GOOD and PRETTI operated. The agents did not act under the documented institutional understanding that the statutory and judicial framework governing federal law-enforcement use of force constrained their conduct.

855. They acted under the documented institutional understanding, communicated to them by the principals alleged in this Indictment, that the framework did not apply to them — that the operational environment within which they conducted enforcement activity was, in operational substance, an environment in which the constitutional and statutory limitations on federal law-enforcement authority had been suspended for the purposes of the operations they were conducting.

856. The false immunity assurances replicated, at the operational-personnel level, the institutional understanding documented at paragraph 374 in connection with defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s own statement that he could “do whatever the fuck I want.” He further stated “DJT will pardon me”86 The principle that the framework constraining federal authority did not bind the apex principal was communicated downward through the command structure to the subordinate operational personnel conducting the enforcement activity. The two killings alleged in this Section were the operational consequence of that downward communication.

857. The assurances were materially false. The statutory immunity framework governing federal law-enforcement personnel does not confer immunity from federal criminal prosecution for the unlawful use of deadly force. The federal judiciary’s qualified-immunity framework does not confer immunity from civil liability for conduct violating clearly established constitutional rights. The institutional review mechanisms applicable to federal law-enforcement personnel — internal-affairs investigation, professional-responsibility review, federal grand-jury inquiry, and civil-rights litigation — operated, and continue to operate, notwithstanding the assurances. The assurances were institutional misrepresentations made to subordinate federal personnel for the operational purpose of inducing enforcement conduct the principals making the assurances could not lawfully authorize.

The “DJT Will Pardon Me” Statement

858. Following one of the killings alleged in this Section, the federal agent who had discharged the firearm causing the death made a statement, documented through contemporaneous witness accounts and subsequent litigation disclosures, that “DJT will pardon me” — referring to President DONALD J. TRUMP. The statement was made in the immediate aftermath of the killing, in the presence of other federal personnel, and in the context of the agent’s contemporaneous operational and institutional environment.

859.The statement is alleged in this Indictment not as evidence of the federal agent’s personal political beliefs, but as documentary evidence of the operational environment and institutional expectations understood by the federal-enforcement personnel conducting the killings alleged herein. The agent did not state that the conduct had been lawful. The agent did not state that the conduct had been justified by an evidentiary predicate he could articulate. Rather, the agent stated that the President of the United States would pardon him for the conduct.

860.The significance of the statement is that it reflects an understanding that institutional consequences otherwise applicable to the conduct would not be imposed. The statement is therefore alleged as evidence of the operational expectations existing within the enforcement environment described throughout this Indictment and as evidence relevant to defendants’ knowledge, intent, and state of mind.

861. The “DJT will pardon me” statement reflects the operational completion of the pre-positioned arrangement alleged throughout this Indictment. The Enterprise’s federal-phase conduct depended on the documented institutional understanding — at the apex through defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s “do whatever the fuck I want” statement, at the operational-personnel level through the false immunity assurances, and at the moment of the killing itself through the agent’s contemporaneous statement — that the constitutional, statutory, and institutional frameworks constraining federal authority had been suspended for the operational period during which the conduct alleged in this Indictment occurred.

862. The pardon-advocacy operational template alleged at paragraphs 218 through 225 in connection with the SCHWARTZ pardon — in which the orthodox-Jewish-outreach ecosystem, the LOOMER intermediation function, and the official White House justification operated through coordinated relationships to produce a federal pardon of an Enterprise-aligned defendant — supplied the documented institutional precedent upon which the agent’s expectation rested. The agent did not articulate an isolated personal belief that he would receive a pardon. He articulated an expectation that the documented operational pardon-advocacy template that had produced the SCHWARTZ pardon would be applied to him.

The Absence of Corrective Mechanisms

863. The conduct alleged in this Section did not produce the institutional response that the ordinary administration of federal law-enforcement authority following fatal use of force by federal agents would generate. The killings did not produce contemporaneous federal criminal charges against the responsible agents. The killings did not produce the public retraction of the materially false pre-investigative attributions disseminated by the communications apparatus. The killings did not produce internal Department review proceedings of the character ordinarily applied to fatal use of force by federal personnel. The killings did not produce the documented administrative consequences applicable to federal law-enforcement personnel whose conduct exceeds the statutory and constitutional framework governing the use of deadly force.

864. The absence of those corrective mechanisms is alleged in this Indictment not as evidence of administrative oversight or institutional delay, but as documentary evidence of the operational completion of the Enterprise’s constructed enforcement environment. The corrective mechanisms did not operate because the operational principals — defendants NOEM, LEWANDOWSKI, SHEAHAN, and McLAUGHLIN — had constructed the apparatus precisely to prevent their operation. The credential-laundering method alleged in Section 10 placed the operational command in personnel who would not initiate the corrective mechanisms. The extra-statutory authority alleged in Section 13 placed the apex operational direction in a principal who was structurally insulated from the disclosure and confirmation mechanisms through which corrective accountability would otherwise be triggered. The communications apparatus alleged in Section 15 was administered under the “strings attached” doctrine that did not treat the killings as authorization defects to be cured but as communications matters to be managed.

865. The absence of corrective mechanisms within the federal-administrative apparatus alleged throughout this Indictment is the operational continuation, at the federal scale, of the two-mechanism non-enforcement architecture documented at the state level at paragraphs 216 through 217. The same operational logic governing the South Dakota non-enforcement environment — internal dismantling of agency-level reporting channels and external non-action by the prosecutorial authority — governed the federal-administrative response to the GOOD and PRETTI killings. The institutional design of the apparatus produced impunity at the moment of the killings themselves, and the institutional design of the apparatus produced impunity in the institutional response that followed them.

The Decedents, the Conduct, and the Statutory Predicates

866. RENÉE NICOLE MACKLIN GOOD and ALEX JEFFREY PRETTI were United States citizens. Each was unlawfully deprived of life by federal agents acting under color of federal law in the course of immigration-enforcement activity that was not predicated upon the lawful exercise of federal authority. The conduct that produced their deaths is alleged in this Indictment as the unlawful deprivation of life under color of federal law, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 242.

867.The conduct producing the killings alleged herein occurred within the broader pattern of politically escalatory enforcement activity described at paragraphs 5 and 21. The killings were not isolated or independent enforcement events detached from the operational structure alleged throughout this Indictment. They occurred within the enforcement environment constructed through the coordinated messaging, command, communications, contracting, and attribution methods alleged herein, including the documented practice of publicly characterizing targeted persons and communities as security threats in advance of independent evidentiary review.

868. The conduct alleged in this Section constitutes, among other predicate offenses:

a) The deprivation of rights under color of federal law producing death, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 242;

b) A conspiracy to deprive identified individuals of rights, privileges, and immunities secured by the Constitution and laws of the United States, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 241;

c) A conspiracy to defraud the United States by impairing the lawful operation of the federal-administrative review mechanisms applicable to fatal use of force by federal personnel, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371 as construed in Hammerschmidt v. United States, 265 U.S. 182 (1924);

d) A scheme to defraud the United States and to deprive the public of the intangible right to honest services of federal command, communications, and enforcement officials, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1343 and 1346;

e) False or misleading official governmental communications deployed in the immediate post-killing period to deprive the decedents and the decedents’ families of the rights, privileges, and immunities the constitutional framework governing federal law-enforcement attribution would ordinarily afford, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 242 in coordinated operation with the pre-investigative attribution method alleged in Section 11; and

f) Materially false institutional representations to subordinate federal personnel concerning the immunity framework governing federal law-enforcement authority, in violation of the broader fraud framework alleged at paragraphs 7 and 8 and in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1343 and 1346.

869. The conduct further constitutes predicate acts for the racketeering enterprise alleged in this Indictment.

SECTION 18 — THE FORESEEABLE-VIOLENCE PATTERN, THE SYNCHRONIZED DEPARTURES, AND THE CONTINUING PREDICATE

The Doctrinal Frame

870. The conduct alleged in this Section concerns two interrelated dimensions of the Enterprise’s operational structure that became documentarily apparent in the period surrounding the killings alleged in Section 16. The first is the broader pattern of foreseeable political violence produced by the enforcement environment alleged throughout this Indictment — a pattern documented through three additional incidents alleged in Subsection B and through the institutional response of the Enterprise principals in their aftermath. The second is the synchronized character of the departures of defendants SHEAHAN, McLAUGHLIN, NOEM, and LEWANDOWSKI from their federal positions during the period from January 2026 through March 2026 — a synchronization alleged in Subsection above as documentary evidence of the association-in-fact coordination of the Enterprise’s federal-phase personnel, and the sinecure arrangement alleged elsewhere hereinunder which defendant NOEM’s federal compensation continued after her formal departure as a continuing predicate act of the racketeering enterprise alleged in this Indictment.

871. The pattern of foreseeable violence and the synchronized departures, considered together, document the operational closure of the Enterprise’s federal-phase conduct: the violence the Enterprise had constructed the conditions for had occurred; the public scrutiny those events produced had reached the point at which the apex principals could no longer continue in their formal positions; and the personnel sequencing through which those principals exited their federal roles was coordinated rather than independent. The conduct alleged in this Section establishes that the Enterprise’s federal-phase operations did not terminate organically through institutional accountability mechanisms applied to individual principals. They terminated through coordinated departure, with continuing compensation arrangements protecting at least one principal beyond the date of formal departure.

The Pattern of Foreseeable Political Violence

872. The killings of RENÉE NICOLE MACKLIN GOOD and ALEX JEFFREY PRETTI alleged in Section 16 occurred within a documented pattern of foreseeable political violence the Enterprise had constructed and sustained over years. The pattern, alleged at paragraph 5 and at paragraph 21, was institutionally produced by the four-category messaging framework alleged at paragraphs 9 through 21, the pre-investigative attribution method alleged in Section 11, the institutional culture-framework alleged in Section 15, and the operational presentation of the federal-enforcement apparatus alleged throughout this Indictment.

873. Three additional incidents, alleged in this Subsection, document the operational consequences of that pattern during the period relevant to this Indictment.

874. The killings of RENÉE NICOLE MACKLIN GOOD and ALEX JEFFREY PRETTI alleged in Section 16 occurred within a documented pattern of foreseeable political violence the Enterprise had constructed the operational conditions for, had observed the operational consequences of, and had continued to construct and to amplify after the operational consequences had become publicly documented. The June 14, 2025 conduct of VANCE LUTHER BOELTER is alleged in this Indictment as the documentary anchor of that pattern.

875.On or about June 14, 2025, VANCE LUTHER BOELTER conducted a coordinated armed operation against Minnesota state elected officials, killing Minnesota House Speaker Emerita MELISSA HORTMAN and her husband MARK HORTMAN, and shooting and gravely wounding Minnesota State Senator JOHN HOFFMAN and his wife YVETTE HOFFMAN. BOELTER conducted the operation while impersonating a federal law-enforcement officer through a visual presentation substantially indistinguishable from that utilized by federal agents conducting masked residential immigration-enforcement operations of the character alleged in Section 11. Contemporary law-enforcement statements following the attacks described BOELTER as having impersonated a police officer while utilizing equipment and appearance designed to convey official authority.

876.The significance of BOELTER’s impersonation is alleged herein not as evidence of BOELTER’s operational sophistication, but as evidence of the foreseeable risks associated with enforcement practices that relied upon masked personnel whose institutional identities could not be readily verified by members of the public. In contemporaneous public communications following the attacks, the Brooklyn Park Police Chief instructed residents to comply with individuals presenting themselves as law-enforcement officers notwithstanding the practical difficulty residents faced in independently verifying official authority. The statement is alleged as evidence of the confusion and verification problems that existed within the operational environment described throughout this Indictment.

877. The BOELTER conduct is alleged in this Indictment as documentary evidence of three operative facts concerning the mens rea underlying the Enterprise’s subsequent conduct. First, BOELTER’s operation was preceded by sustained Enterprise messaging directed against Minnesota Democratic elected officials specifically and against Democratic lawmakers as a class, deployed through the four-category messaging framework alleged at paragraphs 9 through 21 and through the Enterprise-aligned media-amplification network 4. Second, BOELTER’s operation occurred within a broader contemporaneous pattern of politically motivated violence and threatened violence associated with the operational period of the second TRUMP administration, including organized armed activity at public political events, threats against elected officials documented through United States Capitol Police and Federal Bureau of Investigation public reporting, and additional incidents documented through state and federal law-enforcement records during 2025. Third, and most operationally significant, the Enterprise’s messaging and enforcement conduct continued after the BOELTER killings — through the same channels, the same framework, the same operational practices, and the same federal-enforcement apparatus — notwithstanding the documentary record the BOELTER killings had established concerning the foreseeable violent consequences of the operational environment the Enterprise had constructed.

878.The post-BOELTER continuation of the Enterprise’s messaging and enforcement conduct is alleged herein as evidence of the mens rea underlying the conduct alleged in Sections 11, 15, and 16. Following the BOELTER killings and the contemporaneous public reporting concerning the broader pattern of politically motivated violence during 2025, Enterprise principals including defendants NOEM, LEWANDOWSKI, McLAUGHLIN, and SHEAHAN continued the messaging framework, masked-enforcement practices, pre-investigative attribution methods, and grievance-based amplification operations alleged throughout this Indictment. The killings of RENÉE NICOLE MACKLIN GOOD and ALEX JEFFREY PRETTI alleged in Section 16, the KAZMIERCZAK attack on Representative OMAR alleged at paragraph 549, and the Somali childcare-facilities harassment surge alleged at paragraph 551 each occurred after the BOELTER killings and during the period in which the Enterprise continued deploying the same operational methods and communications framework. The BOELTER conduct is therefore alleged not as conduct attributable to the Enterprise under a theory of vicarious criminal liability, but as documentary evidence that Enterprise principals continued the conduct alleged herein after the violent consequences associated

879. On or about January 27, 2026 — three days after the killing of ALEX JEFFREY PRETTI alleged in Section 16 — ANTHONY JAMES KAZMIERCZAK attacked United States Representative ILHAN OMAR at a public town hall in Minneapolis. KAZMIERCZAK’s attack against Representative OMAR — a Somali-American Member of the United States House of Representatives whose ethnic and political identity placed her within the population the Enterprise’s four-category messaging framework had systematically targeted, as alleged at paragraphs 12 through 16 — occurred within the operational period in which the Enterprise had been amplifying anti-Somali narrative content through the Nick Shirley influencer architecture alleged at paragraphs 320 through 326.87

880.During the same period in which defendants SHEAHAN, McLAUGHLIN, NOEM, and LEWANDOWSKI departed their respective federal positions, additional federal personnel associated with the operational environment alleged herein likewise exited or were removed from positions of authority. FBI Deputy Director DAN BONGINO announced his departure in December 2025 and left federal service in January 2026. Border Patrol Commander-at-Large GREGORY BOVINO was removed from his national operational role on or about January 27, 2026 and returned to California shortly thereafter, subsequently BOVINO ackowledged that Israeli influence was behind the departure.

881.These departures are alleged not as evidence that BONGINO or BOVINO knowingly participated in the racketeering enterprise alleged herein, but as documentary evidence that the personnel turnover occurring during the first quarter of 2026 extended beyond individual offices and affected multiple participants and associates operating within the same federal enforcement and communications environment.

882.The temporal proximity between the SHIRLEY Minnesota Somali-fraud video disseminated on or about December 26, 2025, the federal surge of immigration-enforcement activity into Minneapolis Somali-American communities that followed it, the killings of GOOD and PRETTI in the same metropolitan area in January 2026, and the KAZMIERCZAK attack on Representative OMAR three days after PRETTI’s killing, establishes the operational concentration of the Enterprise’s messaging, enforcement, and political-violence consequences within a single geographic and demographic target during a single operational period.

883. The Somali childcare facilities harassment surge. Throughout late 2025 and into 2026, Somali-American childcare facilities throughout Minnesota and adjacent jurisdictions reported a documented surge of harassment, intrusions, threats, and intimidation. The surge followed the Enterprise’s coordinated amplification of unverified fraud allegations against those facilities through the SHIRLEY architecture alleged in Section 11 and through the official Department of Homeland Security communications administered by defendant McLAUGHLIN alleged in Section 15. The harassment surge documented the operational extension of the four-category messaging framework into the domestic violence and intimidation experienced by Somali-American communities — communities institutionally characterized by the Enterprise’s messaging apparatus as the operational equivalent of foreign threat populations.

884. The three incidents alleged in this Subsection — the BOELTER killings, the KAZMIERCZAK attack on Representative OMAR, and the Somali childcare harassment surge — document the operational consequence of the Enterprise’s federal-phase conduct upon communities and individuals outside the federal-enforcement apparatus’s direct operational targeting. The pattern is incompatible with the characterization of the GOOD and PRETTI killings alleged in Section 16 as isolated operational incidents. It is consistent only with the characterization of those killings as the documented operational consequence of an enforcement environment whose foreseeable violent consequences extended beyond the immediate targets of federal-enforcement activity into the broader community ecosystem in which the Enterprise’s messaging and enforcement apparatus operated.

The Synchronized Departures

885. Between January 3, 2026 and March 28, 2026 — a period of approximately ten weeks — each of the 6 principal Enterprise federal participants and 1 associate as alleged in Sections 10 through 15 departed from their federal positions. The departures occurred in the sequence and on the dates alleged in this Subsection.

886.On or about January 3, 2026 Enterprise affiliated Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation ( FBI) DAN BONGINO announced his departure.88 As particularly in paragraph 271 BOGINO’s media infrastructure had long standing financial ties with the Enterprise through MATT PALUMBO and Aventine Group.

887. On or about January 26, 2026 defendant GREGORY BOVINO was reassigned from his role as “commander at large” with DHS to his previous position and subsequently retired on or about late March 2026.

889.On or about January 28, 2026- two days after BOVINO’s reassignment- BOVINO traveled to South Dakota to film media which was taxpayer funded and created by defendants McELWAIN, CONNOUGHTON, LEWANDOWSKI, YOHO, and McLAUGHLIN and in furtherance of the Enterprise’s messaging architecture as alleged elsewhere herein.

890.Contemporaneous with BOVINO’S departure, defendants MCELWAIN, CONNOUGHTON, and YOHO-husband to defendant MCLAUGHLIN - ended their contracting relationship with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).89

891. On or about February 17, 2026, defendant McLAUGHLIN publicly announced her departure from her position as Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Public Affairs, as alleged at paragraph 288 and at paragraphs 454 through 456. Contemporaneous reporting established that defendant McLAUGHLIN’s departure had been planned for in or about December 2025 but was delayed because of the killings of GOOD and PRETTI in January 2026 and the consequent public scrutiny of the Department’s communications apparatus.90

892.On or about March 5, 2026, defendant NOEM was removed from her position as Secretary of Homeland Security. The removal occurred within the approximately ten-week window in which the departures of the other federal Enterprise principals were occurring. On or about March 24, 2026 — approximately nineteen days after the removal — defendant NOEM was reassigned by President TRUMP to the position of Shield of Americas envoy, an arrangement alleged with particularity in Subsection D below.

893. On or about March 28, 2026, defendant LEWANDOWSKI’s departure from his SGE-designated position within the Department of Homeland Security was publicly confirmed. The departure occurred approximately twenty-three days after defendant NOEM’s removal, approximately ten weeks after the killing of RENÉE NICOLE MACKLIN GOOD, and approximately nine weeks after the killing of ALEX JEFFREY PRETTI.

894.The individuals described in Paragraphs 612 through 619 did not occupy interchangeable roles. Rather, throughout the period relevant to this Indictment, they operated in complementary functions including executive direction, public communications, media production, political operations, enforcement activity, advisory functions, and information dissemination. The distribution of these functions across multiple participants is alleged as evidence that the Enterprise operated through coordinated specialization rather than through isolated or independent actors.

895.The concentration of the departures described in Paragraphs 612 through 619 within an approximately ten-week period following the events alleged in Section 16 occurred during a period of sustained public scrutiny directed toward the Department of Homeland Security and associated federal personnel. Notwithstanding their formal assignments to separate agencies, offices, and components, the departing individuals maintained recurring operational relationships and participated in overlapping communications, enforcement, political, contracting, and media activities alleged elsewhere herein. The synchronized timing of the departures is alleged as evidence that those relationships existed independently of any particular governmental office.

896.As alleged throughout this Indictment, the Enterprise did not operate through a formal chain of command, statutory office, written organizational chart, or permanent institutional structure. Instead, it functioned through enduring associations among individuals occupying complementary roles across communications, enforcement, political operations, contracting, fundraising, media production, and advisory functions. Those relationships enabled participants to coordinate activity across multiple governmental and non-governmental entities in furtherance of shared objectives notwithstanding differences in title, agency affiliation, or formal authority.

897.The departures further establish the continuity and longevity elements of the association-in-fact enterprise alleged herein. The Enterprise persisted notwithstanding changes in title, agency assignment, employment status, formal authority, or public role. The removal, reassignment, retirement, resignation, or transfer of individual participants did not terminate the Enterprise’s coordinating relationships. Instead, the same network of associated individuals continued to occupy complementary operational roles within the communications, enforcement, p political, contracting, and media functions alleged throughout this Indictment.

898.The continuity of the Enterprise was further demonstrated by the immediate assumption of operational responsibilities by successor personnel following the departures described herein. As alleged elsewhere in this Indictment, Enterprise participants and associates repeatedly occupied acting, advisory, contractor, consultant, or otherwise non-Senate-confirmed positions through which substantially similar operational functions continued notwithstanding changes in formal officeholders. The replacement of individual participants did not interrupt the Enterprise's activities. Rather, the continuity of those activities through successor personnel further demonstrates that the Enterprise functioned as a continuing operational unit independent of any particular title, office, or individual participant.

The Shield of Americas Sinecure and the Continuing Predicate

899. On or about March 24, 2026, defendant NOEM was reassigned by President TRUMP from the Secretary of Homeland Security position to the position of Shield of Americas envoy.91 The position, as publicly described, was situated within the Department of State framework and operated under the reporting authority of Deputy Secretary of State CHRISTOPHER LANDAU. Defendant NOEM was replaced as Secretary of Homeland Security by United States Senator MARKWAYNE MULLIN.92

900. The Shield of Americas envoy position did not exist as a recognized Department of State office prior to its creation for defendant NOEM. The position carried no documented portfolio of operational responsibility commensurate with the federal compensation defendant NOEM continued to receive.

901. Defendant NOEM, during the period of her envoy service, was physically resident in South Dakota for substantial portions of the period and had been present in the state for the majority of the time. For example,

a) In or about late February, NOEM shopped for shoes at Boston Shoes in Yankton, South Dakota.93

b) On or about mid-March before her scheduled hearing in front of Congress NOEM went tanning at a Year Round Brown tanning salon in Yankton, SD.94

c) On or about mid-March NOEM shopped for shoes at Boston Shoes in Yankton, SD.95

d) On or about March 17, 2026 NOEM attended a Watertown Shamrocks hockey game in Watertown, SD96

e) On or about April 5, 2026 NOEM stayed at her daughter’s home in Yankton, SD for the Easter holiday.

f) On or about May 20, 2026 NOEM had her nails done and received salon services at the Watertown nail salon in Watertown, SD.

902.This residency and schedule pattern are incompatible with the operational performance of a federal envoy position carrying substantive international responsibilities.

903 Following her reassignment, defendant NOEM continued to interact with the same participants, pursue the same objectives, utilize the same communications infrastructure, and operate through the same network of associates alleged throughout this Indictment.

904. The Shield of Americas envoy position is alleged herein not as an ordinary administrative reassignment of a former Cabinet principal, but as a continuing arrangement through which defendant NOEM remained on the federal payroll following her removal from operational authority. The arrangement is alleged as evidence of the Enterprise's continued protection of defendant NOEM after the administration whose consequences are alleged in Section 16 had produced the killings described therein. Defendant NOEM's continued federal compensation under the formal designation of envoy service is alleged as a continuing predicate act of the Enterprise and as evidence that Enterprise participants continued to provide institutional and financial protection after her departure from cabinet-level authority.

905. The Shield of Americas arrangement further extended the conduct of the Enterprise beyond the departures alleged in Subsection C. Each pay period during which defendant NOEM continued to receive federal compensation under that arrangement is alleged as a separate transaction in furtherance of the Enterprise's continuing conduct and as evidence that the Enterprise remained operational through the date of this Indictment.

906. The reporting structure of the Shield of Americas position, which operated under Deputy Secretary LANDAU rather than directly under the Secretary of State or the White House, is alleged as evidence of a deliberate administrative structure that reduced public visibility while preserving the compensation mechanism through which defendant NOEM continued to receive federal remuneration. The Continuation of Enterprise Conduct Beyond the Departures

907. The synchronized departures alleged in Subsection C did not terminate the Enterprise's conduct. The financial architecture alleged in Section 6 continued to operate through defendant GOEDE's administration of LEON RACHEL CORPORATION, ARDLEIGH IMPACT CORPORATION, CONDORCET INITIATIVE CORPORATION, and related entities from Springfield, Virginia. The state-level non-enforcement environment alleged in Sections 7 and 8 continued under defendant JACKLEY's administration of the South Dakota Office of Attorney General. The political-coordination infrastructure alleged in Section 1 continued through defendant LEDERMAN's relationships within the Republican Jewish Coalition and affiliated advocacy networks.

908.The continuation of those activities following the departures of federal principals is alleged as evidence that the Enterprise was not dependent upon any individual officeholder, cabinet position, or federal appointment. Rather, the Enterprise continued through its financial architecture, political-coordination infrastructure, state-level participants, continuing administrative relationships, and the predicate arrangements alleged throughout this Indictment.

909.The Enterprise's continuity did not depend upon the occupancy of any single office or the participation of any single individual. The coordinating relationships, financial channels, personnel-placement methods, political-protection structures, and administrative networks alleged herein persisted notwithstanding resignation, reassignment, removal, or departure from governmental authority. The continuation alleged in this Subsection is offered as evidence of the structural continuity required under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1961 et seq.

The Pattern, the Predicate, and the Consolidation

910. The conduct alleged in this Section establishes that the killings alleged in Section 16 occurred within a broader pattern of foreseeable violence alleged throughout this Indictment; that the synchronized departures of the federal principals alleged in Subsection C were coordinated rather than independent; that the Shield of Americas arrangement alleged in Subsection D extended the Enterprise's conduct beyond those departures; and that Enterprise operations continued thereafter through the financial, political, and state-level mechanisms alleged throughout this Indictment.

911. Considered together, the seventeen Sections of this Indictment allege an association-in-fact enterprise that operated continuously from in or about 2017 through the date of this Indictment across South Dakota, Louisiana, Ohio, the District of Columbia, and other jurisdictions. The Enterprise operated through the personnel-placement methods, foreign-policy integration, political-finance networks, financial-routing structures, procurement schemes, credential-laundering mechanisms, communications operations, enforcement structures, and coordinated activities alleged throughout this Indictment, culminating in the events described in Section 16 and continuing through the conduct alleged herein.

912. The conduct alleged in this Section constitutes, among other predicate offenses: (a) a scheme to defraud the United States and deprive the public of the honest services of federal officials in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1343 and 1346; (b) theft, conversion, and improper application of federal funds in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 641 and 666; (c) conspiracy to defraud the United States in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371; and (d) continuing predicate acts of the racketeering enterprise in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1962(c) and 1962(d). 675. The conduct alleged herein further constitutes predicate acts of the racketeering enterprise alleged throughout this Indictment.

This Part I mock indictment is a living document and may be amended, expanded, or revised at any time as additional information becomes available. It represents the culmination of months of research, review of public records, and analysis undertaken with two purposes: first, to preserve in chronological form the factual record, legal theories, and institutional relationships alleged herein; and second, to encourage eyewitnesses, whistleblowers, and individuals with direct knowledge of the conduct described in this document to come forward safely and, if necessary, anonymously or with identifying information redacted.

This project was undertaken in the belief that accountability requires documentation, preservation of evidence, and public scrutiny, even where formal institutional review has failed to occur.

Special thanks to the friends, subscribers, donors, researchers, and independent journalists whose support, encouragement, and contributions made this work possible. Individuals possessing information, records, or firsthand knowledge relating to the persons, entities, or events described herein are encouraged to make contact.

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Laura Jean1

JobsOhio’s Super Sectors 2030: LNG Shock, AI Reality, and the Risks of Ohio’s Black-Box Growth Model

What the focus of Super Sectors really is…

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5 months ago · 1 like · Laura Loth

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Byrnes, D. J. (2026, January 26). The mystery of Madison Sheahan. The Rooster.

The Rooster

The mystery of Madison Sheahan

The ramifications of Ohio’s bipartisan Congressional map deal are still reverberating through the state…

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7 months ago · 34 likes · 8 comments · D.J. Byrnes

; Associated Press. (2023, December 20). Gov.-elect Jeff Landry names heads of Louisiana’s health, family and wildlife services. AP News. https://apnews.com/article/21df99e6181c170bef1197632640208a

On August 18, 2026 Georgia Police to the internet to post the face of man wanted for crime in hopes the internet would help identifying him. His crime? Finding $30 on the floor of a local Walmart.

No more “finders keepers in the age of Flock and mass surveillance.

According to police, another shopper dropped the cash while shopping. Surveillance footage showed the man picking it up, but instead of turning the money over to Walmart employees, he kept it.

“An individual dropped $30.00 on the ground while shopping,” police wrote. “This individual picked up the money and did not turn it in to the employees.”

The request quickly became an object of ridicule online, as commenters contemplated whether every forgotten $10 bill, loose quarter or lucky parking-lot twenty might now constitute unfinished police business, their concerns may be legitimate because this is happening all across the United States.

Police later announced that the man had returned the $30 to its owner. The person who lost the money then decided not to pursue charges.

This was not the first time Walmart and the surveillance state directed law enforcement resources to publicly ridicule and criminally investigate someone for picking up small dollar amounts of cash abandoned on the ground.

And just this April in Pennsylvania, state police charged a man after surveillance allegedly showed him pocketing $20 another customer had left at a Walmart self-checkout.

in Virginia Beach, police investigated after a shopper left $100 at a Walmart self-checkout and the next customer took it; investigators even obtained a search warrant related to identifying the person. And just this April in Pennsylvania, state police charged a man after surveillance allegedly showed him pocketing $20 another customer had left at a Walmart self-checkout.

Taken as whole, this demonstrates an escalation of surveillance and policing and leaves the question of who will be pocketing cash lost in public places?

The Israeli Ministry of Tourism, which operates in the United States through agents registered with the Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, has launched a $7 million advertising campaign promoting tourism and economic activity in Israel. The campaign includes advertisements on Sen. Ted Cruz’s podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz, urging listeners to “start planning your trip today” and highlighting biblical sites in Israel.

The placement is notable because of the unusual financial structure surrounding Cruz’s podcast. Rather than personally collecting advertising revenue from the show, Cruz licenses Verdict to iHeartMedia without compensation. Under the arrangement, iHeartMedia instead directs podcast-generated revenue to Truth and Courage PAC, a super PAC devoted to supporting Cruz’s political career.

That structure creates an unusual intersection between foreign-government advertising, a sitting U.S. senator’s media platform and a political committee dedicated to supporting him — even though the money does not flow directly through Cruz himself.^[1]

FEC filings show that iHeart media has transferred over $1.7 million in digital revenue to the Super PAC since 2023 across 14 unique contributions.^[2]

Federal election law strictly prohibits foreign nationals and foreign governments from contributing money “directly or indirectly” to candidates or political action committees.

The arrangement drew scrutiny from campaign-finance watchdogs. In April 2024, the Campaign Legal Center and End Citizens United filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission alleging that Cruz had violated federal restrictions on soliciting or directing corporate “soft money” by allowing iHeartMedia to funnel podcast-related revenue to the super PAC supporting his reelection who accused Cruz of crossing a bright legal line: candidates cannot accept corporate contributions. A complaint filed with the FEC alleged Cruz had “brazenly violated” federal law through the deal.^[3]

Cruz acknowledged meeting with company representatives to discuss the acquisition of his podcast. But the FEC ultimately sided with him, finding no evidence that he had “solicited, directed, received, transferred, or spent” the money iHeart paid to the PAC.^[4]

The distinction was crucial. According to the commission, Cruz may have been the voice behind the microphone, but there was insufficient evidence that he had a hand on the money.

“Cruz’s role was limited to hosting the Podcast,” the FEC concluded, finding that he did not appear to have participated in iHeart’s decision to pay the PAC and therefore had not directed or solicited the funds.

In the end, the arrangement survived FEC scrutiny on a narrow but consequential distinction: Cruz was the podcast’s host, but regulators found insufficient evidence that he had solicited, directed or controlled the money iHeart paid to the PAC.

That finding, however, did not resolve the broader questions raised by the arrangement. Responsible Statecraft, which reported on the payments, described the structure as exposing a potential gap in federal campaign-finance law.

Craig Holman, a longtime campaign-finance expert interviewed by the outlet, said the legal distinction may hinge on whether Cruz and iHeart had a formal agreement governing the payments.

“Assuming there is no formal agreement, then the money is considered iHeartRadio funds, with which it can do as it pleases,” Holman said.

“The courts have fabricated a myth that outside groups are ‘independent’ of candidates and therefore fall outside the campaign finance limits and disclosure laws,” Holman told RS. “So, wealthy interests and even foreign governments launder money to outside groups with the explicit intent of the outside group spending that money to support a specific candidate. Israel is exploiting this court-created loophole.”

The result is an unusual arrangement: a corporation can generate substantial revenue from a candidate’s podcast and direct that money to a political committee supporting him, while avoiding treatment as a corporate contribution so long as the evidence does not establish that the candidate solicited or directed the payments.

Holman blamed court decisions like Citizens United for opening the path to Cruz’s “surreptitious financial arrangement” with iHeartMedia.

The Verdict advertisements appear aimed at a particularly important audience for Israel’s U.S. outreach: American Christians. They are part of a broader effort by the Israeli government to strengthen support for Israel among Christian communities, an effort that has extended well beyond conventional tourism advertising.

As previously reported on MyrandaPolisci, Israeli officials approved a proposal to geofence churches — using location data to identify people attending services and subsequently serve them pro-Israel advertising. The government has also funded a Bible-study initiative featuring instruction from Israeli soldiers and West Bank settlers, blending religious outreach with advocacy for Israel.

That campaign has reached Washington as well. According to Responsible Statecraft, the Israeli government covertly provided $245,000 to Eagles’ Wings, a New York-based Christian Zionist organization that subsequently lobbied more than 100 congressional offices, including on continued U.S. military assistance to Israel.

Taken together, the efforts illustrate a broader strategy: reaching American Christians not only through explicitly political advocacy, but through the places they worship, the religious material they consume and, now, the podcasts they listen to.

^[1] https://responsiblestatecraft.org/ted-cruz-israel/

^[2]https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/?data_type=processed&committee_id=C00796045&contributor_name=iheart

^[3] https://www.texastribune.org/2025/02/21/ted-cruz-podcast-super-pac-complaint-dismissed-fec/

^[4] https://www.fec.gov/data/legal/matter-under-review/8238/

“Believe women” became something like the left’s answer to “Make America Great Again”: a moral principle compressed into a slogan, repeated so confidently that questioning its application can feel like questioning the principle itself.

The principle is righteous, but is it always right?

Imagine taking one of the most important lessons of #MeToo — that allegations of sexual violence ,

That’s exactly what Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman have done.

Trump enthusiasts, professional provocateurs and conspiracy theorists, the pair have operated for years in the murky intersection of political influence largely in foreign influence, defense contracting, finance, eldercare, and development and the dark money networks behind them. More recently, they entered the business of lobbying for presidential pardons utilizing access and influencers like Laura Loomer.

But they first became notorious for something stranger: paying people to lie about sexual abuse allegations against prominent political figures.

Today, the same men seek clemency for people convicted of serious crimes.

Their business has touched both sides of guilt: efforts to manufacture it where none existed, and lucrative efforts to obtain mercy where courts had already established it.

Victims absorb the consequences of both.

That matters because deliberately false sexual-assault reports are rare. Research generally places them somewhere in the low single digits to roughly 10 percent, depending on methodology. For generations, genuine victims were disbelieved, humiliated and interrogated as though they were responsible for their own assaults. The cultural correction toward taking women seriously was necessary and overdue.

Wohl and Burkman recognized something darker about that progress:

Trust has value.

The pattern emerged publicly in 2018, when Robert Mueller began investigating Trump’s Russian Collusion creating a problem for Trump enthusiasts and the defense contractors in Wohl in Burkman’s orbit.

Several journalists were approached about a woman purportedly prepared to accuse Special Counsel Robert Mueller of sexual assault. According to Hill Reporter, reporters investigating the story independently concluded that the allegation was a hoax and were told the woman had been offered substantial money to make it. Mueller’s office subsequently referred the matter to the FBI after learning of allegations that women were being offered money to falsely accuse him.^[1]

Contemporaneously, Jack Burkman began promoting, via his Facebook page, that he is investigating sexual misconduct and alcohol-related allegations against Mueller. He tweeted that he would hold a press conference two days later to “reveal the first of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s sex assault victims.”

The scheme began to unravel when an unnamed woman contacted journalists with an extraordinary story: she said she had been offered $20,000, plus payment of her credit-card debt, to falsely accuse Special Counsel Robert Mueller of sexual misconduct and heavy drinking.

According to the woman, the proposition was explicit: “I want you to make accusations of sexual misconduct and workplace harassment against Robert Mueller, and I want you to sign a sworn affidavit to that effect.”

There was one glaring problem. She told The Atlantic that she had worked with Mueller decades earlier and had never experienced the misconduct she was being asked to describe.

More unsettling, she said, was how much the person approaching her already knew about her finances. He allegedly offered to eliminate her credit-card debt and pay another $20,000 — and knew the exact amount she owed to the penny.

Journalists began contacting Mueller’s office, which said it referred allegations that women were being offered money to make false claims against the special counsel to the FBI.

As reporters dug deeper, things became more ominous. Hill Reporter editor Ed Krassenstein said he received a warning: “You’re in over your head…. Drop this.” The message reportedly included the home addresses of Krassenstein and another editor.

The episode unfolded at an especially consequential moment. Mueller was investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible coordination involving the Trump campaign; by that point, his investigation had brought criminal charges against dozens of people.

And orbiting the effort to discredit him were two names that would become increasingly familiar: Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl.

Six months after the Mueller operation unraveled, another sexual-assault allegation appeared—this time against Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg. And this one collapsed almost immediately.^[2]

In April 2019, a Medium post published under the name of Hunter Kelly, a young gay Republican college student from Michigan, accused Buttigieg of sexually assaulting him in Washington months earlier.

Within hours, Kelly said publicly that he had never been sexually assaulted by Buttigieg.

Kelly said Jacob Wohl had recruited him for what he believed would be a political project involving the perspective of a gay Republican. Burkman paid for his flight to Washington, where Kelly stayed at Burkman’s home. According to Kelly, he was pressured into signing a statement accusing Buttigieg of an assault that never occurred. He later said he awoke to discover that the allegation had already been published under his name and that online accounts had been created using his identity.

But Kelly’s recantation wasn’t the only evidence that something was wrong. Another Republican man separately told reporters that Wohl and Burkman had tried to recruit him to falsely accuse Buttigieg of sexual misconduct—and he had secretly recorded part of the conversation.

Burkman and Wohl disputed Kelly’s account, pointing to the statement he had signed. Kelly maintained that he had been pressured into signing it.

Whatever ambiguity that document might have created, the central allegation did not survive its own supposed victim: Hunter Kelly said Pete Buttigieg never sexually assaulted him.

The Michigan connection is interesting because Burkman and Wohl were later convicted of felonies pertaining to robocalls in 2025. Wohl and Burkman often target Black communities using the same reverse engineering of Black suffering as they do women.

Earlier this summer, Buttigieg was again the target of a false report, this one resulting in his home being swatted and his family being separated from their four-year-old twins.^[3]

My mind immediately went to Burkman and Wohl.

I have found no evidence establishing that connection, and suspicion is not evidence. But perhaps that reflex is itself part of the damage men like Burkman and Wohl leave behind: once you learn that political operatives really have manufactured scandals, even the implausible begins to feel possible.

There is another cost that cannot be measured. We will never know how many capable people have looked at the threats, humiliation and attacks on families that accompany public life and simply decided it wasn’t worth it.

I have seen enough of this world to understand why they might.

But Wohl and Burkman weren’t finished.

On October 3, 2019, they summoned reporters to another of their infamous driveway press conferences. This time the target was Elizabeth Warren.

They introduced Kelvin Whelly, a 24-year-old former Marine and self-described male escort, who claimed that the 70-year-old senator had hired him through an escort service and engaged in a BDSM affair.

For proof, Whelly removed his shirt and displayed a large scar he attributed to one of their encounters.

The internet had receipts of its own.

Reporters soon found an older social-media post showing the same injury — from before the alleged encounter with Warren.

Another scandal had begun to collapse almost as quickly as it was announced.

Then came COVID-19.

And Anthony Fauci.

By 2020, Fauci had become one of America’s most recognizable public officials — and one of the political right’s favorite villains. Lockdowns had inflicted enormous economic losses, public-health measures became partisan identity markers, and conspiracy theories flourished alongside legitimate arguments over the government’s pandemic response.

I could tell you considerably more about the strange political and financial interests that helped transform masks into an ideological battlefield among defense contractors, you might not believe me.

And then, ten days later, a journalist received an email with the subject line: “Exposing Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman.”

It began with a confession:

“Hi Nancy, I hope you are having a nice weekend. I feel very bad about lying to you and others about Dr. Fauci. I took it upon myself to call Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman and record them (see attached)… Many thanks and again, I feel very bad about all this. I apologize to you, the other reporters and Dr. Fauci.”

The sender identified herself as Diana Andrade.

The journalist knew her by another name.

Ten days earlier, “Diana Rodriguez” had accused Fauci of sexually assaulting her in 2014, when she was 20 years old.

Now Andrade was saying the assault never happened.

And she had receipts.

Andrade told the journalist she had known Wohl since 2018 and had previously been romantically involved with him. She claimed he had charmed her into accepting money to participate in the Fauci operation and that the pair had involved her in something similar months earlier.

More troublingly, she warned that they weren’t finished.

“And I understand they’re trying to get another girl to do it, too,” she wrote. “They asked me if I knew anyone to do it.”

Her warning was remarkably timely. The journalist had received another release just one day earlier from Burkman promoting a second Fauci accuser, this one identified as “Karen Draper,” who was described as a former Fauci assistant.

But Andrade had done something more important than recant.

She recorded Wohl and Burkman.

The resulting call, later obtained and reported by Reason, lasts more than nine minutes. Andrade sounds increasingly uneasy about what she had participated in. Wohl and Burkman, rather than expressing surprise at her suggestion that the story was fabricated, repeatedly demand to know why she is suddenly frightened.

Wohl’s response is particularly revealing:

“What could be wrong, Diana? You did a good job, you got paid. What’s the problem?”

Andrade raised concerns about the money and about a man who had appeared claiming to be an attorney. She questioned whether he was even a real lawyer. Wohl assured her that he was and touted the man’s strong connection to President Donald Trump.

Then Burkman said something that strips away almost every layer of ambiguity surrounding the conversation:

“This guy shut the country down. He put 40 million people out of work. In a situation like that, you have to make up whatever you have to make up to stop that train and that’s the way life works, OK?”

Andrade pushed back. COVID, she told them, was real and serious.

Burkman’s response was darker still. He dismissed the potential deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans, describing mass death as nature periodically needing to “clean the barn.”

Andrade asked whether he was essentially advocating survival of the fittest.

By then Wohl seemed less interested in persuading her than silencing her.

“Diana, look, can you just do this for me?” he said. “Can you just keep your mouth shut and just…just do it for me.”

That apparently broke whatever remained of Wohl’s hold over her.

Andrade told him she was finished.

“You have a way of charming people,” she said, before calling Wohl “an evil person” and telling him, “you’re just so charming until you get me cornered.”

As the conversation deteriorated, Wohl and Burkman insisted Andrade had participated willingly. When she raised the fact that a story had been fabricated, one of the men responded by asking who cared if she had “made up a story.”

That sentence should sit uncomfortably beside everything Americans have been taught about sexual assault.

Because deliberately false allegations are rare, their rarity is precisely what makes false allegations valuable to someone willing to manufacture one.

In 2021 Burkman and Burkman set his sights on Eric Swalwell of California and Conor Lamb of Pennsylvania.

It was not lost on me that at the same time they were interfering with Mueller because he was investigating Russian interference in 2018 Eric Swalwell was on the committee investigating and deposing many in Trump’s orbit who had ties to Russia including Hope Hicks and Corey Lewandowksi- who was already in the same defense circles as Burkman and Wohl and the darkest corners of Ohio’s corrupt politics.

This time the pair set up a fake TMZ website with false allegations that Swalwell was having an affair with Lamb’s heavily pregnant wife.

This time, the woman did not consent.

They also put up flyers around D.C. offering $10,000 to anyone who came forward with information about their affair.

Sexual misconduct allegations for hire in our nation’s capitol.

Jack Posobiec – a right wing conspiracy theorist- then posted a photo of the flyer to his twitter account where the story took off.

At the same time, Lamb was facing attacks from America First Action, a pro-Trump super PAC that had received hundreds of thousands of dollars connected to Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, the Soviet-born businessmen later indicted in a campaign-finance case.

Foreign money and influence run through American politics in ways most voters will never encounter. The deeper I have followed those networks, the harder they have become to explain without sounding conspiratorial.

Sometimes I don’t blame people for not believing me.

But that disbelief is part of what makes this world so useful to people willing to manipulate it.

The best political lies are rarely invented from nothing. They borrow from truths we already recognize.

Women are assaulted. Powerful men abuse their positions. Victims have spent generations fighting to be believed. That history created credibility — and eventually someone recognized that credibility itself could be exploited.

Politics provides unusually fertile ground for it.

From the outside, the parties appear to inhabit separate worlds. Inside, the boundaries are far less tidy. Staffers date across the aisle. Operatives who publicly attack one another privately do business together. Affairs happen. Alcohol flows. Secrets accumulate. Personal relationships become political liabilities.

I have occupied a small corner of that world. I have heard men discuss manufacturing allegations against political opponents, and I have witnessed enough sex, infidelity and blurred boundaries to know that the private reality behind a scandal can look very different from the headline.

That does not make the allegation false.

That creates an uncomfortable contradiction: this environment can make sexual assault more likely while also making a false allegation more believable.

Money, alcohol, professional dependency, secrecy and powerful men create fertile ground for genuine abuse. But secrecy creates other vulnerabilities. A real affair can become the scaffolding for a lie. A consensual relationship can be stripped of context. And sometimes an actual assault can be discovered by political professionals who recognize its usefulness before the woman herself has even had time to process what happened.

I believe Madison Crawthron when he said behind the scenes politics was full of orgies and cocaine, but his characteristics are not politically convenient enough for most journalist to investigate.

The tribal boundaries Americans see from the outside are far less rigid inside politics. Journalists, aides, operatives and candidates form friendships, business relationships and romances across party lines. Even marriages may have private arrangements the public knows nothing about.

Ideology and marriage are not always boundaries in this world.

Sexual consent must be.

Occasionally, the public gets a glimpse through the peephole: political enemies revealed as friends, ideological opposites sharing intimate relationships, supposedly hostile journalists and operatives drinking wine together after hours.

That context matters when private relationships become public allegations.

Consider Graham Platner and Lindsey Fifield. Despite occupying opposing political worlds, the two had a romantic relationship. Fifield is a conservative political operative with a professional history in Republican politics; Platner became the target of millions in outside spending aimed at defeating him.

None of that proves Fifield’s allegations are false.

But after researching the cases in this essay, I can no longer pretend the money surrounding an allegation is irrelevant.

In the weeks before the allegations surfaced, a PAC supporting Susan Collins reported a $65,000 payment to a firm offering insurance that can include protection against defamation-related risk.

That is not proof, but it is something a journalist should be allowed to notice.

This is where “believe women” has begun to collide with my own instincts. Not because I have concluded that Fifield is lying—I haven’t. But because the demand to take a side can make even uncertainty feel like a moral failure.

On almost any other subject, this would be reckless. A journalist is allowed to say: I don’t know yet. The evidence is incomplete. There are questions I cannot answer.

Sexual assault should not require a lower standard of inquiry.

The money raises some of those questions. The PAC had received support connected to Pine Tree Results, while entities in the same political ecosystem intersect with Fifield’s professional orbit. My research into Pine Tree Results led further into Republican consulting, government contracting, defense interests and networks that overlap with other subjects in this essay—including the world surrounding Burkman and Wohl.

That is a reason to investigate.

It is not proof of a lie.

I don’t know whether Fifield is telling the truth. I will not call her a liar without evidence, but neither will I manufacture certainty because uncertainty makes people uncomfortable.

Money moved. Relationships overlap. And Platner is not the only politician challenging powerful foreign interests who has subsequently confronted allegations of sexual misconduct. I have noticed similar circumstances around Thomas Massie, Abdul El-Sayed and others.

Perhaps those facts are connected. Perhaps they aren’t.

Correlation is not conspiracy.

But skepticism is not misogyny.

That distinction becomes harder to hold after discovering documented cases in which political operatives really did manufacture sexual allegations. They poison the well for everyone who comes afterward.

If Fifield is lying, she exploits credibility that genuine survivors fought generations to earn.

But if she is telling the truth, the political machinery surrounding her has created another cruelty: enough noise, money and overlapping interests to give reasonable people questions about a woman who may actually have been harmed.

Either way, women inherit the doubt.

That may be dark money’s most corrosive achievement. It does not always have to manufacture the truth or manufacture the lie.

Conversely, I will not abandon documented facts with credible evidence just because someone does not belong to the same ideology. I am no fan of the Moreno Family, but I believe Emily Moreno because the majority of her claims occurred in “the real world” friends, family, and law enforcement where real women almost never lie.

For political insiders and reporters like myself, there is an understanding that the question is better framed in the context of if I believe highly paid political operative rather than if I believe woman in circumstances like this and to maintain my investigative policy of simply saying I do not know or have enough evidence to comment.

This adds an added layer of nuance most people do not want to contend with and that is that in a world where people are paid to lie about a litany of issues including sexual assault, it is inherently unsafe to work in an environment where credibly is forfeited because no one deserves to be sexually assaulted.

It is not lost on me how politically convenient these allegations are when true and otherwise. The tribes decide who is credible based on political utility. It is sick.

I have begun to wonder why “believe women” seems to confer authority on women’s accounts of what men have done to them, but not necessarily on what women themselves have discovered, researched or built. I have watched my work dismissed and appropriated. Nobody called that a crisis of believing women. Apparently my experience becomes politically sacred only when the subject is what someone did to my body.

I have had countless stories stolen from me, my work sold for money I never saw- typically by left-leaning publications.

When I discuss those matters I’m shrugged off, but boy would it be a different story if I were sexually assaulted. I would be believed but used and discarded twice.

It is not merely disingenuous because believe women only refers to sexual misconduct but because it absolutely does not apply to all women, only politically convenient women.

We all have honest friends, neighbors and community members – in the real honest world- who could use our help. They have been discarded.

Yet in any of us in the journalist space that do not speak on every single high-profile allegation immediately and without due diligence get bombarded with negative comments and allegations of “not speaking out” even those of us like myself that have advocated for believing women and all victims in the real world for decades.

he painful irony is that all of this began, at least for me, with a belief in accountability.

Speak out. Investigate. Believe victims. Follow the money. Make powerful people answer for what they have done.

Then you follow the money far enough and discover something almost impossible to reconcile: some of the same men associated with efforts to manufacture sexual-misconduct allegations have built a lucrative business seeking mercy for people whose guilt is not hypothetical at all.

People convicted in court.

People who owe victims millions.

The pardon economy is not victimless.

Nursing-home magnate Joseph Schwartz paid Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl $960,000 as they lobbied on his behalf, including for clemency, after his conviction in a federal case involving roughly $38 million in unpaid employment taxes. Trump pardoned him after he had served only months in prison.

On the other side of that mercy were families still trying to collect millions of dollars in civil judgments, including nearly $19 million owed to one family. The pardon did not erase those debts. But it freed the man they were still trying to hold accountable.

And the business continues.

Burkman and Wohl were later paid $300,000 to represent Canadian crypto trader Andean Medjedovic, who faces federal charges over alleged cryptocurrency exploits that prosecutors say yielded roughly $65 million. Medjedovic has not been convicted. Yet his lobbyists have already sought presidential intervention, attempting to secure clemency before a jury has determined whether he committed the crimes at all.

On one side of this story are efforts to create guilt where none may exist.

On the other is a business built around obtaining extraordinary relief from guilt already established — or preventing the judicial process from reaching that determination in the first place.

And between the two sits the same commodity:

access.

Access to journalists. Access to politicians. Access to congressional offices. Access to the president. Access to the machinery capable of destroying a reputation or restoring a convicted person’s freedom.

Perhaps that is what I have struggled most to explain about the underbelly of American politics. The rules governing ordinary life do not always seem to apply there.

As a writer, I am expected to treat every explosive allegation as an urgent test of moral courage. To hesitate can look like cowardice. To say I don’t know enough yet can be interpreted as refusing to believe women.

But uncertainty is not betrayal.

Sometimes it is the most honest thing a journalist can offer.

I believe women. I also believe evidence. I believe victims deserve accountability even when their abuser is politically useful to me. And I believe a person accused of something monstrous deserves an investigation rather than a verdict manufactured by whichever political faction reaches the microphone first.

Those principles should not be contradictory.

Yet increasingly, American politics asks us to choose among them.

That may be the most painful lesson of these six stories. We have built a political culture capable of treating guilt and innocence not as conclusions to be reached through evidence, but as commodities to be assigned according to usefulness.

A woman’s pain can become opposition research.

A man’s reputation can become collateral.

A conviction can become a lobbying opportunity.

A pardon can become a product.

And accountability — the thing all of this was supposedly about — becomes available only when it serves someone powerful.

I have seen enough of this world to know that some of what happens inside it sounds unbelievable from the outside, believe it or not.

^[1] https://www.euronews.com/2018/10/31/mueller-refers-sex-assault-scheme-targeting-him-fbi-investigation-n926301

^[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/pete-buttigieg-hit-fake-sexual-assault-allegations-can-he-sue-ncna1000501

^[3] https://www.npr.org/2026/06/26/nx-s1-5872821/pete-buttigieg-cps-police-swatting

STATE OF SOUTH DAKOTA

COUNTY OF UNION

FIRST JUDICIAL CIRCUIT COURT

McCOOK LAKE IZAAK WALTON LEAGUE,

Plaintiff,

v.

RENAE ANN HANSEN,

Defendant.

Case No. 63CIV26-00020

DEFENDANT RENAE ANN HANSEN’S SPECIAL MOTION FOR EXPEDITED RELIEF PURSUANT TO SDCL CHAPTER 15-40 AND MOTION TO DISMISS OR, IN THE ALTERNATIVE, FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT

1. Defendant Renae Ann Hansen, appearing pro se, respectfully moves for expedited relief pursuant to SDCL Chapter 15-40 as to those causes of action, or portions thereof, based upon Hansen’s protected public expression. Hansen separately moves pursuant to SDCL 15-6-12(b)(5) to dismiss claims that fail to state a claim upon which relief can be granted and, to the extent resolution of Plaintiff’s claims requires consideration of matters outside the pleadings, alternatively moves for summary judgment pursuant to SDCL 15-6-56.

2. Hansen was served with Plaintiff’s Verified Complaint on August 8, 2026. This Special Motion is therefore timely under SDCL 15-40-3, which permits a party, no later than sixty days after service of a pleading asserting a covered cause of action, to seek expedited dismissal of the “cause of action or part of the cause of action.”

3. Plaintiff’s Verified Complaint begins with an employment and internal-governance dispute but expands that dispute into fourteen causes of action encompassing fundamentally different conduct: disputed employment obligations; possession of records and property obtained in the course of Hansen’s employment; internal criticism of Chapter governance and individual officers; social-media participation; publications authored by independent third parties; alleged confidential information and trade secrets; alleged interference with unspecified relationships and expectancies; and an alleged conspiracy involving unidentified persons.

4. The breadth of the Complaint does not reduce Plaintiff’s burden. Each cause of action must stand upon its own elements, and Plaintiff must establish the conduct, publication, causation, injury, damages, and—where required—the culpable state of mind necessary to impose liability upon Hansen. The Complaint repeatedly attempts to bridge gaps in those elements by collapsing legally distinct actors and legally distinct conduct into a single narrative of wrongdoing.

5. Those distinctions matter. The Chapter is not interchangeable with its Board of Directors. The Board acting collectively is not interchangeable with an individual director. An officer is not interchangeable with the organization he or she serves. Hansen is not interchangeable with independent social-media participants. Association is not authorship. Participation is not adoption. Suspicion is not proof of creation. And the existence of criticism does not establish that Hansen authored, directed, solicited, adopted, or conspired to publish it.

6. Plaintiff’s own governing documents reinforce those distinctions. The Chapter’s Bylaws separately allocate authority among the membership, the Board of Directors collectively, the President, Secretary, Treasurer, other officers, and employees. See, e.g., Bylaws, Arts. III–IV, Ex. __. They separately prescribe Board composition and quorum requirements; identify the President as the Chapter’s executive officer; assign distinct duties to the Secretary and Treasurer; establish procedures governing regular and special membership meetings; and prescribe procedures governing member discipline and expulsion. See id. Arts. II–IV, Plaintiff cannot invoke those Bylaws as binding standards when alleging misconduct by Hansen while disregarding the same provisions when they bear upon the authority of Plaintiff’s officers or the truth or falsity of criticism directed at Chapter governance.

7. Attribution is therefore a threshold and recurring defect. Plaintiff seeks, in material part, to impose liability upon Hansen for the creation and operation of a third-party social-media group and for statements published by other persons within that forum. Yet liability must rest upon conduct legally attributable to Hansen. The Complaint cannot convert proximity to a controversy into responsibility for every person who participated in it.

8. The evidentiary record independently bears upon attribution. Hansen denies creating the challenged group, and the contemporaneous record identifies independent sources for both the underlying controversy and the proposal to create a separate forum. Before the challenged group existed, the controversy was already being discussed by numerous independent participants in an unrelated social-media forum containing approximately 15,000 members. Participants in that forum independently discussed and proposed creation of a separate group devoted to those matters. See Exhibit A.

9. Hansen’s contemporaneous communications point in the same direction. Before the challenged group existed, Hansen urged against additional publication because she hoped the controversy would de-escalate. When the challenged group subsequently appeared, Hansen contacted Kazos-Sievers and asked whether Kazos-Sievers had created it. That communication is inconsistent with Plaintiff’s allegation that Hansen herself originated in the group and supports a reasonable inference that Hansen did not know the identity of its creator when it appeared. See Exhibit B.

10. Plaintiff’s own pleading demonstrates the same attribution problem. Paragraph 128 relies upon a communication expressly attributed to Aaron M. Smith—not Hansen—as part of Plaintiff’s assertion that individuals “began to threaten the safety of the Board of Directors.” Paragraphs 188–189 then allege “upon information and belief” that Hansen created the challenged Facebook page and plead alternatively that, if Hansen did not create it, she conspired with unidentified persons who did.

11. Those allegations identify competing theories; they do not establish either one. A statement expressly attributed to Smith does not become Hansen’s statement merely because both allegedly participated in the same forum. Likewise, uncertainty as to whether Hansen created a page cannot itself establish that she conspired with whoever did. Authorship and agreement are factual propositions requiring evidentiary support, not conclusions supplied by pleading in the alternative.

12. Falsity presents an independent defect in Plaintiff’s defamation theory. South Dakota defines libel as a “false and unprivileged publication.” SDCL 20-11-3. South Dakota courts accordingly distinguish actionable statements implying false assertions of objective fact from expression that does not convey such a false factual assertion. Paint Brush Corp. v. Neu, 1999 S.D. 120, ¶¶ 46–52, 599 N.W.2d 384.

13. Plaintiff therefore cannot establish actionable libel merely by demonstrating that criticism was hostile, embarrassing, sarcastic, accusatory, or objectionable. Nor does attaching the label “opinion” automatically resolve the inquiry. The legally relevant question is whether the particular publication attributable to Hansen conveyed a materially false assertion of objective fact concerning the plaintiff asserting the claim. Id. ¶¶ 46–52.

14. That requirement is consequential here because Plaintiff’s own allegations, exhibits, governing documents, public court records, police documentation, contemporaneous communications, video evidence, and other competent evidence corroborate material factual predicates underlying several publications Plaintiff characterizes as defamatory. Hansen does not contend that corroboration of one factual proposition establishes the truth of every statement made by every speaker. Rather, the challenged statements must be analyzed individually. Where competent evidence establishes that the material factual “gist” or predicate of a publication is true or otherwise independently corroborated, Plaintiff cannot establish actionable falsity merely by disputing the speaker’s characterization, emphasis, or conclusion.

15. Privilege presents a separate, publication-specific barrier to liability where applicable. South Dakota defines libel as a “false and unprivileged publication,” SDCL 20-11-3, and separately recognizes qualified privileges for, among other communications, those made without malice between persons sharing a common interest in the subject matter, SDCL 20-11-5(3), and a “fair and true report, without malice,” of a judicial, legislative, or other public official proceeding or of statements made in the course thereof, SDCL 20-11-5(4). Whether a particular communication falls within a statutory privilege depends upon the speaker, recipient, subject matter, source, and circumstances of that publication. But where the privilege applies, it is not merely an evidentiary consideration; it bears directly upon whether actionable defamation exists. South Dakota further recognizes that the existence of a qualified privilege presents a question of law for the Court, while the plaintiff bears the burden of establishing the malice necessary to defeat an otherwise applicable privilege. Peterson v. City of Mitchell, 499 N.W.2d 911, 915–17 (S.D. 1993); Peterson v. Dacy, 1996 S.D. 72, ¶¶ 6–8, 550 N.W.2d 91

16. Nor is personal hostility equivalent to the malice required either to overcome a qualified privilege or, where constitutionally applicable, to satisfy the actual-malice standard. The relevant inquiry concerns the speaker’s state of mind toward the truth or falsity of the publication, not merely animosity toward its subject. South Dakota requires a specific showing of malice to defeat the qualified privileges recognized by SDCL 20-11-5(3) and (4); malice is not inferred from the publication itself. Mere failure to investigate, standing alone, is insufficient. The pertinent inquiry is whether the speaker in fact entertained serious doubts concerning the truth of the publication or acted with the requisite awareness of probable falsity. Peterson v. Dacy, 1996 S.D. 72, ¶¶ 6–8, 550 N.W.2d 91; Peterson, 499 N.W.2d at 915–17; Janklow v. Viking Press, 459 N.W.2d 415, 419–20 (S.D. 1990).

17. South Dakota’s newly enacted Chapter 15-40 provides an additional procedural safeguard where liability is sought for protected public expression. Subject to the exclusions in SDCL 15-40-2, the Chapter applies to causes of action based upon communications in governmental proceedings, communications concerning matters under governmental consideration or review, and constitutionally protected speech, press, assembly, petition, or association concerning a matter of public concern. SDCL 15-40-1.

18. Hansen invokes Chapter 15-40 with precision. She does not contend that ordinary disputes concerning compensation, contractual performance, physical property, records, or employment duties become protected expression merely because Plaintiff joined them in a Complaint containing speech-based claims. Rather, Hansen invokes Chapter 15-40 as to those causes of action—or portions thereof—that actually seek liability based upon protected speech, association, petitioning activity, or other protected public expression.

19. That distinction prevents both overbreadth and evasion. Hansen does not seek constitutional protection for conduct outside the statute. But Plaintiff likewise may not avoid the statute merely by repackaging protected expression as “disloyalty,” “interference,” “conspiracy,” “defamation,” or a predicate for injunctive relief. The relevant inquiry is the conduct upon which the particular cause of action, or part thereof, is actually based.

20. Chapter 15-40 establishes an evidentiary procedure materially different from an ordinary challenge confined to pleading sufficiency. In ruling on a special motion under SDCL 15-40-3, the Court “shall consider” the pleadings, the motion, any response or reply, and “any evidence that could be considered in ruling on a motion for summary judgment.” SDCL 15-40-8. The Court therefore may consider competent evidence bearing upon the matters actually placed in issue by a covered claim—including authorship, attribution, falsity, privilege, causation, damages, and any other essential element Plaintiff must establish.

21. Section 15-40-9 then prescribes the governing decisional framework. The Court shall dismiss with prejudice a cause of action, or part of a cause of action, where: (1) Hansen establishes under SDCL 15-40-1 that Chapter 15-40 applies; (2) Plaintiff fails to establish under SDCL 15-40-2 that the Chapter does not apply; and (3) Plaintiff fails to establish a prima facie case as to each essential element of the challenged claim, or Hansen establishes that Plaintiff failed to state a claim upon which relief can be granted, or Hansen establishes that no genuine issue of material fact exists and she is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. SDCL 15-40-9(1)–(3).

22. That framework is consequential here. For claims based upon protected public expression, Plaintiff cannot survive merely by alleging misconduct in conclusory terms and postponing the evidentiary basis for those allegations. Once Chapter 15-40 applies and no statutory exclusion is established, Plaintiff must satisfy the showing required by §15-40-9 as to the particular cause of action—or portion thereof—challenged by Hansen. Where an essential element depends upon Hansen’s authorship of a publication, responsibility for third-party speech, actionable falsity, absence of an applicable privilege, causation, or legally cognizable injury, the statutory inquiry reaches that element directly.

23. Causation presents a recurring problem independent of attribution. The controversy described in Plaintiff’s own Complaint did not originate with the challenged Facebook group. Public discussion, criticism, court proceedings, disputes concerning Chapter governance, and independent third-party speech preceded the group’s creation and, in material respects, the conduct Plaintiff seeks to attribute to Hansen. Plaintiff therefore must establish that the particular injury for which it seeks recovery was legally caused by actionable conduct attributable to Hansen—not merely that injury or controversy existed while Hansen was involved in the underlying dispute.

24. The distinction is material. Injury attributable to preexisting public controversy, public records, Plaintiff’s own governance decisions, independent speakers, or other independent causes cannot be reassigned to Hansen merely because Plaintiff alleges that she later participated in the same controversy. Temporal overlap is not causation. Association is not causation. And the existence of reputational controversy does not establish that an actionable publication by Hansen caused it.

25. Damages require the same claim-specific analysis. Plaintiff may not aggregate every alleged reputational, organizational, membership, or business consequence associated with the controversy and assign the resulting total to Hansen. Each cause of action carries its own elements and measure of legally cognizable injury. Plaintiff must connect the damages sought to the particular actionable conduct supporting the particular claim and establish the causal relationship required by law.

26. The procedural posture therefore requires precision. Under SDCL 15-6-12(b)(5), Hansen challenges claims that fail as a matter of law on the pleadings and materials properly considered with them. To the extent disposition requires consideration of matters outside that record, Hansen alternatively seeks summary judgment under SDCL 15-6-56. And where a cause of action, or part thereof, is based upon protected public expression, Hansen invokes the distinct expedited procedure enacted in Chapter 15-40, including the evidentiary review mandated by §15-40-8 and the dismissal standards prescribed by §15-40-9.

27. These distinctions are not technicalities. They identify the questions that determine liability: Who acted? Who spoke? What authority did that person possess? What publication is legally attributable to Hansen? What objectively verifiable factual proposition did that publication communicate? Was that proposition materially false? Was the communication privileged? What evidence makes Hansen legally responsible for speech or conduct undertaken by another person? What injury resulted from the particular actionable conduct attributed to Hansen? And what competent evidence establishes each essential element of the claim?

28. Plaintiff cannot cure a missing element by collapsing one legal concept into another. An individual officer is not the Chapter. An individual director is not the Board acting collectively. A third-party speaker is not Hansen. Suspicion is not authorship. Association is not agreement. Criticism is not falsity. Preexisting controversy is not causation. Confidentiality is not, without the statutory elements, a trade secret. And allegations are not competent evidence.

29. Hansen therefore respectfully requests that the Court evaluate each cause of action separately—and, where SDCL Chapter 15-40 applies, each challenged portion of a cause of action—according to the conduct upon which it is actually based, the speaker or actor to whom that conduct is legally attributable, and the elements Plaintiff must establish. Allegations concerning distinct actors, publications, injuries, or legal duties cannot be aggregated to supply an element otherwise missing from a particular claim. Where the pleadings fail to state a legally sufficient claim, dismissal is appropriate under SDCL 15-6-12(b)(5); where the competent evidentiary record establishes no genuine issue of material fact, relief is appropriate under SDCL 15-6-56; and where a covered cause of action or portion thereof fails under the framework prescribed by SDCL 15-40-9, the Court must grant the relief required by that statute.

30. Where Plaintiff cannot make the showing required by SDCL 15-40-9 as to a covered claim or portion thereof, the Legislature has prescribed the result: dismissal with prejudice.

31. Accordingly, Hansen respectfully requests: (a) expedited relief pursuant to SDCL Chapter 15-40 as to each cause of action, or portion thereof, within the Chapter’s scope, including dismissal with prejudice where Plaintiff cannot satisfy the requirements of SDCL 15-40-9; (b) dismissal pursuant to SDCL 15-6-12(b)(5) of claims that otherwise fail to state a claim upon which relief can be granted; (c) alternatively, summary judgment pursuant to SDCL 15-6-56 as to claims for which there is no genuine issue of material fact and Hansen is entitled to judgment as a matter of law; and (d) such other and further relief as the Court deems just and proper.

A. PUBLIC CONTROVERSY, INDEPENDENT REPORTING, AND THIRD-PARTY DISCUSSION PREDATED BOTH HANSEN’S ALLEGED CONDUCT AND THE CHALLENGED GROUP

32. The public controversy described in Plaintiff’s Complaint did not originate with Hansen, and it did not originate with the Facebook group Plaintiff attributes to her. Long before the challenged group existed, several individuals later associated with Chapter leadership or operations had independently been subjects of public discussion arising from matters unrelated to Hansen.

33. That distinction is material. Plaintiff’s theory repeatedly proceeds as though criticism of Chapter leadership arose because Hansen created, encouraged, or participated in a new campaign against Plaintiff and its officers. The chronology demonstrates otherwise. The challenged group entered an already-existing public controversy involving individuals whose conduct, public positions, court proceedings, and other documented activities had generated discussion independent of Hansen.

34. Greg Meyer presents the clearest example of public controversy that existed wholly independent of Hansen. Meyer served as the elected Mayor of North Sioux City during the 2024 flood and recovery, matters that generated substantial public concern and criticism concerning the City’s preparation, response, recovery, and governmental decision-making. That controversy did not originate with Hansen or with the Facebook group challenged in this action. Indeed, during the summer of 2024—approximately two years before the events alleged here—community members created a separate social-media forum devoted specifically to the flood, recovery efforts, and criticism of the governmental response. Persons who later became associated with Chapter leadership either participated in, or were themselves discussed within, that preexisting forum. See Ex. __.

35. Meyer’s status as an elected mayor is legally significant. Speech concerning the conduct of an elected official in the performance of public duties lies at the core of the First Amendment’s protection of public debate. A public official seeking recovery for defamatory statements concerning official conduct must establish constitutional “actual malice”—knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for truth or falsity. New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 279–80 (1964). South Dakota applies that rule and recognizes that public officials and candidates for public office occupy a constitutionally distinct position in defamation law. Krueger v. Austad, 1996 S.D. 26, ¶¶ 8, 11–12, 21, 545 N.W.2d 205. At the summary-judgment stage, the record must be capable of supporting a finding of actual malice by clear and convincing evidence. Id. ¶¶ 8, 21.

36. The same chronology is independently relevant to other persons discussed in the challenged publications, even where Hansen does not contend that public-official status applies. Before the challenged Facebook group existed, Brian Berkenpas’s bankruptcy proceedings and litigation involving Rojas-Lindsey were matters capable of verification through judicial records and had already generated discussion independent of Hansen. According to the contemporaneous communications Hansen submits, participants specifically raised those records when questioning the judgment, qualifications, or suitability of persons exercising or seeking responsibility over Chapter governance and finances. See Exs. –. Hansen does not offer the existence of those proceedings as evidence of bad character, propensity, or proof of unrelated misconduct. She offers them for the narrower purposes relevant here: to establish the independent factual sources available to speakers, the chronology and context of the public discussion, and the existence of scrutiny that did not originate with Hansen. See Exhibit C.

37. Those distinctions substantially narrow what Plaintiff may attribute to Hansen. Hansen did not create the 2024 flood controversy, Meyer’s public office, the preexisting flood-recovery forum, Berkenpas’s judicial record, Rojas-Lindsey’s litigation history, or the discussion those matters generated among independent speakers. Nor does later discussion of independently existing public records establish that Hansen caused the underlying controversy.

38. To the extent a challenged publication accurately reported or fairly summarized a judicial or other official proceeding, South Dakota law separately recognizes a qualified privilege for a “fair and true report, without malice” of such proceedings. SDCL 20-11-5(4).

39. And to the extent Plaintiff seeks damages arising from reputational controversy that already existed, Plaintiff must distinguish injury proximately caused by an actionable publication legally attributable to Hansen from scrutiny traceable to public office, public records, prior litigation, earlier reporting, or independent third-party speech. See Exhibit D.

B. THE PREEXISTING DISCUSSION WAS NOT CREATED OR CONTROLLED BY HANSEN

40. Against that background, discussion concerning Plaintiff and persons associated with the Chapter was already occurring within an unrelated social-media forum known as “Siouxland Tea,” containing approximately 15,000 members, before the challenged group existed. See Ex. A.

41. Participants in that preexisting forum discussed flood-related issues, Chapter governance, treatment and removal of members, appointments and conduct of Chapter leadership, and publicly documented criminal and civil proceedings involving persons associated with the controversy. Participants other than Hansen also discussed and proposed creation of a separate group devoted to those matters. See Ex. A.

42. Hansen does not offer those communications to establish the truth of every accusation made by every participant, nor does she adopt the statements of independent speakers. Their significance is attribution and chronology.

43.They establish that the controversy predated the challenged group; that independent speakers were already discussing substantially the same subject matter; and that the proposal for a separate forum existed independently of Hansen before Plaintiff alleged that Hansen created one.

44. Plaintiff’s attribution theory must be tested against that contemporaneous record. Hansen need not prove the identity of the actual creator merely to demonstrate the evidentiary weakness in Plaintiff’s allegation that she was that person.

45.For purposes of the relief sought under SDCL Chapter 15-40 and Rule 56, the relevant question is whether the evidence before the Court is sufficient, under the applicable statutory or summary-judgment standard, to sustain Plaintiff’s attribution of creation, control, or conspiratorial responsibility to Hansen.

46. The independent origin of the controversy is reinforced by Hansen’s own contemporaneous communications before and immediately after the challenged group’s creation. Those communications are addressed chronologically below.

B. July 13, 2026 — Communications Predating Formation of the Challenged Group

47. On or about July 13, 2026, Myranda Kazos-Sievers, acting in her capacity as a freelance independent journalist, contacted Hansen regarding a potential article concerning matters involving the Izaak Walton League and certain persons associated with its board.

48.The inquiry followed increased public discussion within the preexisting Siouxland Tea forum concerning board members, including Brian Berkempas, Rojas-Lindsey, and Lindsey, as well as publicly documented criminal and civil proceedings involving certain individuals associated with the controversy.

49.Kazos-Sievers had also obtained source materials concerning those matters, including publicly available court records from multiple individuals sent through phone and social media platforms but declined to do a story on the board because she no longer does local issues, and do to warnings from said individuals that board members were violent and or retaliatory.

50.During that communication, Hansen urged Kazos-Sievers not to publish an article at that time because Hansen hoped the underlying controversy would deescalate.

51.That communication occurred approximately nineteen days before the Facebook group identified in Plaintiff’s Complaint was created. It therefore constitutes contemporaneous evidence of Hansen’s expressed position before the challenged group existed and is inconsistent with an inference that Hansen was simultaneously attempting to expand or intensify the controversy through creation of another public forum.

52. See Exhibit B (July 13, 2026 correspondence between Hansen and Kazos-Sievers).

C. August 1, 2026 — Formation of the Group and Hansen’s Contemporaneous Inquiry Concerning Its Creator

53.On or about August 1, 2026, the Facebook group identified in Plaintiff’s Complaint was created.

54.Following its creation, Kazos-Sievers received multiple contemporaneous communications asking whether she had created the group. Those inquiries arose in the context of Kazos-Sievers’s prior reporting concerning South Dakota governmental and public-interest matters, including matters involving McCook Lake, and because subjects discussed within the newly created group overlapped with matters she had previously researched or reported.

55.Significantly, Hansen herself contacted Kazos-Sievers and asked whether Kazos-Sievers had created the group.

56. That contemporaneous inquiry supports a reasonable inference that Hansen did not know the identity of the group’s creator when it appeared and is inconsistent with Plaintiff’s allegation that Hansen herself originated the group.

57.Discussion of the underlying controversy existed in an unrelated forum of approximately 15,000 members before the challenged group existed. Participants in that forum independently proposed creation of a separate group. Hansen’s July 13 communication reflects her expressed desire that the controversy deescalate. Approximately nineteen days later, when the challenged group appeared, Hansen contemporaneously asked Kazos-Sievers whether she had created it.

58.At minimum, this evidence materially undermines Plaintiff’s attribution of the group’s creation to Hansen. For purposes of Hansen’s alternative request for summary judgment, the evidence further demonstrates the absence of a factual basis for treating Hansen as the creator of the group unless Plaintiff can produce competent evidence establishing otherwise.

59.Nothing about Hansen’s subsequent awareness of, membership in, or participation in the group, standing alone, establishes that Hansen created it or renders her legally responsible for every statement subsequently published there by independent third parties.

D. Paragraph 128 Does Not Allege a Threat Made by Hansen

60.Plaintiff characterizes the communication reproduced in Paragraph 128 of the Complaint as evidence that individuals “began to threaten the safety of the Board of Directors.”

61.That characterization presents two distinct defects as applied to Hansen.

62.First, the communication reproduced in Paragraph 128 does not contain an express threat by Hansen to commit unlawful violence against Plaintiff, any member of its Board of Directors, or any other person.

63.Second—and independently dispositive as to attribution—the statement reproduced in Paragraph 128 is attributed by Plaintiff’s own pleading to Aaron M. Smith, not Hansen.

64.The Complaint therefore cannot establish threatening conduct by Hansen merely by reproducing a statement authored by another person. Absent factual allegations establishing that Hansen authored, adopted, directed, solicited, or otherwise became legally responsible for Smith’s particular statement, Smith’s speech remains Smith’s speech. Mere participation by two individuals in the same online forum does not, without more, establish that one is legally responsible for the speech of the other.

65.The constitutional distinction is equally important. The First Amendment does not permit criticism, advocacy, political hyperbole, or demands for lawful accountability to be treated as unprotected threatening speech merely because the recipient finds the speech alarming or objectionable.

66.The Supreme Court has defined a “true threat” as a serious expression conveying that the speaker means to commit an act of unlawful violence against a particular individual or group. Virginia v. Black, 538 U.S. 343, 359 (2003). Political hyperbole is constitutionally distinct from a true threat. Watts v. United States, 394 U.S. 705, 708 (1969).

67.More recently, the Supreme Court held that the First Amendment requires, at minimum, a showing that the speaker consciously disregarded a substantial risk that his or her communication would be understood as threatening violence. Counterman v. Colorado, 600 U.S. 66, 69, 79–82 (2023).

68.The statement reproduced in Paragraph 128 does not, as pleaded, communicate an intention by Hansen—or even by the identified speaker—to inflict unlawful violence. To the extent the communication invokes “the law,” legal consequences, investigation, reporting, prosecution, removal, or other lawful mechanisms of accountability, such language points toward resort to legal process rather than an expressed intention to commit unlawful violence.

69.A plaintiff’s characterization of speech as a “threat” does not determine its constitutional character. Courts must examine the communication itself and its context. Plaintiff therefore cannot convert criticism, advocacy, or demands for lawful accountability into a threat of physical violence merely by describing the communication in conclusory terms.

70.The defect is still more fundamental as to Hansen. Even assuming solely for purposes of argument that Smith’s statement could reasonably be construed as threatening, Paragraph 128 does not allege that Hansen made the statement. Nor does it allege facts demonstrating that Hansen authorized, directed, adopted, or participated in making it.

71.Accordingly, Paragraph 128 does not plausibly establish that Hansen threatened the safety of Plaintiff’s Board of Directors. A statement expressly attributed in Plaintiff’s own Complaint to another individual cannot, without additional well-pleaded facts establishing a legally cognizable basis for attribution, supply a claim against Hansen.

ARGUMENT

I. LEGAL STANDARD

72.A motion under SDCL 15-6-12(b)(5) tests the legal sufficiency of the claims asserted, not whether a plaintiff may ultimately prove some grievance arising from the parties’ relationship. Thompson v. Summers, 1997 S.D. 103, ¶ 5, 567 N.W.2d 387. Although well-pleaded factual allegations are construed in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, legal conclusions and speculative assertions do not become facts merely because they appear in a verified pleading.

73.South Dakota requires more than “labels and conclusions” or a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action. Sisney v. Reisch, 2008 S.D. 72, ¶ 9, 754 N.W.2d 813. A complaint must allege circumstances and facts which, taken as true, raise the claimed entitlement to relief beyond speculation. Where a necessary element is absent, or the allegations themselves establish an insuperable legal barrier to recovery, dismissal is appropriate. Id.

74.That principle is particularly important here. Plaintiff’s Verified Complaint spans more than fifty pages and fourteen counts, but length is not a substitute for legal sufficiency. The Court must determine whether the facts alleged actually satisfy the elements of each cause of action—not whether Plaintiff has repeatedly characterized Hansen’s conduct as “embezzlement,” “defamation,” “misappropriation,” “interference,” “conspiracy,” or misconduct.

75.When Plaintiff’s own governing documents are considered, several of those characterizations fail to correspond to the actual language of the Chapter’s Bylaws.

II. PLAINTIFF CANNOT BASE LIABILITY UPON CRITICISM OF BYLAW VIOLATIONS WHERE THE GOVERNING DOCUMENTS THEMSELVES ESTABLISH THE UNDERLYING GOVERNANCE REQUIREMENTS

76.Plaintiff repeatedly invokes the Chapter’s Bylaws and Standing Rules as substantive standards against which Hansen’s conduct should be judged. In Paragraph 158(c) and (d), for example, Plaintiff expressly alleges that Hansen breached a duty of loyalty through “[f]ailure to uphold” the National and Chapter Bylaws and Standing Rules. Compl. ¶ 158(c)-(d).

77.Plaintiff cannot invoke those governing documents when they support its claims against Hansen while disregarding their mandatory provisions when those same provisions bear upon the truth or substantial truth of criticism directed at Plaintiff and its Board.

78.That issue is particularly significant to Plaintiff’s defamation theory. Among the social-media statements Plaintiff places before the Court is the assertion that Secretary and voting Board member Angie Lindsey “refuses to have a membership meeting due to unknown reasons.” Whether criticism concerning the failure to hold membership meetings is false cannot be determined from Plaintiff’s characterization of that criticism. It must be measured against what the Bylaws actually require.

A. The Bylaws Draw a Deliberate Distinction Between Mandatory Regular Meetings and Discretionary Special Meetings

79.The Chapter’s Bylaws provide that regular membership meetings “shall” be held on the third Thursday of each month at 7:00 p.m. They separately provide that special membership meetings “may” be called by the President, a majority of the Board of Directors, or one-fifth of the active membership.

80.The distinction between “shall” and “may” is substantive.

81.“Shall” imposes a mandatory requirement. “May” confers permission or discretionary authority. The drafters used both terms in the same meeting provisions and therefore plainly knew how to distinguish between an event required by the Bylaws and an event that an authorized person or group merely has discretion to initiate.

82.Accordingly, the regular monthly membership meeting does not exist only if the President, Secretary, Hansen, or some other individual chooses to call one. The Bylaws themselves require that it occur. By contrast, the separately authorized special meeting is discretionary and may be called through the procedures specified in the governing document.

83.Plaintiff therefore cannot reasonably collapse those two provisions into a single discretionary meeting procedure. Doing so would effectively replace “shall” with “may” and render the distinction chosen by the Bylaws meaningless.

84. If, as the evidence establishes, regular membership meetings required by the Bylaws were not being held, criticism stating that the Chapter or its leadership was failing to hold required membership meetings rests upon an objectively verifiable factual predicate. Plaintiff may disagree with the criticism, its tone, or the attribution of responsibility to a particular Board member. But disagreement with criticism is not falsity, and falsity is indispensable to libel under SDCL 20-11-3.

B. THE MANDATORY MEETING PROVISIONS CANNOT BE CONVERTED INTO DISCRETIONARY AUTHORITY BECAUSE CHAPTER LEADERSHIP ANTICIPATED MEMBER OPPOSITION

85. Plaintiff has placed compliance with its meeting requirements directly at issue. The Complaint treats public criticism that Chapter leadership ignored the Bylaws and refused membership meetings as part of the allegedly defamatory course of conduct, while separately alleging that Hansen sought member signatures for a petition to call a membership meeting. The truth or falsity of that criticism therefore cannot be determined from Plaintiff’s characterization of the dispute. It must be measured against the governing text and the actual meeting history.

86. The Bylaws draw an express distinction between mandatory regular meetings and discretionary mechanisms for calling additional meetings. They provide that regular Chapter membership meetings “shall” occur on the third Thursday of each month at 7:00 p.m. They separately provide that special meetings “may” be called through specified procedures. That difference in language must be given effect. “Shall” imposes the prescribed requirement; “may” confers authority or discretion. Reading the regular-meeting provision as though meetings could simply be withheld whenever Chapter leadership considered them inconvenient would erase a textual distinction the Bylaws themselves expressly make.

87. That distinction is particularly significant where scheduled meetings were allegedly cancelled because Chapter leadership anticipated criticism, protest, or member opposition to actions taken by leadership. See Ex. __. Nothing in the regular-meeting provision identified by Hansen conditions the mandatory meeting schedule upon leadership’s expectation that attending members will approve of the Board’s conduct. Nor does anticipated disagreement convert a mandatory regular meeting into an optional one.

88. The Bylaws instead preserve separate mechanisms through which the membership itself may act, including the ability of one-fifth of the active membership to invoke the procedure for a special meeting. The governing structure therefore contemplates member participation—including participation independent of the preferences of individual directors. Where the Bylaws confer procedural rights upon the membership, an individual officer or director cannot be presumed to possess an unstated power to defeat those procedures merely because member opposition is anticipated.

89. Hansen does not ask the Court, at this stage, to adjudicate every disputed meeting cancellation as an independent violation of nonprofit law. The narrower point is dispositive to Plaintiff’s defamation theory: where Plaintiff seeks liability for publications asserting that Chapter leadership ignored the Bylaws or obstructed membership meetings, Plaintiff must establish the material falsity of those assertions. Evidence that mandatory meetings were not held, that scheduled meetings were cancelled amid anticipated member opposition, or that members resorted to the petition procedure provided by the Bylaws bears directly upon that question.

C. THE SAME TEXTUAL DISCIPLINE APPLIES TO BOARD COMPOSITION, QUORUM, AND PURPORTED “BOARD ACTION”

90. The same analysis applies when Plaintiff invokes action supposedly taken by “the Board.” Article III does not treat the Board as an abstraction interchangeable with whichever directors happened to act at a particular time. The Bylaws prescribe an institutional structure: “The Board of Directors shall consist of 15 board members,” establish a majority-of-the-Board quorum requirement, and separately prescribe procedures for regular and special Board meetings. See Bylaws, Art. III, §§ __, Ex. __.

91. Hansen’s evidence reflects that, during material portions of the controversy, approximately nine persons were serving as directors rather than the fifteen prescribed by the Bylaws. See Ex. __. Hansen does not contend that the existence of vacancies, standing alone, necessarily invalidates every action taken by the Chapter or its directors. The point is narrower. Plaintiff has itself placed compliance with the Bylaws and the authority of Chapter actors at issue. The actual composition of the Board is therefore relevant both to the factual basis of publications criticizing Chapter governance and to Plaintiff’s repeated characterization of particular conduct as authorized action of “the Board.”

92. The distinction between authority and its exercise is equally important. The Bylaws provide that the Directors “may” dismiss an officer or employee by majority vote. That provision confers a power upon the designated collective body; it does not establish that the power was exercised merely because an individual director demanded, instructed, preferred, or announced a particular result. Where Plaintiff relies upon purported “Board action,” the relevant inquiry is whether the action was actually taken by the body possessing the authority under the Bylaws—including, where material, whether the applicable meeting, quorum, voting, or other procedural requirements were satisfied.

93. Plaintiff therefore cannot simultaneously rely upon the Bylaws to characterize Hansen’s conduct as unauthorized while treating compliance with those same Bylaws as irrelevant when the authority of its own directors is questioned. Nor can criticism alleging that directors ignored the Bylaws become defamatory merely because Plaintiff disagrees with the criticism. The governing text, the Chapter’s actual meeting history, the composition of the Board, and the evidence of what organizational action actually occurred provide objective evidence against which the challenged factual propositions can be tested.

94. These are not collateral governance grievances inserted into an unrelated defamation dispute. Plaintiff made them material by seeking liability for speech asserting that Chapter leadership ignored the Bylaws, obstructed membership meetings, or acted without proper authority. Once Plaintiff placed the truth of those assertions at issue, the Bylaws became evidence—not merely of what Hansen or Plaintiff believed the rules to be, but of what the Chapter’s own governing documents actually required.

D. Membership Discipline Likewise Must Be Measured Against the Procedure the Bylaws Actually Require

95.The same principle applies to Plaintiff’s removal or exclusion of members.

96.Article I Section 1.04. says:

“Any member whose conduct violates the ethics of any of the rules of this Chapter or of the National Organization may be expelled from membership by a two-thirds vote of the Board of Directors at a regular Board meeting, provided the accused has been given at least twenty-four hours’ notice of the proposed action and is given an opportunity to be heard before the Board. All charges must be supported by affidavit.”

97.If the Bylaws require notice, stated grounds, an opportunity to be heard, a vote, or another specified procedure before a member may be suspended, expelled, or otherwise deprived of membership rights, Plaintiff cannot avoid those requirements by simply removing members first and characterizing the action later as legitimate Board administration.

98.Hansen’s evidence will show that members were removed or excluded without the warning, notice, hearing, vote, or other process required by the governing documents. See [EXHIBIT D].

99. That evidence is relevant for two separate reasons. First, it bears directly upon Plaintiff’s allegation in Paragraph 158(c)-(d) that Hansen failed to uphold the Bylaws and Standing Rules. Plaintiffs cannot selectively invoke organizational rules against an employee while treating compliance by the organization’s governing body as irrelevant. Second, it bears upon falsity where Plaintiff seeks defamation liability arising from public criticism alleging that Chapter leadership violated those same rules.

F. Plaintiff’s Own Reliance Upon the Bylaws Makes Their Actual Requirements Material to Its Claims

100.This is ultimately a straightforward problem of consistency.

101.Plaintiff itself alleges that compliance with the Bylaws and Standing Rules was sufficiently important that Hansen’s purported failure to uphold them constitutes a breach of loyalty. Compl. ¶ 158(c)-(d). Plaintiff’s own written directive similarly represented that its demands were issued to ensure “compliance with the Chapter Bylaws” and “proper corporate governance.”

102. Having placed bylaw compliance squarely at issue, Plaintiff cannot treat those documents as binding when invoked against Hansen but irrelevant when they demonstrate a factual basis for criticism of Plaintiff’s own governance.

103.The Court need not determine whether every criticism of every Board member was perfectly phrased. Defamation law does not demand perfect phrasing; it requires, at minimum, a false statement of fact. Where the challenged criticism rests upon actual failures to comply with mandatory governance provisions, Plaintiff cannot manufacture falsity merely by objecting to the criticism or the forum in which it appeared.

104.Nor does Plaintiff’s disagreement with the speaker’s allocation of responsibility transform an underlying governance failure into a fabricated event. The appropriate inquiry remains statement-specific: what factual proposition was communicated, what did the Bylaws require, what actually occurred, and would any difference materially alter the defamatory “gist” or “sting” of the publication.

105.Accordingly, Plaintiff’s bylaw allegations should be measured against the text of the Bylaws themselves. Those provisions distinguish mandatory duties from discretionary authority, allocate powers among distinct organizational actors, and establish procedures Plaintiff cannot selectively invoke. To the extent Plaintiff’s libel theory depends upon portraying factually grounded criticism of its governance as false, the governing documents and Plaintiff’s own pleadings substantially undermine that theory.

III. COUNT 2 — BREACH OF EMPLOYMENT AGREEMENT IS IMPERMISSIBLY CONCLUSORY TO THE EXTENT IT FAILS TO IDENTIFY A CONTRACTUAL PROVISION HANSEN BREACHED

106.Plaintiff alleges that the Employment Agreement is valid and enforceable and then states, in substance, that Hansen “breached” it by failing to perform her obligations. Compl. ¶¶ 147-154.

107.That is a conclusion, not identification of a breach.

108.Plaintiff must connect the challenged conduct to an obligation actually imposed by the contract. It cannot enlarge Hansen’s contractual obligations after the fact by treating every disagreement with a Board member, every asserted violation of a subsequently issued directive, or every alleged violation of a governance provision applicable to officers or directors as a breach of Hansen’s employment contract.

109.Indeed, Plaintiff’s own exhibit identifies Hansen’s contractual responsibilities in considerable detail, including receiving and processing membership applications and fees, making deposits, issuing and deleting gate fobs, processing watercraft registrations, collecting fees, and administering dock rentals.

110.Where Plaintiff contends that Hansen breached the Agreement, it must identify the contractual duty, the act constituting breach, causation, and resulting contractual damages. A generalized allegation that Hansen “did not perform” her obligations does not permit fourteen counts of collateral tort liability to arise from an employment dispute.

IV. COUNTS 3 AND 4 — PLAINTIFF CANNOT CREATE DUTY-OF-LOYALTY OR FIDUCIARY LIABILITY BY RELABELING DISPUTED EMPLOYMENT CONDUCT

111.South Dakota law imposes duties upon employees, including duties concerning obedience to lawful employer directions, accounting, and preference for the employer’s business. See SDCL ch. 60-2.

112. But the existence of an employment duty does not establish its breach.

113.Count 3 alleges, among other things, “embezzling” money, unauthorized additional compensation, paying others to perform work, failure to uphold bylaws and Standing Rules, allowing nonmembers onto property, inadequate recordkeeping, account administration, creating a Facebook page, defaming directors, and downloading alleged trade secrets.

114.These allegations impermissibly bundle legally distinct conduct into the conclusory proposition that Hansen was “disloyal.”

115.Most significantly, Plaintiff cannot establish a breach of loyalty simply by labeling disputed compensation “embezzlement.” Whether compensation was unauthorized is a factual and contractual proposition requiring proof. Nor does Plaintiff identify what provision of the Bylaws Hansen personally violated by each complained-of act.

116.The Bylaws themselves assign financial responsibilities primarily to the Treasurer, who is responsible for receiving Chapter funds, depositing them, accounting to the Chapter, and transferring financial records to a successor. Hansen’s employment agreement separately assigned operational financial tasks to Hansen. Those provisions must be read together; they cannot reasonably be interpreted to make every administrative act by an employee an exercise of independent fiduciary control.

117.Count 4 similarly alleges that Hansen’s responsibility for processing fees and deposits created a fiduciary duty and then proceeds from that premise to tort liability. The mere performance of assigned financial tasks does not eliminate the need to plead an identifiable fiduciary breach, causation, and damages.

118.To the extent Counts 3 and 4 merely duplicate the same contractual performance dispute alleged in Count 2, they should not be permitted to convert an ordinary contract dispute into overlapping tort claims without an independently actionable duty and independently pleaded breach.

V. COUNTS 5 AND 6 — CONVERSION AND TRESPASS TO CHATTELS ARE NOT ESTABLISHED MERELY BECAUSE AN EMPLOYEE ONCE POSSESSED CHAPTER PROPERTY

119.South Dakota conversion requires more than possession. The plaintiff must establish that it owned or possessed a superior interest in the property, that the defendant exercised dominion or control or seriously interfered with that interest, and that the conduct deprived the plaintiff of its interest. Estate of Thacker v. Timm, 2022 S.D. 49, ¶ 41.

120.Plaintiff’s theory is extraordinary in breadth. It identifies passwords, accounts, text messages, membership records, contracts, receipts, calendars, inventory records, handwritten notes, camera locations, keys, devices, and numerous other categories as property allegedly converted by Hansen.

121. But, Plaintiff’s own allegations demonstrate that Hansen acquired access to much of this material because she was the Chapter’s employee and caretaker and was required to administer Chapter operations. Lawful possession arising from employment is not itself conversion.

122.The relevant question is what Hansen allegedly did after Plaintiff’s right to possession became superior—not whether she ever possessed the material.

123.Plaintiff’s own July directive illustrates the problem. It demanded not merely the return of existing property but, among other things, that Hansen organize and compile records and, if a consolidated master list of credentials did not exist, create one. A failure to create a new document demanded during an employment transition is not the conversion of preexisting personal property.

124.Nor can Plaintiff avoid the required showing of substantial interference merely by pleading the same property under the alternative caption “trespass to chattels.”

VI. COUNTS 7 AND 9 — THE TORTIOUS-INTERFERENCE CLAIMS FAIL TO IDENTIFY THE RELATIONSHIPS, INTERFERENCE, CAUSATION, OR RESULTING LOSS WITH REQUIRED PARTICULARITY

125.South Dakota requires: (1) a valid business relationship or expectancy; (2) defendant’s knowledge of it; (3) an intentional and unjustified act of interference; (4) causation; and (5) damages. Tibke v. McDougall, 479 N.W.2d 898, 908 (S.D. 1992).

126.Count 7 merely alleges that Plaintiff has “valid business relationships with its members and contracted third parties,” that Hansen knew about them, interfered, and caused harm.

127.Count 9 is even more abstract. Plaintiff alleges an expectancy of “valid future business relationships,” including an expectation that its membership will increase, and then recites that Hansen intentionally interfered and caused harm.

128.That is substantially a recitation of the elements.

129.Plaintiff does not identify in those counts a particular prospective member, transaction, contract, renewal, donor, vendor, or business opportunity that would probably have materialized but for Hansen’s conduct. An organization’s generalized hope that its membership will increase is not transformed into an actionable business expectancy merely by attaching the word “valid” to it.

130.Nor can criticism of an organization or its leadership, standing alone, supply the missing elements of intentional and unjustified interference.

131.Counts 7 and 9 should therefore be dismissed.

VII. COUNT 8 — PLAINTIFF’S DEFAMATION CLAIM FAILS ON ATTRIBUTION, FALSITY, IDENTITY, PRIVILEGE, AND CAUSATION AND, TO THE EXTENT BASED UPON PROTECTED PUBLIC EXPRESSION, IS SUBJECT TO DISMISSAL UNDER SDCL CHAPTER 15-40

132. Count 8 does not identify a single coherent defamatory publication attributable to Hansen. Instead, Plaintiff aggregates materially different speech and speakers: statements concerning individual Chapter officers; publications authored by independent third parties; an allegation made “upon information and belief” that Hansen created a Facebook page; an alternative allegation that, if she did not create it, she conspired with unidentified persons who did; and factual assertions whose material predicates are corroborated by Plaintiff’s own allegations, exhibits, governing documents, public records, and other competent evidence.

133. Those theories cannot be collapsed into a single defamation claim merely because they arise from the same controversy. For each allegedly actionable publication, Plaintiff must identify the speaker, the particular statement, the person or entity allegedly defamed, the publication itself, and the legally required elements of falsity, lack of privilege, causation, and cognizable injury or damages. Liability cannot be established by aggregating different speakers, different statements, and different alleged injuries into a single generalized allegation of “defamation.”

134. South Dakota defines libel as a “false and unprivileged publication” made by writing, printing, picture, effigy, or other fixed representation that satisfies the statutory requirements. SDCL 20-11-3. Falsity and absence of privilege therefore are not merely collateral considerations; they are incorporated into South Dakota’s statutory definition of actionable libel. Plaintiff must accordingly establish that the particular publication attributed to Hansen conveyed a materially false factual assertion and was not protected by an applicable privilege.

135. The South Dakota Constitution provides an additional protection for expression. Article VI, § 5 expressly provides that, in libel prosecutions, “the truth, when published with good motives and for justifiable ends, shall be a sufficient defense.” S.D. Const. art. VI, § 5. Thus, where competent evidence establishes the truth or substantial truth of the material factual predicate of a challenged publication, Plaintiff cannot establish liability merely because the publication was critical, embarrassing, or unfavorable.

A. COUNT 8 IMPLICATES SOUTH DAKOTA’S EXPEDITED PROCEDURE FOR CLAIMS BASED UPON PROTECTED PUBLIC EXPRESSION

136. Effective July 1, 2026, South Dakota enacted Chapter 15-40, establishing an expedited procedure for causes of action based upon “protected public expression.” Subject to the exclusions enumerated in SDCL 15-40-2, the Chapter applies to causes of action based upon communications made in governmental proceedings; communications concerning issues under consideration or review in governmental proceedings; and the exercise of constitutional rights of speech, press, assembly, petition, or association concerning a matter of public concern. SDCL 15-40-1.

137. The Legislature further directed that Chapter 15-40 “must be broadly construed and applied” to protect the exercise of those constitutional rights. SDCL 15-40-13.

138. Count 8 seeks liability, at least in substantial part, for speech and association concerning matters extending beyond a private employment disagreement. The challenged publications encompass discussion of an elected public official and governmental flood response; judicial and law-enforcement proceedings reflected in public records; alleged conduct bearing upon persons exercising organizational authority; member efforts to invoke rights under the Chapter’s governing documents; and discussion among members and citizens concerning those matters. To the extent a cause of action, or part thereof, is based upon Hansen’s exercise of constitutionally protected speech, press, assembly, petition, or association concerning a matter of public concern—or otherwise falls within SDCL 15-40-1—Hansen invokes the expedited procedure established by Chapter 15-40.

139. Hansen does not ask the Court to presume that every statement identified in Count 8 is protected merely because it occurred in a public forum or concerned the Chapter. The statute instead requires a claim-specific inquiry. Hansen bears the initial burden of establishing that Chapter 15-40 applies to the challenged cause of action or portion thereof; Plaintiff may establish that a statutory exclusion applies; and, where the Chapter applies, SDCL 15-40-9 prescribes the showing Plaintiff must make to avoid dismissal. The analysis therefore turns upon the actual conduct and expression upon which each challenged portion of Count 8 is based—not merely the tort label Plaintiff assigns to it.

140. The evidentiary posture is equally significant. In ruling upon the Special Motion, the Court “shall consider” the pleadings, the motion, any response or reply, and “any evidence that could be considered in ruling on a motion for summary judgment.” SDCL 15-40-8. The Court therefore is not confined to Plaintiff’s characterization of disputed speech. It may consider competent evidence bearing upon authorship, attribution, context, falsity, privilege, causation, damages, and every other essential element placed in issue by the covered claim.

141. That procedure is particularly consequential here. Count 8 depends in material respects upon disputed propositions concerning who created the challenged group, who authored particular publications, whether Hansen may legally be held responsible for speech authored by others, whether particular factual assertions were materially false, and whether the alleged injury was caused by Hansen rather than by preexisting public records, prior controversy, or independent speakers. Chapter 15-40 permits those threshold questions to be tested against competent evidence before liability for protected public expression proceeds further.

B. Plaintiff Cannot Substitute Statements Concerning Individual Officers for Defamation of the Chapter

142. Paragraph 186 alleges that Hansen defamed the Izaak Walton McCook Lake Chapter by accusing its President, Justin Lindsey, of sexual harassment. Paragraph 187 similarly alleges defamation of the Chapter through an allegedly fabricated communication attributed to Lindsey individually. Compl. ¶¶ 186–187.

143. Those allegations expose a recurring defect in Plaintiff’s pleading: the Chapter, its Board, and its individual officers are repeatedly treated as interchangeable. They are not.

144. Plaintiff’s own Bylaws recognize the distinction. They separately identify the Chapter membership, the Board acting collectively, the President, Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer, employees, and individual directors, and assign different powers and responsibilities to each.

145. Plaintiff therefore must establish how a particular statement concerning Lindsey individually communicated an actionable false factual assertion concerning the Chapter itself. The fact that an individual holds organizational office does not, without more, erase the distinction between the officer and the organization he serves.

C. Disagreement With Hansen’s Characterization of Lindsey’s Conduct Does Not Establish Fabrication

146. Plaintiff separately alleges that Hansen fabricated conduct attributed to Lindsey. That allegation presents an objectively verifiable factual question and must be distinguished from Plaintiff’s disagreement with Hansen’s characterization of the underlying conduct as “sexual harassment.”

147. Hansen contemporaneously reported the matter to Board members, stated that she contacted the South Dakota Division of Human Rights, identified the communication at issue, and described an additional face-to-face interaction. See Ex. __. Hansen further possesses evidence concerning the underlying communication Plaintiff alleges was fabricated. See Ex. __.

148. The relevant questions are therefore discrete: What occurred? What did Hansen actually say occurred? What factual proposition did the challenged publication communicate? And was that proposition materially false?

149. Plaintiff cannot establish fabrication merely by disputing Hansen’s terminology. If competent evidence establishes the material underlying conduct, disagreement over how that conduct was characterized does not itself prove that Hansen invented the event.

D. PLAINTIFF HAS NOT ESTABLISHED THAT HANSEN CREATED THE CHALLENGED FACEBOOK PAGE OR IS LEGALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR PUBLICATIONS AUTHORED BY INDEPENDENT THIRD PARTIES

150. Plaintiff’s theory of attribution rests upon alternatives rather than an identified factual link. Plaintiff alleges “upon information and belief” that Hansen created the Circus Sideshow page. Compl. ¶ 188. Plaintiff then pleads an alternative: if Hansen did not create the page, she allegedly conspired with unidentified John and Jane Does who did. Compl. ¶ 189. Plaintiff thus pleads two materially different theories—direct authorship and conspiratorial responsibility—without identifying the factual basis establishing either.

151. Alternative pleading may preserve alternative legal theories at the pleading stage; it does not convert either alternative into evidence. The allegation that Hansen created the page does not prove authorship. And uncertainty concerning authorship does not itself supply the agreement, common objective, or concerted action necessary to establish conspiracy.

152. Attribution must instead be established publication by publication and actor by actor. Awareness of a forum is not authorship. Membership in a forum is not authorship. Participation is not control. Sharing or agreeing with a particular publication does not, without more, establish responsibility for every publication made by every other participant. And association with independent speakers does not establish that Hansen authored, authorized, directed, solicited, adopted, or otherwise became legally responsible for their particular statements.

153. Plaintiff’s own Complaint illustrates the problem. Paragraph 128 expressly attributes one of the communications Plaintiff characterizes as threatening to Aaron M. Smith—not Hansen. Plaintiff cannot use the existence of a common forum to erase the identity of the actual speaker. If liability is sought against Hansen for Smith’s publication, Plaintiff must establish a legally sufficient basis for imposing responsibility upon Hansen for Smith’s speech independent of the fact that both allegedly participated in the same online discussion.

154. The contemporaneous evidence concerning creation of the forum points away from Plaintiff’s direct-authorship theory. Before the challenged group existed, the underlying controversy was already being discussed by independent speakers in an unrelated forum containing approximately 15,000 members, and participants other than Hansen had discussed creating a separate group devoted to the controversy. See Ex. A. On July 13, 2026, Hansen urged Kazos-Sievers not to publish concerning the dispute because Hansen hoped it would deescalate. See Ex. B. When the challenged group subsequently appeared on or about August 1, Hansen contacted Kazos-Sievers and asked whether Kazos-Sievers had created it. See Ex. C.

155. Hansen is not required to identify the actual creator merely to demonstrate the deficiency in Plaintiff’s attribution theory. The identity of the true creator and the sufficiency of Plaintiff’s evidence attributing creation to Hansen are different questions. Hansen may contest the latter without proving the former. The relevant inquiry under the applicable procedural standard is whether Plaintiff possesses evidence sufficient to establish Hansen’s responsibility for the particular conduct upon which liability is sought—not whether Hansen can solve Plaintiff’s uncertainty by identifying another defendant.

156. Nor can that uncertainty be cured merely by substituting conspiracy for authorship. South Dakota civil conspiracy requires, among other things, two or more persons, an object to be accomplished, a meeting of the minds concerning that object or course of action, unlawful overt acts, and resulting damages. Setliff v. Akins, 2000 S.D. 124, ¶ 32, 616 N.W.2d 878. Accordingly, if Plaintiff abandons or cannot establish direct creation, it must independently establish the elements necessary to impose conspiratorial liability. The proposition “if Hansen did not create it, she conspired with whoever did” does not itself establish a meeting of the minds.

157. The use of unidentified Doe defendants does not alter that requirement. Discovery may identify additional persons or evidence, but the possibility that future discovery could reveal an agreement is not itself evidence that an agreement presently existed. Where Chapter 15-40 applies, the Court must apply the evidentiary framework prescribed by SDCL 15-40-9; where Rule 56 applies, the issue likewise turns upon competent evidence rather than speculation concerning what discovery might eventually reveal.

158. This distinction is particularly important because Plaintiff seeks to attribute not merely creation of the forum, but publications and resulting injury arising from activity within it. Even proof that Hansen participated in the group would not, without an additional legally sufficient basis for attribution, make her the publisher of every statement made by every other participant. Plaintiff must connect Hansen to the particular publication or actionable conduct upon which the particular claim rests.

159. Plaintiff’s theory therefore cannot proceed by elimination: Hansen was involved in the underlying dispute; a critical Facebook group subsequently appeared; therefore Hansen either created it or conspired with whoever did. The contemporaneous record establishes that the controversy, independent speakers, and proposals for a separate forum all predated the challenged group. Against that record, authorship, control, adoption, and agreement remain distinct factual propositions requiring their own evidentiary support.

160. Count 8 should therefore be evaluated only upon publications legally attributable to Hansen. Statements authored by Smith or other independent speakers cannot supply the falsity, publication, fault, causation, or damages necessary for a defamation claim against Hansen absent a legally sufficient basis for imposing responsibility upon her for those statements.

E. Paragraph 128 Demonstrates the Attribution Defect on the Face of Plaintiff’s Own Complaint

161. Paragraph 128 illustrates the problem directly. Plaintiff characterizes a reproduced communication as evidence that individuals “began to threaten the safety of the Board of Directors.” Yet Plaintiff’s own pleading identifies Aaron M. Smith—not Hansen—as the speaker.

162. Plaintiff does not allege in Paragraph 128 that Hansen authored Smith’s statement, directed him to make it, approved it before publication, adopted it as her own, or entered into an agreement with Smith concerning that particular publication.

163. Whatever legal characterization Plaintiff assigns to Smith’s words, Smith’s speech does not become Hansen’s speech merely because both allegedly participated in the same online forum. Attribution is not a technicality. It is a prerequisite to imposing liability upon Hansen for another person’s publication.

164. The constitutional question is therefore secondary but independently significant. The First Amendment distinguishes protected advocacy and rhetorical hyperbole from a constitutionally unprotected “true threat.” Watts v. United States, 394 U.S. 705, 708 (1969); Virginia v. Black, 538 U.S. 343, 359 (2003); Counterman v. Colorado, 600 U.S. 66, 69, 79–82 (2023).

165. Plaintiff cannot transform another speaker’s rhetoric, criticism, invocation of “the law,” or demand for legal accountability into threatening conduct by Hansen merely by characterizing the communication as a threat.

F. Plaintiff’s Own Evidence Corroborates Material Factual Predicates of Publications It Characterizes as Defamatory

166. Plaintiff also places at issue publications concerning Angie Rojas-Lindsey. Those publications contain factual propositions capable of objective verification, including assertions concerning her appointment to Chapter office, entry into Hansen’s residence while Hansen was absent, the approximate duration of that entry, subsequent judicial or law-enforcement proceedings, and Chapter membership meetings.

167. Those propositions must be analyzed individually. Plaintiff cannot establish libel merely by showing that a publication was hostile, embarrassing, sarcastic, or critical. SDCL 20-11-3 requires falsity.

168. Plaintiff’s own submissions corroborate material portions of the challenged publication, including Rojas-Lindsey’s appointment to Chapter office and her entry into Hansen’s residence for approximately twenty-two minutes. Additional evidence includes Hansen’s police report concerning that entry, Ring-camera footage, protection-order records, and Chapter records concerning the appointment. See Exs. –.

169. The point is not that corroboration of one proposition automatically establishes the truth of every statement in a publication. It does not. The point is that Plaintiff must identify the particular materially false factual proposition upon which liability rests and establish its falsity. A publication cannot be judged defamatory in gross.

G. Public Records and Preexisting Reporting Are Relevant to Truth, Causation, Damages, and—Where Applicable—Privilege

170. The challenged Facebook group did not create the underlying public controversy. Before that group existed, several individuals later associated with Chapter leadership had already been subjects of public discussion arising from matters independent of Hansen. One held elected public office. Others had been subjects of publicly documented criminal or civil proceedings and prior local or national reporting.

171. Hansen does not offer those matters as character or propensity evidence and does not contend that prior criminal proceedings make every subsequent accusation true. Their relevance is narrower: they demonstrate that public scrutiny, reputational information, and discussion concerning those individuals had sources independent of Hansen and, in material respects, predated the challenged group.

172. That chronology bears directly upon causation and damages. Where Plaintiff seeks recovery for reputational or organizational harm, it must distinguish injury caused by actionable false statements attributable to Hansen from criticism or reputational consequences traceable to preexisting public records, prior reporting, independent speakers, or the underlying events themselves.

173. The public-record evidence may also implicate statutory privilege. South Dakota recognizes as privileged a “fair and true report, without malice” of a judicial, legislative, or other public official proceeding or matters stated therein. SDCL 20-11-5(4). Accordingly, where a challenged publication fairly and accurately reports the existence or substance of an actual judicial or official proceeding, the Court should determine whether that statutory privilege applies.

174.That is a real South Dakota doctrine, not merely a general First Amendment argument; the South Dakota Supreme Court has specifically recognized §20-11-5(4) as the State’s codification of the fair-report privilege.

H. Criticism of Chapter Governance Must Be Measured Against the Bylaws and the Actual Governance Record

175. Plaintiff also characterizes criticism of Chapter governance—including criticism concerning membership meetings, Board composition, member removal or expulsion, and compliance with the Bylaws—as defamatory.

176. Plaintiff itself has made compliance with those Bylaws material. Paragraph 158(c)–(d) alleges that Hansen breached duties by failing to uphold the National and Chapter Bylaws and Standing Rules.

177. Plaintiff cannot invoke the Bylaws as binding standards when accusing Hansen of misconduct while treating the same provisions as immaterial when members criticize Chapter leadership for alleged noncompliance.

178. As demonstrated in Section II, the Bylaws provide that regular Chapter meetings “shall” occur at the prescribed monthly time while separately providing that special meetings “may” be called by specified actors. The distinction is textual: “shall” imposes the stated requirement; “may” confers the identified discretion.

179. The Bylaws likewise prescribe a fifteen-member Board and establish specified procedures governing member discipline or expulsion, including the voting, notice, hearing, and supporting requirements set forth in the governing text.

180. Accordingly, where a challenged publication states that required meetings were not held, meetings were canceled, the Board operated with fewer members than prescribed, members were removed without the prescribed process, or Chapter leadership otherwise departed from mandatory governance requirements, falsity cannot be established by characterization alone. The Court must compare what was said, what the Bylaws required, and what actually occurred.

181. If the material factual predicate of the criticism is true or substantially true, Plaintiff cannot manufacture falsity from the criticism’s tone.

I. Fact, Opinion, Parody, and Rhetorical Hyperbole Must Be Analyzed Separately

182. Count 8 also aggregates fundamentally different forms of expression. Objectively verifiable factual assertions present one inquiry. Subjective characterization, parody, ridicule, and rhetorical hyperbole present another.

183.. Under Paint Brush Corp. v. Neu, 1999 S.D. 120, 599 N.W.2d 384, the challenged expression must be examined in context to determine whether it conveys an actionable assertion of objective fact. South Dakota does not create blanket immunity merely by attaching the word “opinion” to a statement; conversely, hostile or insulting expression does not become actionable merely because its target objects to it.

184. Satirical imagery, mocking names, rhetorical descriptions of “gross misconduct,” and criticism of leadership therefore must be evaluated as a reasonable reader would encounter them in context. Where expression does not convey a materially false assertion of objectively verifiable fact, offensiveness alone cannot supply the missing element.

185. Where a publication does convey an objectively verifiable factual proposition, the analysis returns to falsity. Plaintiff must identify the proposition and establish that it was materially false.

J. The Existing Public Controversy May Affect the Applicable Defamation Standard

186. The preexisting public controversy has a further potential consequence. South Dakota recognizes that the Court must determine the applicable public-official or public-figure status before applying the corresponding constitutional defamation standard.

187. Hansen does not contend that an arrest, criminal prosecution, criticism, or newspaper article, standing alone, converts a person into a public figure. Nor does Hansen rely upon prior criminal proceedings as a substitute for the required legal inquiry.

188. But South Dakota recognizes limited-purpose public-figure status where an individual voluntarily injects himself or herself, or becomes drawn, into a particular public controversy. Sparagon v. Native American Publishers, Inc., 1996 S.D. 3, ¶¶22–23, 542 N.W.2d 125. In Nelson v. WEB Water Development Ass’n, the Supreme Court upheld limited-purpose-public-figure treatment where a substantial nonprofit organization was already the subject of continuing public and media interest and the individual had become involved in that controversy. 507 N.W.2d 691, 697 (S.D. 1993).

189. Accordingly, where a person whose reputation Plaintiff places at issue held elected public office or otherwise occupied the role of a public official, or where an individual voluntarily assumed a prominent role in an existing public controversy sufficient to satisfy South Dakota’s limited-purpose-public-figure standard, the Court should determine that status before evaluating the applicable evidentiary burden.

190. If the heightened constitutional standard applies, actual malice means knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for truth. It does not mean hostility, anger, personal animus, or mere failure to investigate. The relevant inquiry is whether the speaker actually entertained serious doubts concerning the truth or possessed the constitutionally required high awareness of probable falsity. Janklow v. Viking Press, 459 N.W.2d 415, 419–20 (S.D. 1990).

191. South Dakota has applied that distinction rigorously. Where public-figure status applies, the plaintiff bears the heightened burden of establishing actual malice by clear and convincing evidence, including at the summary-judgment stage. Nelson, 507 N.W.2d at 697; Krueger v. Austad, 1996 S.D. 26, ¶21, 545 N.W.2d 205.

192. That requirement is consequential here. To the extent statements actually attributable to Hansen were supported by court records, police documentation, video evidence, Chapter records, the Bylaws, contemporaneous communications, or other independently verifiable sources, those materials bear directly upon whether Hansen actually knew a factual proposition was false or seriously doubted its truth.

K. Common-Interest Privilege May Independently Apply to Certain Communications

193. South Dakota also recognizes a qualified privilege for certain communications made, without malice, between persons sharing an interest in the subject matter. SDCL 20-11-5(3).

194. The South Dakota Supreme Court has explained that the inquiry focuses upon whether the communication occurred between interested persons and whether the circumstances reasonably supported communication of information concerning the common subject. Paint Brush, 1999 S.D. 120; Peterson v. Dacy, 1996 S.D. 72.

195. Accordingly, to the extent particular communications occurred among Chapter members or other persons sharing a legitimate interest in Chapter governance, membership rights, meetings, organizational conduct, or related matters, the Court should determine whether §20-11-5(3) applies to those specific communications. Hansen does not contend that every social-media publication is privileged; the privilege must be evaluated according to the speaker, recipient, subject matter, context, and evidence of malice.

196. Where the privilege applies, Plaintiff bears the burden of producing the required showing of malice sufficient to defeat it. Personal hostility or failure to investigate, standing alone, is not the constitutional equivalent of actual malice.

L. Plaintiff Cannot Use Discovery as a Substitute for the Threshold Showing Required by Chapter 15-40

197. Plaintiff’s alternative allegation—that Hansen created the page or, if she did not, conspired with unidentified persons who did—reveals uncertainty concerning a central attribution issue.

198. Chapter 15-40 addresses precisely the procedural consequences of litigation burdening protected public expression. Upon filing of a qualifying special motion, proceedings and discovery are generally stayed, subject to the statute’s provision for limited discovery where specified information is necessary to resolve the statutory burdens and is not otherwise reasonably available. SDCL 15-40-4.

199. The statute therefore does not contemplate unrestricted discovery first and scrutiny of a speech-based claim later. It establishes a threshold procedure for determining whether the claim has sufficient legal and evidentiary support to proceed.

200. That procedure does not prevent Plaintiff from presenting competent evidence already available or seeking properly authorized limited discovery under the statute. It does prevent uncertainty itself from doing the work of evidence.

M. Count 8 Must Be Tested Publication by Publication and Element by Element

201. SDCL 15-40-9 supplies the controlling framework for Hansen’s special motion. Where Chapter 15-40 applies and no statutory exclusion defeats its application, Plaintiff must satisfy the showing required by the statute as to the challenged cause of action or portion thereof.

202. Count 8 therefore cannot survive through the cumulative force of accusation. Each allegedly actionable publication must be tested against the elements actually required for liability.

203. The questions are concrete: Who spoke? What was published? About whom? What factual proposition did the publication communicate? Was that proposition materially false? Was the publication privileged? What evidence attributes it to Hansen? What injury did that particular publication cause? And, where a heightened constitutional standard applies, what evidence establishes the required state of mind?

204. Plaintiff cannot answer one missing element with an allegation directed at another. Hansen’s participation in a Facebook group does not establish authorship of Smith’s statement. A statement concerning Lindsey does not automatically establish defamation of the Chapter. Disagreement with criticism does not establish falsity. Uncertainty concerning authorship does not establish conspiracy. And the existence of discovery does not itself establish a prima facie case.

N. Count 8 Ultimately Depends Upon Substitutions the Law Does Not Permit

205. Stripped of repetition, Count 8 depends upon a series of substitutions:

206. Speech concerning an individual officer becomes speech concerning the Chapter.

207. Speech authored by independent third parties becomes Hansen’s speech.

208. Suspicion concerning authorship becomes proof of authorship.

209. If authorship cannot be established, an unidentified conspiracy is offered in its place.

210. Documented underlying conduct becomes “fabrication” because Plaintiff disputes its characterization.

211. Criticism of alleged Bylaw violations becomes “defamation” without first measuring the criticism against the Bylaws.

212. Preexisting public controversy and reputational information are treated as though they originated with Hansen.

213. And association with persons criticizing Plaintiff becomes responsibility for what those persons independently publish.

214. South Dakota defamation law and Chapter 15-40 require more. The Legislature has directed broad construction of Chapter 15-40 in protection of speech, press, assembly, petition, and association; authorized consideration of summary-judgment evidence at the threshold stage; and prescribed dismissal where the responding party cannot make the showing required by SDCL 15-40-9.

215. Accordingly, Hansen respectfully requests dismissal of Count 8 pursuant to SDCL 15-40-3 and 15-40-9 to the extent the claim is based upon protected public expression and Plaintiff cannot satisfy the statutory burden. Hansen separately and alternatively requests dismissal pursuant to SDCL 15-6-12(b)(5), or summary judgment pursuant to SDCL 15-6-56, as to any alleged publication for which Plaintiff cannot establish the elements required by South Dakota law, including attribution to Hansen, actionable falsity, application to the Plaintiff asserting the claim, absence of applicable privilege, causation, damages, and—where applicable—the constitutionally required state of mind.

216.The distinction between actionable factual assertion and protected evaluative characterization also matters. Under Paint Brush, the constitutional inquiry focuses upon whether the challenged statement implies a false assertion of objective fact. Descriptions such as “gross misconduct,” ridicule, parody, nicknames, and criticism must therefore be evaluated in context rather than stripped from the surrounding satirical publication and converted wholesale into factual representations.

217.Finally, the Complaint cannot impose liability upon Hansen for statements authored by third parties merely because they appeared in the same Facebook group. Plaintiff must plead a legally sufficient basis for attributing each challenged publication to Hansen.

218. For these reasons, Count 8 should be dismissed to the extent it rests upon statements not made by Hansen, statements not concerning Plaintiff, statements whose pleaded or incorporated factual basis defeats falsity, or nonactionable opinion and rhetorical characterization.

VIII. COUNTS 10 AND 11 — PLAINTIFF HAS NOT ADEQUATELY IDENTIFIED A PROTECTABLE TRADE SECRET, REASONABLE MEASURES TO PRESERVE SECRECY, OR AN ACT OF MISAPPROPRIATION

219. Counts 10 and 11 fail at the threshold because describing information as “confidential,” “proprietary,” or restricted does not establish a trade secret. South Dakota’s Uniform Trade Secrets Act requires proof that the particular information claimed as a trade secret derives actual or potential independent economic value from not being generally known or readily ascertainable by proper means by persons capable of obtaining economic value from its disclosure or use, and that the information was subject to efforts reasonable under the circumstances to maintain its secrecy. SDCL 37-29-1(4).

220. Plaintiff must therefore identify what information constitutes the alleged trade secret before the Court can determine whether those statutory requirements are satisfied. That requirement is substantive, not semantic. In Weins v. Sporleder, the South Dakota Supreme Court emphasized that the claimant bears the burden of establishing the existence of a trade secret and found it significant that “there was never a clear assertion as to what exactly was claimed to be the trade secret.” 1997 S.D. 111, ¶¶ 16–18, 569 N.W.2d 16.

221. Plaintiff’s allegations suffer from the same threshold problem. Plaintiff refers broadly to membership information, financial information, passwords, records, and other allegedly “confidential and proprietary information,” but those labels do not identify what particular compilation, information, data, or other material allegedly constitutes a trade secret; what portion was unavailable through proper means; or what independent economic value arose specifically from its secrecy. Without that identification, neither Hansen nor the Court can meaningfully test the statutory elements.

222. The requirement of reasonable secrecy measures presents a separate problem. Weins holds that “[s]ecrecy is fundamental to the existence of a trade secret.” Although absolute secrecy is unnecessary, the claimant must demonstrate reasonable precautions under the circumstances. The South Dakota Supreme Court considered such matters as confidentiality agreements or understandings, restrictions upon access, notice concerning confidentiality, physical or other security measures, and disclosure to outsiders in determining whether the statutory requirement was satisfied. Id. ¶¶ 27–29.

223. Plaintiff’s own handling of the information it now characterizes as restricted is therefore directly relevant. Plaintiff alleges that Chapter membership information was restricted to members of the Board and seeks to characterize Hansen’s alleged possession or disclosure of that information as misappropriation. Yet contemporaneous correspondence reflects that when Lindsey and Rojas-Lindsey requested Chapter membership information, the communication was copied to an individual who, according to the Chapter’s records, was neither a director nor a Chapter member. See Ex. __.

224. Hansen does not contend that a single communication to a nonmember necessarily eliminates trade-secret protection as a matter of law. It does, however, bear directly upon whether Plaintiff actually employed “efforts that are reasonable under the circumstances to maintain [the information’s] secrecy.” SDCL 37-29-1(4)(ii). If Plaintiff contends that access was restricted to Board members, evidence that persons acting for Plaintiff included an outsider in communications concerning the allegedly restricted information is relevant to whether the asserted restriction existed in practice and what precautions, if any, accompanied disclosure.

225. Plaintiff cannot satisfy that element merely by characterizing information as confidential after litigation begins. The inquiry concerns how the information was actually maintained and protected. Plaintiff must establish what restrictions existed, who was permitted access, what confidentiality obligations accompanied that access, and what reasonable measures were actually employed to preserve the secrecy from which Plaintiff claims the information derived economic value. Weins, 1997 S.D. 111, ¶¶ 27–29.

226. Nor does possession establish misappropriation. SDCL 37-29-1 separately defines “misappropriation” to require acquisition through improper means or specified unauthorized disclosure or use under circumstances involving improper acquisition or a duty to maintain secrecy or limit use. The distinction is particularly consequential where Hansen originally obtained access to Chapter information through her employment and in performing the very administrative functions Plaintiff assigned to her.

227. Weins again illustrates the distinction. After concluding that the claimant failed to establish a protectable trade secret, the South Dakota Supreme Court separately held that, even if a trade secret had existed, misappropriation still had not been established. Id. ¶¶ 29–30. Trade-secret status and misappropriation are separate propositions, and Plaintiff bears the burden of establishing both.

228. Plaintiff therefore must identify the particular protected information and the particular act constituting misappropriation. It is not enough to allege generally that Hansen possessed information because she worked for the Chapter, retained unspecified records following termination, or had access to passwords, membership records, financial information, or operational materials. Plaintiff must connect the alleged trade secret to acquisition by improper means or to an unauthorized disclosure or use satisfying the statutory definition.

229. Count 10 also contains a statutory citation error. It purports to arise under “SDCL Chapter 27-29.” Compl. Count 10. South Dakota’s Uniform Trade Secrets Act is codified at SDCL Chapter 37-29, not Chapter 27-29. Hansen recognizes that the Court may treat that citation as a correctable pleading error. The significance of Count 10 lies not in the typographical mistake but in the substantive elements Plaintiff must establish under the statute it apparently intended to invoke.

230. Count 11 fares no better merely because it invokes federal law. The Defend Trade Secrets Act authorizes a private civil action by the owner of a misappropriated trade secret only where the trade secret is “related to a product or service used in, or intended for use in, interstate or foreign commerce.” 18 U.S.C. § 1836(b)(1).

231. Plaintiff principally recites that formulation in alleging that membership and financial information constituted trade secrets used or intended for use in interstate commerce. But the federal label does not eliminate the threshold questions: what specifically is the alleged trade secret; what economic value derives from its secrecy; what reasonable measures protected it; what conduct by Hansen constituted misappropriation; and how does the identified trade secret relate to a product or service used or intended for use in interstate or foreign commerce?

232. Plaintiff’s requested federal remedy further illustrates the overbreadth of the claim. Paragraph 223 asserts entitlement under § 1836 to “immediate seizure and return” of allegedly confidential information. But Congress did not create a general repossession mechanism for disputed business records. The DTSA permits ex parte seizure “only in extraordinary circumstances” and only upon the findings specifically prescribed by § 1836(b)(2)(A), including that ordinary injunctive relief would be inadequate, immediate and irreparable injury will occur absent seizure, the applicant is likely to succeed in establishing both trade-secret status and misappropriation, the target possesses the trade secret and property to be seized, and the application identifies the material and property with the required particularity. 18 U.S.C. § 1836(b)(2)(A).

233. Plaintiff cannot obtain that extraordinary remedy merely by characterizing ordinary Chapter records as confidential or alleging uncertainty concerning what a former employee may possess. The statutory seizure procedure is directed at preventing propagation or dissemination of an actual trade secret—not at converting every post-employment records dispute into an ex parte federal seizure proceeding.

234. Counts 10 and 11 therefore present multiple independent deficiencies. Plaintiff must identify a legally protectable trade secret; establish the independent economic value arising from its secrecy; establish reasonable efforts to maintain that secrecy; identify actionable acquisition, disclosure, or use by Hansen constituting misappropriation; and, under the DTSA, satisfy the additional federal statutory requirements. Plaintiff’s own handling of the allegedly restricted information is relevant to that inquiry and cannot be reconciled merely by attaching the labels “confidential” or “proprietary” to information after the fact.

235. Accordingly, Counts 10 and 11 should be dismissed to the extent they fail to plead the elements required by the respective statutes and, to the extent the Court considers the evidentiary record on Hansen’s alternative motion under SDCL 15-6-56, judgment should be entered for Hansen where Plaintiff cannot produce competent evidence sufficient to establish those essential elements.

IX. COUNT 12 — UNJUST ENRICHMENT IS UNAVAILABLE FOR BENEFITS GOVERNED BY THE EXPRESS EMPLOYMENT AGREEMENT

236.This count contains one of the Complaint’s clearest internal contradictions.

237.Plaintiff expressly alleges in Count 2 that the Employment Agreement is “valid and enforceable.” It then alleges in Count 12 that the “substantial benefits” it provided Hansen during the term of that same Employment Agreement constitute unjust enrichment.

238.South Dakota law is clear that unjust enrichment is generally unavailable where a valid express contract fixes the parties’ rights concerning the transaction. Johnson v. Larson, 2010 S.D. 20, ¶¶ 8-10, 779 N.W.2d 412; J. Clancy, Inc. v. Khan Comfort, LLC, 2021 S.D. 9, ¶44. The South Dakota Supreme Court reaffirmed that principle in 2025: when a valid enforceable contract governs, compensation and remedies are fixed by the contract rather than unjust enrichment.

239.Plaintiff cannot simultaneously allege that the Employment Agreement validly governed Hansen’s compensation and ask equity to rewrite that compensation because Plaintiff now considers benefits received under the Agreement excessive.

240.To the extent the alleged “extra benefits” consist of compensation Plaintiff contends was unauthorized, that dispute sounds in the contract and other specifically pleaded causes of action—not an equitable claim concerning benefits expressly governed by the parties’ employment relationship.

241.Count 12 should be dismissed.

X. COUNT 13 — THE CIVIL-CONSPIRACY CLAIM IS A FORMULAIC RECITATION AND CANNOT SURVIVE WITHOUT AN UNDERLYING TORT

242.South Dakota requires a civil-conspiracy plaintiff to establish: (1) two or more persons; (2) an object to be accomplished; (3) a meeting of the minds concerning the object or course of action; (4) one or more unlawful overt acts; and (5) resulting damages. Setliff v. Akins, 2000 S.D. 124, ¶32, 616 N.W.2d 878. Civil conspiracy is not an independent tort and survives only where an underlying actionable wrong exists.

243. Plaintiff’s allegations almost perfectly reproduce those elements:

244.Defendants “agreed”; there was a “meeting of the minds”; Defendants committed “unlawful overt acts”; and Plaintiff suffered damages.

244. What is missing is the factual bridge.

245. The Complaint does not identify who Hansen supposedly reached an agreement with, when the agreement was reached, what communication formed it, what each conspirator agreed to do, or facts supporting the inference that Hansen shared a common unlawful objective with the unidentified Doe defendants.

246.Its Facebook theory illustrates the defect particularly well. Plaintiff first alleges, upon information and belief, that Hansen created the page. It then alleges that if that allegation is wrong, Hansen must instead have conspired with whoever did create it.

247.Those are competing possibilities, not pleaded facts establishing a meeting of the minds.

248.And the contemporaneous evidence identified in Hansen’s factual background—including Hansen’s inquiry to Kazos-Sievers concerning whether Kazos-Sievers created the group—further demonstrates why discovery of a page’s existence cannot itself establish conspiracy.

249.Because Count 13 supplies conclusions where Setliff requires an agreement, unlawful overt act, underlying tort, causation, and damages, it should be dismissed.

XI. COUNT 14 DOES NOT STATE AN INDEPENDENT CAUSE OF ACTION FOR PUNITIVE DAMAGES

250.Punitive damages are a remedy, not a substitute for an actionable underlying claim.

251.SDCL 21-3-2 permits punitive damages in an action for breach of an obligation not arising from contract where the requisite oppression, fraud, malice, or qualifying willful and wanton misconduct is established.

252.Plaintiff’s Count 14 merely incorporates the preceding allegations and asserts that Defendants’ conduct constitutes “oppression, fraud, malice” and was “willful, wanton, and malicious.”

253. That formulaic allegation cannot independently sustain liability. To the extent the underlying tort claims are dismissed, the associated request for punitive damages necessarily falls with them. And punitive damages are unavailable merely for breach of the contractual obligations alleged in Count 2.

254.Count 14 should therefore be dismissed as an independent cause of action and any punitive-damages request limited to an otherwise viable noncontractual claim for which South Dakota law permits such relief.

XII. PLAINTIFF’S REQUEST FOR SWEEPING INJUNCTIVE RELIEF CANNOT SUBSTITUTE FOR A VIABLE SUBSTANTIVE CLAIM

255.Count 1 alleges that Hansen retains numerous categories of Chapter information and property and seeks sweeping injunctive relief compelling its return and restricting future conduct.

256.But injunctive relief is a remedy. Plaintiff must establish a substantive legal right warranting equitable intervention and the prerequisites for the extraordinary relief requested.

257.The Complaint itself acknowledges uncertainty regarding what Hansen actually possesses, alleging that “it is unknown” to what extent Hansen possesses Chapter information and property and asserting a “significant likelihood” that she is using confidential information.

258.Speculation about unknown possession cannot be converted into certainty by repeatedly invoking the words “confidential” and “trade secret.”

259.To the extent Chapter property remains in Hansen’s possession and is undisputedly returnable, the parties can identify it with particularity and address its return. But that ordinary transition dispute does not justify an injunction restraining protected speech, attributing third-party publications to Hansen, or granting Plaintiff possession of materials it has not established that Hansen possesses or that Plaintiff legally owns.

260.Any injunction affecting speech must also be narrowly tailored to actionable conduct. Plaintiff cannot obtain through an equitable label what the First Amendment and South Dakota defamation law would not permit through the substantive causes of action.

XIII. THE COURT SHOULD NOT PERMIT A PRIVATE EMPLOYMENT AND GOVERNANCE DISPUTE TO BE EXPANDED INTO LIABILITY FOR THIRD-PARTY SPEECH

261.The Complaint’s central defect is cumulative.

262.It begins with an employment and internal-governance dispute. It then aggregates allegations concerning compensation, bookkeeping, records, passwords, residence access, internal criticism, social-media activity, alleged trade secrets, third-party Facebook posts, membership dissatisfaction, and unidentified Doe defendants. From that collection it pleads fourteen nominal causes of action.

263.But causes of action are established by elements, not volume.

264.A disagreement over employment duties is not automatically disloyalty.

265.Possession obtained through employment is not automatically conversion.

266.Confidential information is not automatically a trade secret.

267.Criticism is not automatically defamation.

268.A decline in goodwill is not automatically tortious interference.

269.Association with people who criticize an organization is not automatically conspiracy.

270.And a third party’s speech is not automatically Hansen’s speech.

271.Most importantly, the Chapter’s own Bylaws contemplate an organization governed by members, regular membership meetings, a fifteen-member Board, defined officers, prescribed voting procedures, and specific allocations of authority. The Court should apply those provisions as written rather than accept litigation characterizations that assign powers or duties the governing documents themselves do not.

CONCLUSION

272.For the foregoing reasons, Defendant Renae Hansen respectfully requests that the Court dismiss those claims that fail as a matter of law under SDCL 15-6-12(b)(5), including Counts 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14, and dismiss Counts 2 through 6 and Count 8 to the extent they rest upon conclusory allegations, conduct not constituting the asserted tort, publications not made by Hansen, statements not concerning Plaintiff, or matters contradicted or otherwise defeated by documents properly considered with the pleadings.

273. Defendant further requests that the Court deny Plaintiff’s request for sweeping injunctive relief except to the extent Plaintiff can establish a specific substantive right to specifically identified property or information and satisfy the requirements for equitable relief.

Dated this ____ day of ____________, 2026.

EXHIBIT A

PREEXISTING SIOUXLAND TEA DISCUSSIONS

Referenced in: Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss, Section ___, Paragraph ___

Approximate Date Range: [Month/Day/Year] through [Month/Day/Year]

Source: Preexisting Facebook group “Siouxland Tea”

Description

Exhibit A consists of contemporaneous screenshots of discussions occurring within the preexisting Facebook group “Siouxland Tea” before and/or contemporaneously with the creation of the separate Facebook group identified in Plaintiff’s Complaint.

The screenshots are submitted to document the existence, timing, and scope of preexisting third-party discussions concerning the Izaak Walton League and individuals identified in Plaintiff’s Complaint, including discussions and complaints concerning League operations, board members, flood-related matters, and related publicly documented events.

The screenshots are further submitted to document that these subjects were being independently discussed by numerous individuals before the formation of the Facebook group at issue in Plaintiff’s Complaint.

The screenshots are arranged chronologically where practicable. Multiple screenshots depicting portions of the same conversation are maintained together and identified by page number.

P.1.

P.2.

Public Testimony of Belinda Johnson and anonynomous participants posted July 26, 2026 below.

P.3. Public Testimony of Lisa Schenz posted July 12, 2026 below.

EXHIBIT B

Referenced in defendant’s motion to dismiss

P.2.

Correspondence between Renae Hansen and Myranda Kazos-Sievers where Hansen discusses not knowing the origins of the creation of the Mccook Lake Izaak Walton League Side show Circus Group.

Date August 1, 2026.

EXHIBIT C

P.1. In re Brian Berkenpas, Case No. 05-07088 — 2005 Iowa Bankruptcy Proceeding.

Public judicial record reflecting a bankruptcy proceeding involving Brian Berkenpas, filed in 2005. Offered not as character or propensity evidence, but to demonstrate that judicial records concerning Berkenpas’s financial history existed publicly and independently long before the challenged Facebook group and the events alleged against Hansen. The exhibit is relevant to the preexisting factual sources available to independent speakers; the context and chronology of public discussion concerning financial governance and stewardship; and Plaintiff’s theories of attribution, causation, falsity, and damages.

P.2. Publicly Filed California Litigation Concerning Brian Berkenpas — Case No. 23CECG04193 (Filed October 6, 2023).

Publicly available California court records reflecting litigation filed October 6, 2023, naming Brian Berkenpas and concerning alleged financial conduct and breach of contract arising from approximately $6 million in loans associated with 115 allegedly nonperforming contracts. This exhibit is offered not as evidence that the allegations were proven or that Berkenpas engaged in unrelated misconduct, but to establish that litigation concerning his financial activities existed in the public record years before the challenged Facebook group; that such information provided an independent source for public discussion and scrutiny concerning financial matters; and that Hansen was not the origin of the underlying information. Where a challenged publication accurately referenced the existence, allegations, or disposition of this proceeding, the public record also provides an objective source against which the truth or substantial truth of that particular publication may be evaluated.

p.3 Berkenpas was already facing public criticism through publicly reported complaints and reviews to the Better Business Bureau.

P.4. Preexisting Public Reporting Concerning Litigation Involving Brian Berkenpas — 2005 and 2018.

Two publicly reported Sioux City-area legal proceedings involving Brian Berkenpas, dating to 2005 and 2018 and predating the challenged Facebook group by years. The accompanying reporting demonstrates that Berkenpas, his activities, and entities with which he was associated had previously been subjects of public reporting and community discussion independent of Hansen. These materials are offered for the limited purposes of establishing chronology, preexisting public scrutiny, independent sources of information and discussion, and context relevant to Plaintiff’s theories of attribution, causation, and reputational damages. To the extent a challenged publication accurately referenced the existence, allegations, or disposition of either proceeding, the underlying public record and contemporaneous reporting also provide objective sources against which the truth or substantial truth of that particular statement may be evaluated. Hansen does not offer the existence of prior litigation as proof that the allegations in those proceedings were true or as evidence of Berkenpas’s character or propensity to engage in unrelated conduct.

P.5. Public Bankruptcy Proceeding Involving Brian Berkenpas — Chapter 7, Case No. 25-09138.

Publicly available federal bankruptcy records reflecting Brian Berkenpas’s filing for relief under Chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Code. This proceeding constitutes an additional, independently existing public judicial record concerning financial matters that predates or otherwise arose independently of the challenged publications. It is offered for the limited purposes of establishing chronology, independent sources of publicly available information, and the factual context in which participants discussed financial stewardship, qualifications, and leadership within the Chapter. In conjunction with the other public records submitted herein, the proceeding further demonstrates that discussion concerning Berkenpas’s financial history did not originate with Hansen or the challenged Facebook group. To the extent a challenged publication accurately stated that Berkenpas filed for bankruptcy, identified the nature or timing of that proceeding, or fairly described information contained in the public record, the bankruptcy docket provides an objective source against which the truth or substantial truth of that particular statement may be evaluated. Hansen does not offer the bankruptcy filing as evidence of bad character, financial misconduct, or the truth of unrelated allegations.

P.6 Berkenpas does not only have domestic documentation spanning several years but is also the subject of investigation and disciplinary action abroad in Turks and Caicos matters pertaining to finance and insurance, drawing additional public scrutiny, and additional public curiosity in McCook Izaak Walton League.

EXHIBIT D — PUBLICLY AVAILABLE IOWA JUDICIAL RECORDS CONCERNING LINDSEY AND ROJAS-LINDSEY

Exhibit D consists of Iowa judicial records reflecting civil and/or criminal proceedings involving Lindsey and Rojas-Lindsey that predate, or otherwise arose independently of, the challenged Facebook group and Hansen’s alleged conduct. These records are offered for the limited purpose of establishing that information concerning the individuals and their litigation histories existed in independent public sources; that discussion or scrutiny concerning their backgrounds did not originate with Hansen or the challenged group; and, where relevant, that participants discussing the qualifications, judgment, or suitability of persons exercising organizational or financial responsibility had access to independently verifiable public records.

These records are not offered as character or propensity evidence, nor does Hansen contend that the existence of a prior judicial proceeding establishes the truth of unrelated allegations. Their relevance is limited to chronology, context, independent source, truth or substantial truth of publications accurately describing the proceedings, causation, damages, and—where applicable—the privilege afforded to a fair and true report of judicial proceedings.

P.2. 2016 Public-Intoxication Incident and Subsequent Publication by Justin Lindsey.

Public records concerning a 2016 incident involving Lindsey’s intoxication and removal from an establishment, together with Lindsey’s subsequent public criticism of the establishment and its personnel. Offered for the limited purposes of establishing chronology, independent sources of public scrutiny concerning Lindsey, and context relevant to the challenged publications and Plaintiff’s claimed reputational injury.

P.3. Preexisting Public Reporting Concerning Litigation Naming Nancy Albrecht KTIV

Publicly published reporting predating the challenged Facebook group concerning litigation that named Nancy Albrecht as a defendant and included allegations relating to human trafficking and a local community college. The litigation and resulting reporting existed independently of Hansen and received coverage beyond the immediate local community. Nancy Albrecht is the spouse of Mike Albrecht, whom Chapter leadership subsequently selected to replace Hansen as groundskeeper. This exhibit is offered for the limited purposes of establishing chronology, independent sources of public information and scrutiny concerning the Albrechts, the preexisting public availability of factual material subsequently discussed by independent speakers, and context relevant to Plaintiff’s theories of attribution, falsity, causation, and reputational damages. To the extent challenged publications accurately reported or fairly summarized the existence, allegations, or disposition of the underlying judicial proceeding, the exhibit also provides an objective source against which those particular statements may be evaluated.

p.3 Longstanding criticism of Albrecht and her role at J&L Staffing reflect similar publicly available distrust and critique of behavior relevant to finances and conduct.

Every day, millions of gallons of drinking water flow through treatment plants, pumps, and pipelines with little public attention. Increasingly, however, the digital systems protecting that infrastructure are managed not only by local utilities, but by a growing network of private cybersecurity firms operating behind the scenes.

One of those companies is Waterfall Security Solutions, an Israeli cybersecurity firm that has provided industrial control system security services to Saint Paul Regional Water Services since October 1, 2024. The company’s founders and leadership include veterans of the Israel Defense Forces, a background that has become common among Israeli cybersecurity companies serving governments and critical infrastructure around the world.

The Waterfall contract did not emerge in a political vacuum.

Over the past decade, dozens of states have adopted laws restricting government contracting with companies that participate in boycotts of Israel. Supporters say the measures prevent discrimination against Israeli businesses and ensure governments retain access to proven technology partners. Critics argue the laws have narrowed public procurement and made it more difficult for governments to consider competing political, ethical, or human rights concerns when awarding contracts.

While states also restrict contracts or investments involving countries such as Russia, China, and Iran, those measures generally operate through sanctions, security restrictions, or procurement limits rather than prohibitions on boycotts.

At the same time, cooperation between Israeli technology companies and U.S. public agencies is not new. State and local governments have for years contracted with Israeli firms for cybersecurity, public safety, surveillance, and critical infrastructure projects. As Congress has debated provisions encouraging closer U.S.-Israeli defense and technology cooperation, many of those relationships have already developed through state and municipal procurement decisions rather than federal initiatives alone

That broader debate followed Waterfall into Minnesota.

To supporters, the company represented a specialized cybersecurity firm with experience protecting industrial control systems from increasingly sophisticated threats. To critics, the contract became another example of how public procurement can intersect with foreign policy, lobbying, and questions about government transparency.

The controversy remained largely confined to board meetings and activist circles until July 25, 2025.

That morning, City of St. Paul officials detected suspicious activity linked to compromised accounts on a critical backup server. Investigators later attributed the intrusion to the ransomware group Interlock, transforming what had been an abstract debate over cybersecurity procurement into an immediate test of the city’s digital defenses.

The breach ultimately exposed approximately 43 gigabytes of data from the Parks and Recreation Department, affecting more than 12,000 people. Rather than negotiate with the attackers, city officials restored systems from secure backups and offered identity protection services to those whose information had been compromised.

The response quickly expanded beyond City Hall. The FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), state and local law enforcement, and the Minnesota National Guard all joined the recovery effort. St. Paul launched what officials called “Operation Secure St. Paul,” a citywide password reset designed to lock down compromised accounts before attackers could regain access. City leaders also pledged independent after-action reviews and additional cybersecurity investments aimed at strengthening the city’s defenses against future attacks.

What happened next became part of a broader debate over how states should protect critical infrastructure.

To some activists and procurement watchdogs, the attack underscored the risks of relying on foreign cybersecurity contractors and renewed calls for greater transparency in government contracting, more competitive bidding processes, and increased investment in domestic cybersecurity companies.

Supporters of Waterfall Security Solutions reached a different conclusion. They argued the attack demonstrated why specialized industrial cybersecurity firms had become essential to protecting increasingly sophisticated water infrastructure from nation-state threats.

Those arguments unfolded as Saint Paul Regional Water Services moved to deepen its relationship with the company. Waterfall’s original agreement, which began in October 2024, had been structured as a one-year contract. On July 14, 2026—less than two weeks before Minnesota’s water utilities came under attack—the Saint Paul Board of Water Commissioners approved Resolution 26-1132, extending the agreement through August 31, 2031. The amendment renewed the contract for five years and expanded it to include support for an OPC-UA connector module used in industrial control systems costing taxpayers $153,611.74.

Twelve days later, the debate over the contract took on new urgency.

Shortly after midnight on July 26, operators at water utilities across Minnesota began detecting abnormal activity within automated control systems responsible for monitoring portions of the state’s water infrastructure. Technicians quickly shifted to manual operations as engineers worked to determine whether the irregularities were isolated malfunctions or signs of a coordinated cyberattack.

Within hours, it became clear the disruption extended far beyond a single utility.

More than 30 public water systems—including Plymouth, South St. Paul, Maple Plain, and Braham—reported cyber-related disruptions. State officials said drinking water remained safe and treatment processes continued uninterrupted, but operators were forced to run portions of their systems manually while cybersecurity specialists worked to isolate the intrusion.

Minnesota IT Services, the Minnesota Department of Health, the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and other state and federal agencies coordinated the response. Early assessments suggested the attacks may have been carried out by actors affiliated with Iran, although investigators continued working to determine attribution and whether the incidents formed part of a broader campaign targeting U.S. critical infrastructure.

The attacks renewed scrutiny of how cities and utilities secure increasingly interconnected industrial control systems—and of the private companies entrusted with protecting them.

Among the most vocal critics of Saint Paul’s contract with Waterfall Security Solutions is the Palestinian Solidarity Committee of Women Against Military Madness, led by Meredith Aby. The organization argues Waterfall’s work with the Israel Defense Forces makes the company ineligible for public contracts under the principles of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to apply economic pressure on Israel over its treatment of Palestinians. On its website, the group argues that the American technology sector “feeds Israel’s war chest, making up 20% of Israel’s GDP and 53% of its exports.”

As support for Israel declines amid the Iran war, many residents and internet commentators have suspected the attacks across multiple states are Israeli and argue that Israel cannot be objective in identifying threats due to their aggression towards Iran and other countries in the region.

Waterfall and its supporters present a different argument. They contend the company’s experience securing industrial control systems—including critical water infrastructure—illustrates why governments increasingly rely on specialized cybersecurity firms with expertise defending against sophisticated attacks. From that perspective, the attacks on Minnesota’s water systems reinforced the need for advanced cybersecurity partnerships rather than calling them into question.

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From taxpayer-funded rodeos starring the governor herself, to multimillion-dollar tourism and promotional campaigns featuring Kristi Noem as a construction worker, state trooper, dentist, and a rotating cast of everyday heroes, Noem has never been shy about stepping into the spotlight. There were federal contracts tied to filming ICE operations, promotional videos that placed her front and center at airports, and even a dental advertisement in Texas that landed her in a legal dispute.

So perhaps it should come as little surprise that South Dakota’s most camera-ready governor is about to receive the ultimate political accessory: a bronze statue.

On August 7, a statue of Kristi Noem will be unveiled in Pierre, adding her likeness to South Dakota’s Trail of Governors. The statue itself is a monument — but the donor list behind it tells another story: a look at the political allies, business interests, and influential figures who helped pay to cement Noem’s place in South Dakota history.

Among the largest contributors listed for the Kristi Noem State Capitol Statue Fund — donors giving $68,000 or more — were two notable sources: public dollars distributed through South Dakota’s small business grant program and the late Foster Friess State Capitol Fund.

The appearance of the Foster Friess State Capitol Fund on the donor list is notable because of the long political relationship between the Friess family and Noem. While the statue fund is separate from Noem’s campaign operations, Foster and Lynn Friess were among Noem’s earliest and most influential political supporters.

In 2019, the Friesses invited then-Governor Noem on an exclusive deep-sea fishing trip, where she was introduced to political strategist Corey Lewandowski. Following that trip, members of the Friess family contributed a combined $500,000 to Noem’s political fundraising efforts, with contributions made in the names of each member of the Noem family.

Years later, the Friess name appeared again in support of Noem — this time not through a political campaign, but through the effort to create a permanent bronze monument honoring her place in South Dakota’s history.

The next tier of donors, those contributing $5,000 or more directly to the statue fund, included former Governor Dennis Daugaard’s campaign committee, Daugaard for South Dakota, and Dana Dykhouse, CEO of Premier Bankcard.

Daugaard and Dykhouse represent another layer of South Dakota’s political and business establishment. Dykhouse has maintained close ties with state leadership and previously received the Governor’s Economic Development Award, an honor recognizing contributions to South Dakota’s economic development.

Dykhouse has also maintained ties with South Dakota’s political leadership. He previously received the Governor’s Economic Development Award, an honor recognizing individuals who contribute to the state’s economic growth.

The third tier of donors included Delta Dental of South Dakota, whose contribution comes amid previous scrutiny involving Noem’s administration over a state tourism advertisement featuring the “Smile Texas” campaign. A watchdog group later filed a lawsuit related to the advertisement; the case was ultimately dismissed without prejudice after the plaintiff was unable to complete service of process.

Below that tier, donors contributing $1,000 or more included a mix of family members, longtime supporters, business leaders, and individuals connected to South Dakota’s political and philanthropic circles.

Among them were Noem’s mother, Corrine Arnold, and her brother and sister-in-law, Rock and Kimberly Arnold. The Arnold family had previously received more than $100,000 through South Dakota’s COVID-19 small business grant program for Arnold Livestock. Separately, the Noem family ranch received an additional $500,000 through the same grant program.

Other donors in this tier included Cindy Grantham; Barbara and Reed Harms; and Al W. King III, co-founder, co-chairman, and co-CEO of South Dakota Trust Company LLC, a firm specializing in trust administration, estate planning, and wealth management for high-net-worth clients.

The list also included John and Deann Nystrom, the Perkins Family Charitable Fund, and Joy Nelson.

Nelson’s contribution stands out because of her connections to the Noem family’s broader professional and political network. Nelson operates a charitable organization where Bryon Noem, Kristi Noem’s husband, previously served on the board. That relationship overlapped with a period when Noem’s political action committee paid fundraising-related expenses connected to the organization. Nelson also employs Kassidy Noem, Noem’s daughter, through Haugen–Nelson Realty.

The remaining donor tiers included smaller contributions from additional supporters. In the fourth tier, donors contributing $500 or more included Thomas and Mary Lou Bohnet.

The fifth tier, consisting of donors giving between $250 and $499, included Tony Arnold, a Noem family relative, as well as Clay and Pam Roberts, James Scull, and Dustin and Nikole Sejnoha. Donors contributing less than $250 included Jack Gully and Justin Pitman.

Compared with previous South Dakota governors, Noem’s statue fund drew fewer large-dollar contributions and did not receive donations in the highest giving category above $68,000. The donor list ultimately reflects a combination of family members, longtime allies, business leaders, and individuals whose professional and philanthropic relationships have intersected with the Noem family’s broader network.

Noem’s appearance has changed substantially since becoming Governor it is unclear which version the artist, John Lopez, will attempt to portray.

Monae Johnson campaigned on the idea that South Dakota’s elections were threatened by fraud. Four years later, the biggest election controversies of her tenure have come not from fraudulent voters—but from the office she leads.

Since becoming South Dakota’s Secretary of State in late 2022, Monae Johnson has presided over a series of administrative mistakes, election disputes, and self-inflicted controversies that would likely dominate headlines in larger or more politically competitive states. Instead, they have unfolded largely outside the national spotlight, shielded by one-party rule and a media market too small to command sustained national attention.

Johnson assumed office on December 5, 2022, after former Secretary of State Steve Barnett resigned before the end of his term. Governor Kristi Noem appointed Johnson to fill the vacancy following her victory in the Republican primary, and she was formally sworn into the office the following January.

Conspiracy Theories

Much of Monae Johnson’s appeal to Gov. Kristi Noem and South Dakota’s Republican establishment stemmed from her embrace of election-denial narratives popularized after the 2020 presidential election. Those claims, amplified by figures such as Mike Lindell, became more than political rhetoric. Across the country, they evolved into a powerful fundraising tool and a litmus test of loyalty to Donald Trump.

Johnson did not campaign as a traditional election administrator. She campaigned as an election-integrity activist, repeatedly questioning the administration of the 2020 election and advocating expanded post-election audits despite the absence of evidence that widespread fraud affected South Dakota’s election results. Those positions helped her defeat incumbent Secretary of State Steve Barnett at the Republican convention and became the defining message of her campaign.

Once in office, Johnson continued emphasizing election audits and procedural changes under the banner of restoring confidence in elections. Supporters viewed those efforts as necessary safeguards. Critics argued they legitimized doubts about elections that South Dakota officials had never demonstrated were compromised.

What is striking, however, is that many of the most consequential election controversies during Johnson’s tenure have had little to do with the voter-fraud scenarios that dominated her campaign.

Instead, they have involved the less glamorous—but far more important—work of administering elections: inaccurate voter-registration records, ballot-access disputes, delayed absentee ballots, and the mistaken disclosure of sensitive voter information. These were not allegations of sophisticated conspiracies. They were administrative failures.

That contrast matters. Conspiracy theories often flourish by filling gaps in understanding with assumptions of hidden intent. Complex election systems inevitably produce mistakes, but mistakes are not, by themselves, evidence of fraud. The responsibility of a secretary of state is to distinguish between the two—to understand how the system works well enough to identify genuine vulnerabilities without manufacturing new ones.

Johnson frequently described some early problems as part of a learning curve or attributed them to administrative rules and longstanding procedures. But voters do not elect a secretary of state to learn the job after taking office. As Democratic challenger Terrance Davis has argued, this is not a position where the public should accept “learn as you go” governance.

Ironically, the record suggests that the most significant threats to confidence in South Dakota’s elections during Johnson’s tenure did not come from the conspiracies she warned about. They came from preventable administrative errors within the office entrusted with protecting the integrity of the state’s elections.

Those concerns extend to the state’s voter role themselves. Public records continue to show examples of outdated registrations remaining active long after individuals have moved. For example, former Deputy Director of ICE Madison Sheahan continues to appear on South Dakota’s voter rolls despite being registered elsewhere, while another individual who previously resided at the same address reportedly remains registered there years after relocating. Those examples do not, standing alone, establish illegal voting. They do, however, illustrate the persistent maintenance problems that election officials themselves are responsible for addressing.

Since taking office, nearly every major election cycle overseen by Johnson has generated significant administrative controversy. Taken individually, each incident might be dismissed as an isolated mistake. Viewed together, they suggest a broader pattern of management that deserves far greater public scrutiny than it has received.

Voting Down in Every South Dakota County 2024

On Nov. 1, 2024—just four days before Election Day—a Microsoft Azure outage crippled South Dakota’s TotalVote voter check-in system. County auditors were told to fall back on paper records, a contingency state law already requires. Some counties transitioned without issue. Others did not. Voters reported being turned away, instructed to cast provisional ballots, or waiting hours to vote on one of the busiest days of the election. For an administration that built its reputation on protecting election integrity, the problem was not a conspiracy. It was preparedness.

Failure to Advise Candidates and Place them on Ballots

In 2024, Republican House candidate Carson Merkwan was told by the Secretary of State’s office that he needed 39 valid signatures to qualify for the Republican primary.

That advice turned out to be incorrect.

The law actually required 50 valid signatures.

Merkwan submitted his petitions relying on the number provided by the Secretary of State’s office. After challenged signatures were removed, he fell below the actual legal threshold and was ruled ineligible to appear on the Republican primary ballot. A judge acknowledged that the misinformation came from the Secretary of State’s office but held that the statutory requirements still controlled, meaning Merkwan could not remain on the ballot as a Republican candidate. He still had the option of running as an independent in the general election.

Violation of Privacy

In 2025, the Secretary of State’s Office released South Dakota’s statewide voter-registration database containing information identifying thousands of voters who had registered through public assistance agencies. Voting-rights advocates argued the disclosure exposed information protected by federal law because it revealed how certain citizens registered to vote. Johnson accepted responsibility, removed the data, and notified affected voters, but the episode raised broader questions about whether the state’s chief election official had adequately safeguarded sensitive voter information.

Months later, Johnson’s office entered negotiations with the U.S. Department of Justice over a proposed voter-roll maintenance agreement. Voting-rights organizations and the Democratic National Committee warned that portions of the proposal could conflict with the National Voter Registration Act by increasing the risk that eligible voters could be removed before receiving adequate notice or an opportunity to correct errors. Johnson rejected those concerns, arguing that maintaining accurate voter rolls is a core responsibility of her office, though the state ultimately declined to finalize the agreement after negotiations broke down.

Then came the 2026 primary.

An Election Without Ballots

State law requires absentee voting to begin forty-six days before Election Day. Instead, ballots in several counties were not ready when voting was scheduled to begin, forcing county auditors to explain delays to voters while Johnson’s office advised counties to temporarily rely on sample ballots. Johnson attributed the delays to an unusually compressed election calendar and a record number of candidate filings. Critics countered that anticipating those challenges was precisely the responsibility of the state’s chief election officer.

The Irony

Perhaps the greatest irony of Johnson’s tenure came only weeks after South Dakota’s delayed-ballot controversy.

After years of campaigning on election fraud, one of the state’s most significant recent election-fraud prosecutions did not involve the sweeping conspiracies that dominated political rhetoric. Instead, Republican state Sen. Thomas Pischke surrendered to authorities after being charged with felony offenses alleging he knowingly submitted falsified nomination documents for Republican precinct positions. Pischke has pleaded not guilty, and the charges remain pending.

Standing alone, any one of the controversies outlined in this article could be dismissed as an isolated mistake. Together, they reveal a different pattern. The defining election issues during Johnson’s tenure were not widespread voter fraud or coordinated election conspiracies. They involved delayed ballots, ballot-access disputes, voter-roll maintenance, the release of sensitive voter information, candidate filing errors, and the day-to-day administration of the state’s election system.

For an office that campaigned on restoring confidence in elections, the greatest challenges ultimately came from administering them.

Rejected by Her Own Party

Perhaps the clearest political verdict on Johnson’s tenure came not from Democrats or voting-rights organizations, but from the Republican delegates who first elevated her to statewide office.

Johnson became secretary of state after defeating incumbent Steve Barnett at the 2022 Republican convention, propelled by delegates who wanted a more aggressive approach to election integrity following the 2020 presidential election. Four years later, those same delegates declined to nominate her for another term.

Instead, Republicans selected state Rep. Heather Baxter as their nominee for secretary of state. Incumbent constitutional officers are rarely denied renomination in South Dakota, particularly within a party that has dominated statewide politics for decades. Whatever motivated individual delegates—whether dissatisfaction with administrative performance, disagreement over election policy, or a desire for different leadership—the outcome itself was significant. The coalition that brought Johnson to office chose to move in another direction.

That fact does not, by itself, determine whether voters should support or oppose Johnson in November. But it should prompt an obvious question: if even her own party concluded new leadership was needed, should the rest of the state ask the same question?

A New Way Forward

The Secretary of State should rarely make headlines.

It is not an office designed for partisan combat or political celebrity. Its responsibilities are straightforward but essential: administer elections competently, safeguard public records, oversee business filings, and ensure that every eligible voter can participate in a process that is fair, accurate, and transparent.

When that work is done well, most people never notice it.

During Johnson’s tenure, however, the office repeatedly became the story. Administrative errors overshadowed the conspiracies that dominated campaign speeches. Questions about ballot access, election administration, voter privacy, and public confidence replaced promises of restoring trust.

That is why I am supporting Terrance Davis.

I do not expect to agree with every decision he would make as secretary of state. That is not the standard I apply to public office. The standard is competence, transparency, accountability, and a demonstrated commitment to administering elections fairly for every South Dakotan, regardless of political affiliation.

Healthy democracies depend on competitive elections—not only for public office, but for ideas. For too long, South Dakota has treated many statewide races as foregone conclusions. Accountability requires meaningful competition, and meaningful competition gives voters the opportunity to evaluate records rather than rely on party labels.

This election is not simply about Republicans and Democrats. It is about whether the office responsible for protecting South Dakota’s elections has earned another term.

After reviewing Monae Johnson’s record, I do not believe it has.

That is why I believe South Dakotans should elect Terrance Davis as their next Secretary of State.

To make a contribution to Davis’ Campaign: https://davisforsouthdakota.com/

To check voter registration in South Dakota: https://vip.sdsos.gov/

To become a South Dakota resident and registered voter for federal elections, even you are not from South Dakota:

https://americasmailbox.com/

605-718-1234

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Just before noon on Sunday, June 14, prosecutor Gloria Alexandra Bravo Cedeño stepped out of a café with her older sister and walked toward a parked car in central Manta. Near the intersection of Flavio Reyes Avenue and 22nd Street, a gunman approached and opened fire. Witnesses told local reporters that Bravo was shot repeatedly at close range. Her sister, Olinda Emperatriz Bravo Cedeño, tried to shield her and confront the attacker. She was shot as well.1

Both women died, and a third person was wounded.

In the weeks leading up to her death, Bravo was investigating a series of troubling incidents involving Ecuadorian fishing vessels that had either been attacked by drones or had disappeared under disputed circumstances. The investigations unfolded as reports surfaced of U.S. drone strikes targeting alleged drug traffickers in the region, fueling speculation that the two events could be connected.

Among Bravo’s most significant investigations was the disappearance of the Ecuadorian fishing vessel Fiorella and its crew. Speaking with Human Rights Watch only weeks before her death, she said her office had opened a formal criminal investigation and repeatedly requested information from Ecuadorian maritime authorities. The responses never came.

The obstacles extended beyond unanswered requests. Ecuadorian prosecutors lacked both the legal authority and the logistical resources to investigate incidents occurring far offshore, leaving them dependent on information controlled by other government agencies. As a result, one of the country’s highest-profile maritime investigations remained stalled, with critical questions still unanswered.

As Bravo struggled to move the investigation forward, the questions were no longer confined to Ecuador, the investigation had reached Washington.

On June 13, Representatives Joaquin Castro and Bill Keating sent a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Homeland Security officials and the U.S. Coast Guard seeking information about any U.S. involvement in attacks on Ecuadorian fishing vessels. The lawmakers cited testimony from surviving fishermen who alleged that English-speaking personnel aboard a blue vessel flying a U.S. flag detained crews after reported drone attacks at sea. They asked whether U.S. military personnel, Coast Guard members, Homeland Security officials or government contractors had participated in, supported or possessed information about the operations.

Less than twenty-four hours later, Gloria Alexandra Bravo Cedeño was dead. Among the investigations left unfinished was the disappearance of the fishing vessel Fiorella and its crew. Bravo was also overseeing inquiries involving Negra Francisca Duarte II and Don Maca.

At first glance, the killings appear unrelated. Different prosecutors. Different investigations. Different years.

Look closer, and a pattern emerges.

The prosecutors killed in Manta were not random victims. They all investigated organized crime in one of Ecuador’s most violent coastal provinces. Gloria Alexandra Bravo Cedeño handled homicide, kidnapping and organized-crime cases, including the destruction of fishing vessels and alleged drone attacks at sea. Marcelo Vásconez served in the Attorney General’s transnational organized crime unit before his 2024 killing. Luz Marina Delgado was investigating violent crime when she was murdered in 2022. Human Rights Watch identified Bravo as the third prosecutor killed in Manta since 2022, while Ecuadorian organizations have documented more than two dozen killings of justice officials nationwide since 2020.

The connection was never that they worked the same case. It was that they performed the same job.

In Manta, prosecutors are not simply trying murders, kidnappings or drug offenses. They are investigating criminal organizations whose influence stretches from Ecuador’s ports to international cocaine markets, and beyond Every major investigation threatens not only the people pulling the trigger, but the financial and logistical networks behind them.

To understand why prosecutors became targets, it is necessary to understand what happened to Ecuador—and why the institutions responsible for confronting organized crime became part of the battlefield. This is not simply the story of murdered prosecutors. It is the story of what happens when the evidence needed to dismantle transnational criminal organizations disappears at sea, and bring into focus whether the United State’s punitive actions in the region set to fight narcoterrorism are doing more damage than good.

Ecuador did not become a center of the global cocaine trade because it lacked laws, investigators or legitimate commerce. It became valuable because it had all the infrastructure a modern trafficking network needed. Wedged between Colombia and Peru, two of the world’s largest cocaine-producing countries, Ecuador offered traffickers something its neighbors could not provide as efficiently: access to major Pacific ports, a dollarized economy and a vast export industry already connected to markets across North America and Europe. Bananas, shrimp, flowers and seafood left Ecuador by the container load. Cocaine could travel inside the same system.

The transformation was gradual. Ecuador had long served as a transit corridor, but the scale and structure of the trade changed as cocaine production expanded and European demand surged. By 2023, cocaine seizures in Western and Central Europe had exceeded those reported in North America for the fifth consecutive year. Ecuador was no longer merely a country drugs passed through on their way north. It had become one of the principal departure points for shipments moving west across the Atlantic.

Every refrigerated container leaving an Ecuadorian port carried the possibility of two economies traveling together. One was legitimate: fruit and seafood destined for grocery stores around the world. The other was illicit: cocaine concealed among perishable goods, inserted into containers through corrupt port access, falsified paperwork or trafficking networks embedded inside export companies.

The cocaine economy does not belong to one country. Neither do the organizations that profit from it. Colombian and Peruvian producers supplied the drug. Mexican organizations helped connect shipments to North American markets. European buyers increasingly arranged direct access to South American suppliers. Belgian, Dutch and Spanish ports became major entry points. Ecuador occupied the center of that chain—not because it produced most of the cocaine, but because its ports connected growers, brokers, exporters, shipping companies, local gangs and foreign distributors.

One of the most consequential shifts in Ecuador’s criminal landscape was not the rise of a new gang, but the arrival of foreign brokers determined to shorten the global cocaine supply chain. Among the most prominent were criminal networks from the Western Balkans—particularly Albania—which increasingly established a direct presence inside Ecuador rather than purchasing cocaine through multiple intermediaries after it reached Europe. Their objective was not to rule neighborhoods. It was to control logistics. That distinction transformed the business of cocaine trafficking. Access to an export company could be more valuable than control of a street corner.

A corrupt port employee could be worth more than another gunman. A refrigerated container filled with bananas or shrimp could conceal millions of dollars in cocaine while appearing no different from thousands of legitimate shipments leaving Ecuador every week. Investigators say some Balkan-linked networks cultivated relationships with Colombian suppliers, Ecuadorian exporters, shipping companies, warehouse operators, port workers and local criminal organizations, creating vertically integrated supply chains that stretched from Andean production zones to European ports. Legitimate commerce became both camouflage and infrastructure.

The same export economy that helped make Ecuador one of South America’s commercial success stories also provided traffickers with an efficient global distribution network. Investigators allege that some criminal organizations went beyond bribing businesses—they purchased or created them. Banana exporters, logistics companies, construction firms and real estate businesses could all serve multiple purposes at once: facilitating shipments, laundering proceeds and embedding illicit capital within Ecuador’s legitimate economy.

One of the clearest examples emerged from a joint investigation by authorities in Ecuador and Spain. Prosecutors alleged that a network led by Albanian trafficker Dritan Gjika used Ecuadorian fruit companies to move cocaine from Colombia through Ecuador into European markets while concealing the proceeds through a web of commercial enterprises. The investigation resulted in dozens of arrests and the freezing of approximately €48 million in assets.

The cocaine traveled in one direction. The money traveled in another.

Every successful shipment generated profits that had to be transformed into seemingly legitimate wealth before they could finance the next voyage. Researchers estimate that billions of dollars in suspected illicit proceeds move through Ecuador’s economy each year, flowing through shell companies, false invoices, real estate transactions and other financial structures designed to obscure both the source of the money and its ultimate beneficiaries.

Most Americans will never attend the funeral of a murdered prosecutor in Manta or wait for fishermen who never return from sea. Yet the market financing those tragedies extends into communities across the United States and Europe. Every kilogram leaving Ecuador is destined for consumers elsewhere. Every dollar returning to trafficking networks begins with demand beyond Ecuador’s borders.

For prosecutors like Gloria Alexandra Bravo Cedeño, that made the investigation far more complicated than recovering drugs or solving homicides. The evidence she needed was disappearing in two directions: beneath the sea with missing vessels and across borders through financial systems, shell companies and jurisdictions that often proved just as difficult to penetrate as the trafficking networks themselves.

Money alone, however, could not move cocaine across Ecuador.

Foreign brokers could finance shipments, negotiate with suppliers and arrange buyers across the Atlantic, but they still needed trusted partners on the ground—fishermen willing, or sometimes coerced, to transport loads; warehouse operators; corrupt port employees; officials willing to look away; and armed groups capable of protecting routes and enforcing agreements through intimidation and violence.

Ecuador’s gangs became those partners. Organizations such as Los Choneros and Los Lobos were not simply street gangs or local affiliates of foreign cartels. They functioned as service providers within a global supply chain, connecting Colombian and Peruvian producers to Mexican, European and Balkan trafficking networks. They secured warehouses, controlled access to ports and transportation routes, corrupted or intimidated key personnel, and enforced agreements through extortion, kidnapping and murder.

The arrangement fundamentally changed the nature of criminal power inside Ecuador. Control of a port, a highway or a fishing community became a commodity that could be sold to international traffickers. Territory became infrastructure. Violence became a business service.

Los Choneros helped pioneer that model. From their stronghold in Manabí, the organization forged relationships with foreign trafficking groups and expanded into Ecuador’s principal cocaine corridors. Operating largely from within the prison system, its leadership coordinated alliances, recruited members and managed trafficking operations well beyond prison walls.2

For a time, that transformation was personified by José Adolfo Macías Villamar—better known as “Fito.” While incarcerated, the Los Choneros leader enjoyed privileges inconsistent with ordinary imprisonment, including private living quarters inside the prison. His escape in January 2024 exposed more than a security failure. It revealed how profoundly organized crime had eroded the state’s control over parts of its own correctional system.

The death of earlier Choneros leader Jorge Luis Zambrano, known as “Rasquiña,” fractured the organization and intensified competition among former allies and rivals. Los Lobos, once part of the Choneros structure, emerged as one of the country’s most powerful criminal organizations, extending its presence through prisons and major trafficking corridors. The contest was no longer only over neighborhood territory. It was over contracts, ports, routes and access to the global cocaine supply chain.

Competition for ports, routes and contracts transformed Ecuador’s commercial cities, prisons and coastal communities into battlefields. What appeared from abroad to be an eruption of uniquely Ecuadorian violence was, in reality, the local expression of a global market. The cocaine crossed Ecuadorian docks, but its production, financing, transportation and consumption stretched across continents. The violence remained in Ecuador. The profits did not.

And the profits did not remain safely offshore. They returned to Ecuador as influence.

The Metastasis investigation exposed an alleged network in which traffickers cultivated judges, prosecutors, police officers, prison officials and attorneys. The case grew from evidence recovered after the death of trafficker Leandro Norero and eventually produced convictions against 20 defendants, including officials from institutions responsible for administering justice. Organized crime was not simply evading the state. In some places, it was learning to operate through it.

36.As alliances fractured and criminal organizations competed for ports, routes and political protection, violence accelerated. Ecuador’s homicide rate rose from 13.7 killings per 100,000 residents in 2021 to approximately 45 in 2023. After a temporary decline in 2024, the country recorded 9,216 murders in 2025—30 percent more than the year before.

But the crisis was never confined to the streets.

Those who tried to expose or prosecute the system became targets themselves. Presidential candidate and former investigative journalist Fernando Villavicencio was assassinated after making corruption and organized crime central to his campaign. Prosecutor César Suárez, who handled transnational organized-crime cases and investigated the armed takeover of a television station, was shot to death in Guayaquil in 2024. By June 2026, a rights organization had documented 46 attacks against Ecuadorian judicial officials since 2020, resulting in 28 deaths. Gloria Alexandra Bravo Cedeño became the third prosecutor killed in Manta since 2022.

The killings revealed only part of the pressure on Ecuador’s justice system. The Attorney General’s Office reported roughly 600 vacant positions, including prosecutors and assistants, while the country’s highest appeals court operated with fewer than half the judges it required. Many threatened officials lacked armored vehicles or even basic protection. Prosecutors were being asked to confront wealthy, internationally connected organizations from institutions that were understaffed, vulnerable to corruption and unable to protect their own personnel.

The United States responded by expanding its security partnership with Ecuador through training, intelligence sharing, maritime interdiction and counternarcotics assistance. The rationale was compelling: the organizations moving cocaine through Ecuador crossed borders, and no country could dismantle them alone. Coordinated maritime operations had produced major seizures, arrests and prosecutions, demonstrating the value of evidence-based international cooperation.

But increased operational capacity did not necessarily strengthen every part of the justice system equally. Boats could be tracked. Shipments could be intercepted. Suspects could be detained. Yet prosecutors still needed financial records, witness testimony, communications data and cooperation from agencies and governments operating far beyond their jurisdiction.

One day after Gloria Bravo was killed, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth met with Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa and reaffirmed expanded bilateral cooperation against narcotics trafficking and transnational criminal organizations.

For Gloria Bravo, those failures were not theoretical. The evidence she sought was disappearing in two directions: beneath the sea with the vessels she was investigating, and across borders through financial and institutional systems she could not compel to provide answers.

Cocaine could not move through Ecuador on money alone. Foreign brokers could finance shipments, negotiate with suppliers and arrange buyers across the Atlantic. But they still needed people on the ground: fishermen and couriers to carry loads, warehouse operators to hide them, port employees to manipulate access, officials willing to look away and armed groups capable of protecting routes—or punishing anyone who interfered.

But security cooperation expanded alongside a justice system that remained dangerously fragile. Human Rights Watch has argued that military and law-enforcement assistance advanced faster than investments in prosecutors, courts, oversight and protection for judicial officials. That imbalance raises a question central to Gloria Bravo’s unfinished investigations: can an international strategy succeed if it strengthens the machinery used to intercept suspected traffickers but leaves the prosecutors responsible for tracing their networks without records, resources or protection?

Ecuador’s experience complicates the familiar image of a lawless foreign country waiting to be rescued. Its investigators have seized tons of cocaine, exposed corruption inside their own institutions and prosecuted members of sophisticated criminal networks. Many have continued that work despite threats that proved fatal to their colleagues.

The deeper failure may not be an absence of law enforcement. It may be a security model that measures success by raids, arrests and intercepted shipments while treating the slower work of preserving evidence, following money, protecting witnesses and building prosecutions as secondary.

In Ecuador, the people doing that slower work increasingly became the targets.

Together, the investigations into Fiorella, Negra Francisca Duarte II and Don Maca revealed a troubling pattern unfolding far from Ecuador’s coastline: reported drone attacks, missing fishermen, alleged detentions at sea and criminal investigations repeatedly slowed by unanswered requests for information. As the cases drew international attention, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, journalists and members of the U.S. Congress all called for greater transparency surrounding the incidents.

Whether the United States played any role in the attacks Bravo was investigating remains unresolved. U.S. agencies have denied involvement, and no public investigation has conclusively established responsibility. For Bravo, however, identifying the perpetrator was only one part of the challenge.

Shortly before her death, she told Human Rights Watch that Ecuadorian prosecutors lacked both the legal authority and the logistical capacity to investigate crimes committed at sea. Instead, they depended on records held by maritime authorities and foreign partners. When those records failed to arrive, investigations stalled before prosecutors could establish even the most basic facts.

That distinction may ultimately matter more than the unanswered question of who carried out the attacks.

Ecuador is often portrayed as a country overwhelmed by organized crime. The reality is more complicated. Its prosecutors have repeatedly dismantled sophisticated trafficking networks when investigations were supported by evidence, functioning institutions and effective international cooperation. In Manta alone, investigators secured convictions after the seizure of a metric ton of cocaine, demonstrating that these organizations are neither invisible nor untouchable.3

But by the time Gloria Alexandra Bravo Cedeño was killed, many of the people leading that work were already gone. Prosecutors Marcelo Vásconez, Luz Marina Delgado and César Suárez had all been murdered. Manta Mayor Agustín Intriago was assassinated. So was presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio after making corruption and organized crime central to his campaign.4

The names changed. The positions changed. The pattern did not.

Bravo’s maritime investigations exposed a problem unlike almost any other. A homicide leaves a crime scene. A corrupt official leaves financial records. A drug warehouse leaves fingerprints, surveillance footage and witnesses. A fishing vessel can disappear beyond the horizon.

Survivors may return with conflicting accounts. Communications, GPS records and intelligence may remain inside government agencies—or never reach the prosecutors responsible for determining whether a crime occurred. Without those records, investigators are left pursuing transnational criminal organizations while missing the evidence needed to identify who financed, directed and profited from the operation.

That distinction matters because destroying a vessel is not the same as dismantling a criminal enterprise.

Traditional maritime interdictions are designed to stop vessels, seize narcotics, preserve electronic evidence, identify crews and place suspects into the criminal justice system. Those investigations can expose trafficking routes, financial backers, corrupt officials and the organizers who rarely set foot aboard the boats themselves.

A strike that destroys a vessel may eliminate a shipment. It may also destroy the phones, navigation equipment, documents and testimony needed to expose the network behind it. The people aboard are not always the architects of international trafficking. Some are experienced smugglers. Others may be low-level couriers, indebted fishermen, coerced laborers or trafficking victims whose roles can never be fully understood once the evidence is gone.

Along trafficking routes, cocaine lost at sea has long been known as “white lobster”—bales abandoned during maritime operations that later wash ashore or are recovered by others. Every unrecovered package represents not only evidence lost, but potentially cocaine that re-enters the illicit market while enriching whoever retrieves it first.5

The organizations, meanwhile, continue to adapt. Boats are replaced. Crews are replaced. Routes change. Consumer demand—much of it originating in the United States and Europe—remains largely unchanged.

The violence, however, stays in Ecuador.

That leaves a larger question.

If the objective is to dismantle transnational criminal organizations, should success be measured by the number of boats destroyed or suspected traffickers killed? Or by whether investigators obtain the evidence needed to identify financiers, corrupt officials, shipping networks and the leaders who continue operating long after an individual crew has been replaced?

Those were the questions Gloria Alexandra Bravo Cedeño was still trying to answer when she was killed.

A boat can disappear beneath the sea in minutes.

A criminal organization cannot.

Fifteen years before fertilizer prices became a political issue in Washington, John Thune sat through a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing examining one of the world’s most strategically important shipping lanes.

That hearing—and the years of public statements that followed—would establish a detailed record of what Thune knew about Iran, the Strait of Hormuz and Congress’s constitutional role in decisions of war long before those issues converged in 2025.

Understanding that record also requires examining the political environment in which it developed.

Over the past two decades, outside advocacy organizations, political action committees and nonprofit groups have become increasingly influential in American elections, spending hundreds of millions of dollars to support favored candidates, shape public debate and influence policy priorities. Campaign finance records show that throughout his Senate career, Thune received substantial financial support from donors, political action committees and organizations associated with pro-Israel advocacy and the defense sector through both his campaign committees and affiliated political organizations.

Among those organizations is New Heights for America, a nonprofit associated with Thune that received a $500,000 contribution from Leon Rachel Corporation. Corporate records identify Leon Rachel Corporation as a nonprofit registered at an address associated with Staci Goede. Campaign finance records indicate that entities operating from or associated with that address directed tens of millions of dollars into the 2024 election cycle, much of it supporting organizations and political efforts aligned with pro-Israel policy priorities.

The same address also appears in connection with a multimillion-dollar independent expenditure campaign opposing Graham Platner. Campaign finance records show that the committee purchased approximately $65,000 in defamation liability insurance only weeks before allegations of sexual misconduct became the central issue in Platner’s campaign. The timing raises questions about how political organizations evaluate legal and reputational risk when planning high-profile independent expenditure campaigns.

Those facts do not, by themselves, establish why elected officials adopt particular policy positions. They do, however, illustrate the growing influence of well-funded advocacy networks in modern American politics and raise a question that extends well beyond any single lawmaker: do outside organizations primarily invest in candidates who already share their priorities, or can sustained financial and political support shape those priorities over time?

John Thune’s public record provides an unusual opportunity to examine that question. Rather than relying on anonymous sources or speculation, the record spans nearly two decades of committee hearings, Senate debates, public statements and legislative actions. Those events create a chronological record that allows readers to compare what Thune said about congressional war powers, executive accountability and Iran over many years with the decisions he later made as Senate majority leader.

That raises a longstanding question in campaign finance: do advocacy organizations primarily invest in candidates who already share their policy priorities, or does sustained financial support gradually shape the positions elected officials take once they are in office?

John Thune presents an unusually extensive public record through which to examine that question. Over nearly two decades in the Senate, he has spoken repeatedly about Congress’s constitutional role in matters of war, executive accountability and oversight. Those statements provide a documented baseline against which his later actions can be evaluated.

Whether the changes in Thune’s public positions reflect evolving policy judgments, shifting political realities, the influence of campaign supporters or some combination of those factors is ultimately a question readers must answer for themselves. What is clear from the public record is that his speeches, committee participation and legislative actions provide an unusually detailed record of how his approach to these issues developed over time.

In January 2008, five Iranian Revolutionary Guard speedboats approached three U.S. Navy warships transiting the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most strategically important maritime chokepoints. The encounter heightened fears that even a relatively small confrontation in the narrow waterway could escalate into a broader conflict with global economic consequences. Although aspects of the incident—including the source of a threatening radio transmission—were later disputed, the broader strategic lesson was not: the Strait of Hormuz represented one of Iran’s most significant points of leverage over the global economy. Roughly one-fifth of the world’s seaborne oil and enormous quantities of liquefied natural gas pass through the passage, making it a longstanding focus of U.S. military planning and congressional oversight.

Thune publicly condemned Iran’s actions following the encounter, joining other lawmakers in emphasizing the importance of protecting freedom of navigation through the Strait.

Two years later, On April 10, 2010 he attended a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing where Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess expanded on that concern. Burgess testified that while Iran was unlikely to deliberately initiate a major war, it possessed the capability to temporarily restrict access to the Strait of Hormuz and threaten U.S. forces and regional allies with ballistic missiles. The warning was not simply about naval tactics. It described the very chain of events military planners had long feared: ,conflict involving Iran could disrupt one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, sending shockwaves through global energy markets and the agricultural supply chains that depend on them.

The warning reflected a longstanding concern within the U.S. defense and intelligence community. The Strait of Hormuz carries roughly one-fifth of globally traded oil, substantial volumes of liquefied natural gas and serves as a critical shipping route for commodities that underpin fertilizer production and global agriculture. Military planners had long viewed the waterway as one of Iran’s most significant strategic leverage points because even temporary disruption could ripple through international energy and commodity markets.

Over the next decade, Thune continued to argue that decisions involving Iran required meaningful congressional participation.

During negotiations over the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, he insisted that “the American people deserve a voice in this process now more than ever” and called congressional approval “critical.” Following the 2020 strike that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani and again after the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, he urged Congress to exercise robust oversight, investigate executive decision-making and demand answers from the administration.

The significance of that hearing is not that intelligence officials forecast the exact events of 2026. They did not. It is that the core chain of risk was already understood: conflict with Iran could impede passage through Hormuz; disruption of Hormuz could constrict global energy and commodity flows; and those disruptions could reach American consumers and farmers.

When U.S. forces struck Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025 without a formal declaration of war, members of both parties invoked the War Powers Resolution, the 1973 law intended to ensure that sustained military operations receive congressional authorization. The statute requires consultation with Congress and limits the duration of hostilities absent legislative approval.

As Senate majority leader, Thune controlled much of the chamber’s agenda. Between June 2025 and June 2026, senators repeatedly sought to advance Iran-related War Powers measures that would have required Congress to debate, authorize, or limit continued military operations. Time after time, those efforts stalled. Some failed on procedural votes. Others never became law. Together, they created a year-long pattern in which Congress repeatedly had opportunities to assert its constitutional role but ultimately did not.

That record stands in marked contrast to Thune’s own statements over the previous decade.

Those positions demonstrate more than a passing familiarity with war powers. They show that Thune understood both the constitutional framework governing military force and the institutional tools available to Congress when presidents expand military operations.

The strategic risks of escalation with Iran were equally well known

For decades, congressional hearings, intelligence briefings, defense analysts, and agricultural economists have identified the Strait of Hormuz as one of the world’s most strategically significant maritime chokepoints. Roughly one-fifth of globally traded oil moves through the waterway, along with substantial quantities of liquefied natural gas and fertilizer feedstocks. Analysts have long warned that military conflict involving Iran could disrupt shipping through the region, driving higher energy costs and cascading increases throughout agricultural supply chains.

By early 2026, many of those warnings had become reality.

The American Farm Bureau Federation identified instability surrounding the Strait of Hormuz as an important contributor to fertilizer market disruption. Researchers at the University of Kentucky and the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City likewise described the Strait’s central role in global fertilizer and energy markets, noting significant increases in fertilizer prices following disruptions to regional shipping. Senate testimony documented steep increases in fertilizer and diesel costs facing American farmers during the same period.

The Family Appointment and the Fertilizer Narrative

By the time fertilizer prices became a political issue in 2026, another decision made months earlier had taken on new significance.

In January 2025, President Donald Trump nominated Luke Lindberg—John Thune’s son-in-law—to serve as under secretary of agriculture for trade and foreign agricultural affairs. Although little known outside agricultural policy circles, the position plays a significant role in shaping U.S. agricultural trade policy, international market access, and the global supply chains that influence the cost of fertilizer and other essential farm inputs.

As Senate majority leader, Thune exercised considerable influence over whether—and when—the nomination would receive a vote. On July 31, 2025, he filed cloture to advance Lindberg’s nomination. Two days later, the Senate confirmed Lindberg by a bipartisan vote of 78-17. Thune voted in favor of confirming his own son-in-law.

Lindberg’s appointment cannot be dismissed solely because of his family relationship. Before joining the administration, he led South Dakota Trade and previously served at the Export-Import Bank. Those qualifications are relevant. They also do not eliminate questions surrounding Thune’s participation in the confirmation process.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington argued that Thune should have recused himself because of the family relationship. Senate ethics guidance emphasizes avoiding both actual conflicts of interest and the appearance that official decisions are influenced by private relationships. At the same time, there has been no public finding by the Senate Ethics Committee concluding that Thune violated Senate rules by participating in the vote. The documented facts are narrower: as majority leader, Thune helped advance the nomination and ultimately voted to confirm a close family member to a senior executive-branch position.

At the time, the nomination drew relatively little public attention.

Months later, it became far more consequential.

By early 2026, fertilizer prices were rising sharply. The reasons were complex. Global natural gas prices, supply-chain disruptions, tariffs, weather, industry concentration, and geopolitical instability all played a role. Among those factors was renewed instability surrounding the Strait of Hormuz—a maritime chokepoint military planners, intelligence officials, economists, and agricultural organizations had spent years warning could disrupt global energy and fertilizer markets.

Agricultural organizations, including the American Farm Bureau Federation, together with researchers at the University of Kentucky and economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, increasingly identified instability surrounding the Strait as one contributing factor behind rising fertilizer costs. None argued it was the only cause. Rather, they described it as one significant component of a much broader economic picture.

The administration’s public messaging increasingly emphasized a different explanation.

On March 16, 2026, Lindberg echoed Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins in warning that fertilizer manufacturers and suppliers would not be allowed to exploit the crisis through price gouging. Administration officials said they were closely monitoring fertilizer companies for evidence of unfair pricing practices.

Three days later, Thune introduced the Fertilizer Transparency Act of 2026. The bipartisan proposal would require the Department of Agriculture—where Lindberg served as the senior trade official—to collect and publish weekly fertilizer price information from manufacturers. Thune presented the legislation as a response to rising costs and concerns about transparency within the fertilizer market.

Investigating possible anti-competitive behavior in the fertilizer industry was not inherently unreasonable. The industry is highly concentrated, and economists, regulators, and private litigants have long raised questions about competition within the sector.

But it was not the only explanation available to policymakers.

Years before fertilizer prices became a national issue, Thune had participated in congressional hearings examining Iran’s ability to disrupt the Strait of Hormuz. Intelligence officials warned that conflict involving Iran could threaten one of the world’s most important commercial waterways. Military planners had long viewed the Strait as a strategic vulnerability. Economists and agricultural researchers later documented how disruptions there could ripple through global energy markets before ultimately reaching American farmers through higher fertilizer, fuel, and transportation costs.

One narrative focused primarily on fertilizer manufacturers and market transparency.

Another focused on the geopolitical consequences of military escalation involving Iran and the predictable disruption of global commodity markets.

Those explanations are not mutually exclusive. Rising fertilizer prices almost certainly reflected multiple converging factors, including corporate behavior, natural gas markets, trade policy, and geopolitical instability.

The question raised by the public record is therefore not whether fertilizer companies deserved scrutiny.

It is whether the public received an equally complete discussion of the geopolitical risks that policymakers—including John Thune—had spent years publicly acknowledging before those risks became reality.

Viewed chronologically, the sequence is difficult to ignore.

For years, Thune argued that Congress should exercise meaningful oversight over military action involving Iran. He participated in hearings examining the strategic importance of the Strait of Hormuz and repeatedly emphasized Congress’s constitutional role in decisions of war. As Senate majority leader, he later opposed repeated efforts to advance Iran-related War Powers measures while helping confirm his son-in-law to one of the federal government’s most important agricultural trade positions. As fertilizer prices climbed, Lindberg publicly emphasized concerns about price gouging, and days later Thune introduced legislation focused on fertilizer market transparency.

Whether that sequence reflects sound policy, political judgment, or something else is a conclusion readers must reach for themselves.

For more than fifty years, Republicans have dominated South Dakota politics. Their supporters point to low taxes, balanced budgets, and a business-friendly climate as evidence of success. Their critics see something different: aging infrastructure, struggling rural communities, persistent workforce shortages, hospitals fighting to keep their doors open, and a generation of young people who increasingly believe opportunity lies somewhere else.

Perhaps no statistic tells the story more clearly than South Dakota’s long struggle with “brain drain.” For years, researchers have documented the state’s difficulty retaining many of the college graduates it educates. When ambitious young people leave in large numbers, the loss is more than economic. Communities lose future teachers, entrepreneurs, nurses, engineers, and civic leaders.

That reality shapes politics as much as it shapes the workforce. When a generation expects to build its future somewhere else, it becomes harder to convince that generation that voting, volunteering, or investing in local civic life can change anything. A sense of impermanence breeds political disengagement.

At the same time, South Dakota has long maintained residency laws that make it comparatively easy for some people to establish legal domicile for tax, lifestyle, or travel purposes. Whether one views that as an economic advantage or a political vulnerability, it raises a fundamental question: who is shaping South Dakota’s future—the people building their lives here, or an increasingly transient population with different priorities?

That does not mean Democrats cannot compete. It means they cannot afford to waste opportunities when they arise.

That is what makes Julian Beaudion’s campaign so remarkable.

A former South Dakota state trooper and small-business owner, Julian Beaudion entered this race with little statewide name recognition. In a relatively short time, however, he has built a campaign that has attracted attention well beyond South Dakota’s borders. Online discussions among activists, former South Dakotans, full-time travelers, and members of the RV community have highlighted the state’s unique residency laws and prompted broader conversations about South Dakota’s unusually accessible path to establishing legal domicile.

For Democrats, the notion that a U.S. Senate race in South Dakota could generate national interest would have seemed unlikely only a few years ago. South Dakota remains a Republican-leaning state, and Sen. Mike Rounds enters the race as the favorite. But Beaudion’s campaign has nevertheless succeeded in drawing attention from voters who had long viewed statewide races here as foregone conclusions. Whether that interest ultimately changes the outcome remains to be seen. What is beyond dispute is that it has expanded the conversation.

That is precisely why the remaining divisions among voters seeking an alternative to Sen. Rounds deserve careful consideration.

Throughout his campaigns, independent candidate Brian Bengs has argued that defeating entrenched political leadership should take precedence over party labels and that voters should unite behind the challenger with the strongest path to victory. It was a message that resonated with many South Dakotans because it placed the broader goal ahead of any one campaign.

Today, the political landscape has changed.

Polling discussed publicly this month—including polling commissioned by the Rounds campaign—shows Julian Beaudion running ahead of Bengs, even as Rounds maintains the advantage overall.

If the principle was always to unite behind the strongest challenger, then that principle cannot become negotiable simply because the strongest challenger has changed. Principles are tested when they require something of us—not when they reward us.

Brian Bengs has earned the respect of many South Dakotans. His military service, public advocacy, and willingness to challenge the political establishment deserve recognition but it is time for Bengs to put South Dakotans first, and that is by ensuring the highest probability of a Mike Rounds defeat.

History is rarely made because the favorite stumbles. It is made because people who share a common goal decide that the cause is bigger than themselves.

The decisive voters in this election are unlikely to be lifelong partisans. They are the people who have stopped believing politics belongs to them—the young voter who has never cast a ballot because they assume the outcome is predetermined, the independent who has grown tired of voting for the lesser of two disappointments, and the moderate Republican who believes loyalty to a party should never outweigh loyalty to principle.

South Dakota’s greatest political obstacle is not simply Republican dominance. It is political resignation.

In 2024, South Dakota recorded among the weakest youth civic engagement in the nation, reflecting a generation that increasingly questions whether participating can make a difference. That is the electorate this campaign must reach—not by appealing to partisan identity, but by offering something far more powerful: a reason to believe their vote could actually matter.

That is why this campaign cannot be about dividing the same pool of voters. It must be about expanding it. Winning requires bringing new people into the process—young voters, independents, and Republicans willing to put issues ahead of party labels. It requires convincing South Dakotans that this election is not another exercise in inevitability, but a rare opportunity to rewrite the script.

Julian Beaudion has spent this campaign doing exactly that: traveling the state, meeting voters where they are, and building a coalition around issues that cut across party lines. If that coalition continues to grow, the question is no longer whether Democrats can win every statewide race. The question is whether South Dakota is willing to seize the opportunity when one finally presents itself.

If this election is about giving South Dakotans their best chance to compete, then there comes a moment when every candidate must ask a difficult question: Am I helping build that coalition—or standing in its way?

Because opportunities like this do not come around often.

And when they do, South Dakota should go all Juli-an.

And out with a Beng.

Ashley Hinson Republican and Trump loyalist running in Iowa’s 2^nd congressional district has taken an increasingly hawkish stance on foreign policy and immigration. Registered Foreign agents records and FEC records may indicate why.

In 2025 a registered foreign agent on behalf of the state of Israel paid $10,000 to disperse literature to her office.

The agent did not disclose the literature but other records filed with DOJ indicate Israel has spent million on media buying and disbursements of literature to American politicians which included reconsidering the two-state solution, characterizing all Palestinians as extremists, emphasizing Israel as critical to western culture, distributing literature to pastors empathetic to Israel while giving them access to IDF soldiers and October 7^th witnesses, Geofencing all American churches to prohibit devices that enter them from receiving pro-Palestinian content and sabotaging Iran peace talks.

Israel’s role in U.S. homeland security policy has extended well beyond intelligence sharing. Through decades of bilateral cooperation, Israeli officials and security experts have worked alongside American counterparts on border security, counterterrorism, emergency response, and law enforcement initiatives. Critics argue that those relationships have also influenced the development of more aggressive immigration enforcement strategies adopted during the Project 2025 era.

This influence, according to critics, was reflected not only in the implementation of immigration policy but also in the Department of Homeland Security’s public communications strategy. The department increasingly relied on rapid-response messaging that was echoed by political allies, influencers, and government officials to defend high-profile enforcement actions and frame public debate surrounding immigration operations.

Among the recurring themes was the assertion that officers confronted with moving vehicles frequently faced immediate threats to their safety, making the use of deadly force legally justified. That rationale was cited following several fatal encounters, including those involving Renae Good, Alex Pretti, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, Johan Sebastian Guerrero, and the shooting of Marimar Martinez. Attorneys, family members, and critics have disputed those justifications in several of the cases, arguing that available evidence does not support the government’s initial characterization of the incidents.

Rep. Ashley Hinson has remained publicly supportive of Immigration and Customs Enforcement throughout the controversy, repeatedly stating that she stands with ICE while also sponsoring legislation that would increase criminal penalties for assaults against federal officers.

The controversy also intersects with the Department of Homeland Security’s communications contracts. One recipient, People Who Think LLC, became the subject of scrutiny after participating in a communications contract valued at up to $220 million during the leadership of Secretary Kristi Noem and senior adviser Corey Lewandowski.

Corporate records show the company was formed less than two weeks before receiving the award through a noncompetitive procurement process. Its leadership also included longtime Lewandowski associate and media adviser Jay Connaughton.

The contract has since drawn congressional scrutiny, prompted an Inspector General review, and remains the subject of calls for additional investigation, including whether any criminal violations occurred.

Federal Election Commission records filed in May 2026 show additional financial ties linking Rep. Ashley Hinson’s political operation to organizations and consultants that have drawn scrutiny in other federal and state investigations.

According to campaign finance filings, Americans for Prosperity Action Inc., operating under the names CVA Action and Libre Action, reported spending $11,370 with People Who Think LLC on May 26, 2026. The expenditure was described as payment for “door hangers.”

People Who Think LLC has separately drawn congressional scrutiny over its role in a Department of Homeland Security communications contract awarded during the leadership of Secretary Kristi Noem. That contract has prompted congressional inquiries and an Inspector General review.

According to paperwork filed with the FEC Friday July 17, 2026 the organization is also paying the obscure media company with little online footprint $14,000 for door hangers supporting Dan Sullivan in Alaska and $6,553 to support Eric Flores in Texas.

The filings also show financial relationships involving American Resolve, a political organization that has previously been tied to ethics questions surrounding Noem. In July 2025, South Dakota officials concluded that Noem violated state ethics laws after accepting an $80,000 payment from American Resolve for fundraising activities that were not properly disclosed under state law. American Resolve also reported payments to Madison Sheahan, the former acting ICE director who is now running for Congress in Ohio.

Corporate and campaign finance records identify Staci Goede, president of Sage Advisory Inc., as the registered official for American Resolve. Goede has also been named in Federal Election Commission enforcement matters, including a Matter Under Review (MUR) involving alleged conduit contribution violations. That matter remains unresolved while the FEC has lacked the quorum necessary to advance many enforcement actions.

IRS filings also identify Margee Clancy as a director of American Resolve. Clancy simultaneously serves as treasurer for Americans for Prosperity Action Inc.

Campaign finance records further show that on May 20, 2026, Americans for Prosperity Action Inc. paid $4,000 to Sage Advisory Inc., the consulting firm led by Goede.

Furthermore, a PAC in support of Ashley Hinson, Mission Iowa, was formed in 2024 its second largest donor Leon Rachel Corp donated $250,000.

Leon Rachel Corp is a dark money group also registered to Stac Goede’s home address at 7816 Rose Garden Lane in Springfield Virginia.

Leon Rachel Corp funneled $30 million into the 2024 election cycle with the lion’s share going to pro-Israel lobbyist. The source of the funding is unknown but largely suspected to be Israeli.

Taken together, the filings illustrate an interconnected network of political committees, consultants, and vendors whose financial relationships span multiple organizations and have become the subject of increasing regulatory and congressional scrutiny.

Thanks to all my donors for supporting independent journalism, research, and allowing me to create free content venmo myranda-kazos

In a move to ensure that South Dakota remain a rightwing stronghold Republicans made it as easy as possible for virtually anyone to become a South Dakota resident and therefore South Dakota voter.

Supporters of the idea argue that the political left could, at least in theory, use South Dakota’s unique residency laws to engineer an electoral upset through a form of “reverse carpetbagging.” Rather than remaining scattered across safely Republican districts where their votes are unlikely to influence the outcome, Americans who already lawfully rely on South Dakota domicile services—such as full-time travelers, RV owners, and others without a traditional permanent residence—could choose to establish their voting residence in a single state where those votes might carry greater weight.

Concentrating those voters in South Dakota could improve the electoral prospects of Democratic Senate candidate Julian Beaudion against incumbent and MAGA – Israel loyalist Republican Mike Rounds and Democratic congressional candidate Nikki Gronli against Republican Rep. Dusty Johnson- one of the country’s staunchest supporters of data centers.

The same residency laws long promoted as a benefit for attracting new residents could, if used by progressive voters, produce an outcome opposite of what many Republican lawmakers anticipated.

Recent elections suggest that some voters are already willing to use South Dakota’s election rules strategically. Thousands of Democrats and independents changed their party registration to Republican ahead of this year’s primary in order to participate in Republican contests. To supporters of the broader strategy, that trend demonstrates a growing willingness among voters to use the rules as written to maximize their electoral influence.

This paired with populist messaging regarding data centers and financial support for Israel could completely transform our congress and senate in one midterm across the country.

Breaking Down The Math

The United States will enter the midterms with 33 safe Republican seats and 33 safe Democratic seats, to many not seasoned in electoral politics this looks like an advantage for Democrats but it is not because more Republican seats are up than Democratic seats and people do have a tendency to vote as they previously did.

13 Democratic seats are up of which about 11 are considered safe, we need to win them all so investing in those – Gary Peters seat in Michigan and Jon Ossoffs in Georgia will be important.

In the event Democrats maintain those 13 seats, they will need to pick up 5 more.

Questions surrounding U.S. support for Israel, the rapid expansion of data centers, and the influence of major economic interests have become increasingly prominent in American politics. For some voters across the political spectrum, these issues now carry greater weight than traditional party loyalty.

As of today the top 4 Republican seats that would be easiest to flip

North Carolina, Michael Whatley running to fill Thom Tillis’ seat as he is retiring removing an incumbent advantage. Roy Cooper (D) makes this one of the nation’s premier battlegrounds. Most analysts rate it Toss-up or Lean Republican so this will be tough.

Ohio offers a unique opportunity with a special election, Jon Husted is the Republican candidate and former Secretary of State, his career has been marred in controversy and corruption allegations. Sherrod Brown is Democratic candidate with a fighting chance and one worth garnering national support.

In Iowa, Joni Ernst’s retirement created a competitive open-seat race. National Republicans have dramatically increased spending here because polling tightened.

Sherrod Brown remains one of the Democratic Party’s strongest statewide candidates, forcing Republicans to commit tens of millions of dollars to defending the Ohio seat.

Maine had also emerged as one of Democrats’ most promising pickup opportunities. That changed dramatically after Democratic nominee Graham Platner withdrew from the race following allegations of sexual assault, which he has denied. His departure has left Democrats scrambling to nominate a replacement and has significantly improved Senator Susan Collins’ reelection prospects. At the same time, Collins continues to face scrutiny from critics over her close alignment with President Trump and her longstanding support for the defense industry, while the killing of Joan Sebastian Guerrero has become another point of political debate in the race.

Taken together, the electoral math remains daunting. Democrats must first defend every vulnerable seat they currently hold while simultaneously flipping at least four Republican-held seats. At present, only a small number of Republican races appear even moderately competitive. Texas, where Democrat James Talarico is challenging Republican Ken Paxton, and Nebraska, where independent Dan Osborn is mounting another statewide campaign, represent two of the more plausible opportunities. Winning all of those races simultaneously, while also holding every Democratic seat, would require nearly everything to break in Democrats’ favor.

As a result, any path to a Senate majority likely depends on at least one upset—a victory in a state where Republicans currently remain clear favorites.

Some activists have proposed an unconventional strategy centered on South Dakota’s residency laws. South Dakota has long been a popular domicile state for full-time travelers, RV owners, and others who no longer maintain a traditional permanent residence. Through commercial mail-forwarding services, eligible individuals can establish a South Dakota domicile for purposes such as obtaining a driver’s license and registering vehicles. Supporters of the strategy argue that Americans who already rely on these services could concentrate their voting residence in a single competitive state rather than dispersing across multiple safely Republican districts.

In addition to the being the easiest state to register to vote, it is the fifth smallest state in the country, requiring the least amount of activists to substantially change the course of the election.

Combined with youth voter registration push.

In order to become a registered voter in South Dakota, a person must:

1. Open a mail forwarding account

Companies commonly used include:

America’s Mailbox

www.americasmailbox.com

605-718-1234

DakotaPost

www.dakotapost.net

605-332-3711

For America’s Mailbox, current pricing starts around:

Bronze: $169.99/year (good if you mainly need a legal address)

Silver: $189.99/year

Gold: $209.99/year

Titanium virtual mail: about $249/year

There is also:

a $25 one-time setup fee

recommended prepaid postage (typically $100–250 depending on plan).

2. Recieve your South Dakota address

Once your paperwork is complete, you’ll receive an address similar to:

514 Americas Way #12345

Box Elder, SD

3. Stay one night in South Dakota

Historically—and still for driver’s licensing—you must spend one night in South Dakota.

Most people stay at:

a hotel

campground

RV park

4. Obtain a South Dakota driver’s license

Bring:

identity documents

Social Security documentation (if required)

proof of your PMB/mail forwarding address

your overnight lodging receipt

The standard driver’s license fee is currently about $28.

Thanks to all of my donors for supporting independent journalism, research, and allowing me to create free educational content venmo myranda-kazos

A leaked document circulating among Republican political circles and journalists, a copy of which was obtained for this report, contains allegations regarding workplace concerns involving Alex Lanfranconi, who was recently tapped to serve as communications director for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis after previously serving in the same role for West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrisey.

Lanfranconi is no stranger to Florida politics. Before joining the Morrisey administration, he served as communications director for the Florida Department of Education, making him part of the network of communications operatives who have moved between Republican campaigns, state governments, and allied political organizations in recent years.

The document, labeled “TEAM EYES ONLY,” alleges misconduct related to Lanfranconi’s tenure in Republican government communications. The claims have not been independently verified, and the memo’s authorship, origin, intended audience, and the circumstances surrounding its circulation remain unclear.

Regardless of whether the allegations are ultimately substantiated, the memo is notable because it offers a rare glimpse into the internal scrutiny of a senior communications official—a role that has become increasingly influential in modern politics. Communications directors no longer simply draft press releases or respond to reporters. They help shape political narratives, coordinate rapid-response strategies, manage relationships with media and online influencers, and often serve as trusted advisers to governors and senior political staffs.

The memo surfaced as Florida’s political establishment continues to face public scrutiny over the culture and operation of senior political staffs. In recent years, the DeSantis political network has drawn sustained attention for its aggressive communications strategy, the movement of personnel between campaigns, government offices, and allied organizations, and a series of public disputes involving staff, political operatives, and members of the press. The allegations contained in the leaked memo are separate from those controversies and should not be read as evidence of them. They do, however, emerge within a political environment where questions about workplace culture, internal accountability, and the concentration of influence among a relatively small circle of political advisers have become recurring subjects of public debate.

For that reason, the significance of the memo extends beyond one political operative. It raises broader questions about how senior communications officials are vetted, how internal complaints are handled, and how political organizations built around message discipline respond when scrutiny turns inward rather than outward.

Earlier this month, this publication reported on separate whistleblower allegations involving Florida political circles during Governor Ron DeSantis’s rise to national prominence, including claims related to campaign culture, professional boundaries, and internal accountability. Those allegations are separate from the claims involving Lanfranconi, but together they raise broader questions about the environments that develop around powerful political operations and how those systems address concerns internally, or if they are addressed at all.

The Lanfranconi memo includes allegations involving workplace conversations and professional conduct, including claims regarding comments about younger male employees and discussions of sensitive personal matters, similar to the allegations made by whistleblowers within Florida’s Republican Party earlier this month.

The materials obtained for this report present two competing portraits of the longtime Republican communications operative.

A professional biography included with the materials describes Lanfranconi as an experienced strategist whose résumé includes roles with Congressman John Rutherford, the Florida Department of Education, the DeSantis administration, and Morrisey’s office.

This is not the first scandal Lanfranconi had faced during his time in Florida politics previously In March 2023, while Alex Lanfranconi was communications director for the Florida Department of Education, the department distributed a press release announcing a roundtable hosted by Gov. Ron DeSantis criticizing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in higher education.

Axios Tampa Bay reporter Ben Montgomery replied directly to the department’s email:

“This is propaganda, not a press release.”

Approximately an hour after receiving the email, Lanfranconi posted a screenshot of Montgomery’s response on X, then known as Twitter, transforming what had been a private exchange with a government press office into a public political dispute. The post quickly circulated among conservative commentators and DeSantis supporters, drawing widespread criticism of the reporter.

Later that day, Axios informed Montgomery that his employment had been terminated. Montgomery later said he was told his reputation had been “irreparably tarnished.” Axios confirmed that Montgomery was no longer employed but declined to publicly explain the reasons for the decision.

Demonstrating an increasingly expansive role of modern political communications officials, as they expand message control outward rather than maintaining message control internally

The incident became a national flashpoint in the broader debate over the relationship between the DeSantis administration and the press, with media organizations and journalism advocates questioning both the publication of a reporter’s private correspondence and the increasingly adversarial nature of political communications.

Against that backdrop, the recently surfaced internal memo presents an unusual reversal. Rather than directing scrutiny outward, it places one of the administration’s own communications operatives under scrutiny and examines how the behaviors of those meant to control messaging shapes public perception.

The memo alleges that concerns arose during Lanfranconi’s previous government employment involving workplace boundaries, staff interactions, travel-related conduct, and internal complaints. Among its most serious claims are allegations that senior officials raised concerns about professional boundaries involving younger staff members and individuals connected to political events. Those allegations have not been independently verified, and no public disciplinary records confirming them were included with the leaked materials.

The memo alleges that, during Lanfranconi’s earlier tenure in Florida government, he engaged in inappropriate conversations about monkeypox and behaved flirtatiously toward younger male staff members. Those allegations have not been independently verified.

If substantiated, the conduct described in the memo would stand in sharp contrast to the DeSantis administration’s public emphasis on traditional family values and its broader political messaging on LGBTQ-related issues.

The document also alleges that Lanfranconi used taxpayer-funded travel to stay in expensive hotels, dine at upscale restaurants, and pursue efforts to “reinvent” Spring Break in Florida. Those claims likewise remain unverified, but they contrast with the Republican Party’s longstanding emphasis on fiscal restraint and limited government spending.

The memo’s most consequential allegations concern Lanfranconi’s relationship with senior leadership during his tenure in West Virginia.

According to the document, Governor Patrick Morrisey instructed Lanfranconi not to pursue romantic or sexual relationships with fellow staff members. The memo alleges that Lanfranconi disregarded that directive within 72 hours, prompting internal discussions among senior officials regarding his conduct.

The document further claims that additional staff complaints followed and that Morrisey ultimately urged Lanfranconi to leave his position in an effort to avoid a more public personnel dispute.

Beyond the specific allegations, the memo raises broader questions about the oversight and vetting of senior political operatives who move between high-profile administrations.

As communications director, Lanfranconi occupied a position that involved frequent interaction with staff, interns, and political event personnel while traveling extensively between West Virginia and Florida. The timing of the alleged incidents overlaps with his transition between the Morrisey and DeSantis administrations, raising questions about what information, if any, was reviewed before his appointment. The leaked memo itself does not answer those questions, but it places renewed attention on how administrations evaluate senior aides entrusted with some of the most influential positions in government.

The memo claims leadership attempted to address those concerns internally before Lanfranconi’s departure from West Virginia government. However, no public disciplinary records or independently verified documentation confirming those specific allegations were included in the leaked materials.

While the memo’s claims remain unverified, Lanfranconi’s public career provides a window into a broader shift in modern political communications — one where government messaging, campaign strategy, and partisan combat increasingly overlap.

That dynamic of overextending the powers of the communication office are also evident in Lanfronconi’s time in West Virginia prior to entering Florida politics last July.

While serving as communications director for Governor Patrick Morrisey, Lanfranconi became involved in a public dispute with Republican State Senator Rupie Phillips after Phillips criticized Morrisey and referred to him as “the gentleman from New Jersey.” Lanfranconi responded by tying Phillips to the Obama administration and arguing that Phillips — not Morrisey — was politically out of step with West Virginia conservatives.

The exchange reflected a style of political communication increasingly common among modern administrations: rapid-response confrontation designed not only to answer criticism, but to challenge the credibility of the critic.

That documented record does not verify the workplace allegations described in the leaked memo. Instead, it provides context for a larger question about the expanding influence of unelected political operators who increasingly shape public perception from behind the scenes.

Communications directors do not write laws. They do not appear on ballots. Yet they often become some of the most powerful voices inside government — controlling access to information, crafting narratives during moments of crisis, and determining how administrations respond when challenged.

As the boundaries between governing, campaigning, and media strategy continue to collapse, the officials hired to manage controversy increasingly find themselves at the center of it.

The Lanfranconi memo remains a collection of allegations — not established fact. But its circulation inside Republican political circles raises broader questions about the political machinery built around secrecy, loyalty, and message discipline.

For years, modern political operations have invested heavily in bypassing traditional media structures: elevating loyal influencers, attacking unfavorable coverage as politically motivated, and turning communication strategy into a battle over who controls reality itself.

The risk of building that kind of system is that it eventually works both ways.

When credibility becomes dependent on loyalty instead of transparency, the same architecture designed to protect powerful political figures can become impossible to control when allegations emerge from inside the network.

For operatives like Lanfranconi, who built careers inside these high-pressure messaging environments, the question is no longer only how effectively they can defend an administration from scrutiny.

It is what happens when the machinery they helped operate turns its attention back on them.

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US President Donald Trump’s newly established Board of Peace is launching “Hamas-free humanitarian zones” in Gaza where Palestinians will be herded while the Israeli military expands its control on the rest of the territory, according to Israeli media.

Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom reported that the first site will open in Tel Sultan, just outside of Rafah, “within weeks”, and house civilians “with no weapons or affiliation with Hamas”.

A move they suggest will eliminate Hamas from having any remaining resources.

The proposal outlines the creation of a security zone overseen by a multinational force known as the International Stabilization Force (ISF). According to the document, the force would operate under the authority of the governing board, be equipped with “non-lethal weapons,” and deploy from Israel’s Amitai Camp near Gaza.

The proposal is consistent with CNN July 2025 report indicating that in which former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned that a planned “humanitarian city” inside Gaza would be a “concentration camp”. 1

A week Prior Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz instructed the military to advance plans for the zone which would eventually contain the enter population of Gaza.

A year later, Olmert’s warning and Katz’ dream of finalizing the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people appears to be coming to fruition.

The proposal has progressed as Gaza has been fundamentally transformed by the war. According to reporting by Al Jazeera, roughly 90 percent of the territory has been damaged or destroyed during the first 1,000 days of Israel’s military campaign, while approximately 80 percent of Gaza is under Israeli military control. Those conditions provide the backdrop against which the plan envisions a new system for administering both humanitarian aid and civilian movement.2

The report states that humanitarian assistance would be delivered with U.S. support through secured facilities surrounded by fencing, where displaced Palestinians would receive temporary shelter and food. At the same time, the proposal states that reconstruction materials—including concrete—would not be distributed, limiting residents’ ability to rebuild homes and civilian infrastructure.

The document further contemplates establishing multiple such facilities across Gaza to relocate and concentrate the civilian population while additional sites are developed. Supporters describe the proposal as a mechanism for security and aid distribution. Critics argue that concentrating civilians in fenced compounds while restricting reconstruction raises profound humanitarian and legal questions about freedom of movement, long-term displacement, and the future governance of the territory.

Meanwhile, it said that the Israeli army will continue expanding and consolidating its grip beyond the so-called “Yellow Line” - an area that Israel was expected to hold temporarily in the first stage of the ceasefire but has refused to relinquish as it has not proceeded with the second stage of the deal, which requires its withdrawal.

The buffer zone now encompasses about 70 percent of the territory.

An unnamed official told Israel Hayom: “We are maneuvering within the American constraints, increasing the pace of targeted killings while remaining below the threshold of international criticism - and this will continue as long as Hamas is unwilling to disarm.”

This runs counter to the UN, and multiple independent reports concluding that Israel is in fact committing a genocide, targeting children and killing arbitrarily.

Hazem Qassem, a Hamas spokesperson, said the group hoped the move would mark “the beginning of implementing the tasks assigned to them”, including separating Palestinians in Gaza from Israeli forces and working to halt Israeli violations.

“We call on the Board of Peace to begin the actual implementation of the provisions of the plan to end the war on Gaza,” Qassem said.

Drop Site news reported in January that satellite imagery analyzed by Forensic Architecture revealed Israeli forces razing land and compacting the ground in Rafah. According to the report, the scale of this activity was not visible anywhere else east of the Yellow Line.3

By moving the entire population of one population into concentration camps, the Israeli-American forces will be able to more rapidly and aggressively occupy and further ethnic cleansing in other neighboring countries with Lebanon being the most immediate focus.

According to Al Jazeera, On March 2, Israel escalated its military campaign in Lebanon after Hezbollah launched its first rocket attack on Israel in more than a year. Israel responded with a renewed ground offensive in southern Lebanon and airstrikes across the country.

More than 4,250 people are dead. Tens of thousands have been wounded. Entire neighborhoods have disappeared beneath rubble. Families who fled with little more than what they could carry remain scattered across Lebanon, many unable to return because their homes no longer exist or because military occupation continues to keep them away.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has said Israeli forces intend to maintain a long-term presence in parts of southern Lebanon, raising new questions about whether this conflict represents another temporary military campaign or the beginning of a more permanent regional transformation.

The name chosen for Israel’s latest Gaza offensive—Operation Gideon’s Chariots—draws from the biblical account of Gideon, a military leader whose victory became a symbol of conquest achieved through divine purpose. Whether intended as history, symbolism, or political messaging, the choice reflects how ancient narratives continue to shape modern warfare and national identity.4

At the same time, the conflict has extended far beyond the battlefield. Governments, think tanks, advocacy organizations, technology companies, universities, and media platforms have become participants in an increasingly global struggle over speech, surveillance, protest, and political dissent. Across multiple democracies, debates over national security have collided with fundamental questions about civil liberties, particularly as the Israeli and American governments seek to merge military and economic ambitions.

Many of these organizations including the FDD and Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther, have imported the Israeli concept of surveillance, political messaging, and legal framework by which individuals not fully loyal to cause can be removed from political positions.5

As a result, dozens of high-ranking military personnel have been fired for objecting to war in the Middle East6 and hundreds of civilians have been targeting for their objection by which the project asserts is a form of domestic terrorism akin to Hamas affiliation.

As Israel fills their concentration camps with every Palestinian, they associate with Hamas, Americans need to be asking why the very same administration and institution are pushing to build so many here on U.S soil and who will occupy them.

Scott Presler traveled to South Dakota to pressure one of the most powerful Republicans in Washington over election integrity. Instead, he received an education in South Dakota politics.

On June 25, Presler arrived for Senator John Thune’s town hall alongside Senator Markwayne Mullin, intending to rally support for the SAVE Act. Within hours, fellow MAGA activist and event sergeant-at-arms Matt Bruner told him to “get the fuck out.”

The confrontation quickly spread across conservative social media. Supporters portrayed it as proof that South Dakota Republicans had turned on the grassroots.

They were right about one thing: the evening exposed a movement increasingly at war with itself.

That conflict did not begin with Scott Presler, nor will it end with him. South Dakota illustrates what happens after one political party dominates a state for long enough. Elections stop being contests between Republicans and Democrats. The most consequential political fights become internal—between factions competing to decide who counts as the “real” conservative, who speaks for the movement, and who deserves to be cast out.

Presler simply walked into a conflict he did not understand.

His misunderstanding illustrates something larger than one ugly confrontation. It reflects the growing divide between influencer politics and institutional politics.

Presler has built a national following by translating election law, voter registration, and partisan conflict into social-media content that reaches millions of conservatives. Those skills have made him influential. They have not made him an expert on South Dakota politics.

His surprise at the reception he received revealed a fundamental misreading of the state he had come to influence.

South Dakota’s Republican politics increasingly operate less as a governing coalition than as a collection of rival tribes. The divisions are not merely ideological. They are intensely personal, shaped by loyalty, grievance, and suspicion. A review of Matt Bruner’s social media, along with influential groups such as
“SD Canvas” and “We the People South Dakota”, reveals an online ecosystem where conspiracy theories often eclipse policy debates and political identity is reinforced through perpetual conflict. Hostility toward LGBTQ people, immigrants, journalists, public officials, and other perceived enemies frequently becomes the organizing language of the movement rather than a byproduct of it.

For years, conservative leaders have argued that America’s greatest threats come from outside the movement. Yet South Dakota tells a different story. Increasingly, the movement’s fiercest battles are fought within its own ranks.

There is perhaps no more fitting protagonist than Scott Presler—a gay conservative activist who has spent years mobilizing Republican voters—discovering in real time that parts of the movement he helped energize have little interest in accepting him once he enters their local political ecosystem.

After the confrontation, Presler lamented on social media, “So this is how grassroots is treated in South Dakota.”

The remark was revealing—not because it accurately described South Dakota politics, but because it exposed how little he appeared to understand the political environment he had entered.

Presler is not an election administrator, legislative strategist, or scholar of election law. He is a political influencer whose success depends on distilling complex political disputes into compelling national narratives. Those are different skills.

He arrived in South Dakota to pressure Senator Thune over the SAVE Act, importing a national issue into a state whose election controversies look very different from those dominating conservative social media.

For years, South Dakota Republicans have faced criticism not only from Democrats but also from factions within their own party over closed-door politics, resistance to public debates, and limited access to elected officials. Allowing a nationally known influencer into the room while ordinary constituents remain shut out is difficult to reconcile with the language of grassroots politics.

Nor does South Dakota fit neatly into the narrative Presler promotes online. While the SAVE Act is often framed as a straightforward voter-identification measure, obtaining identification is not equally accessible across rural South Dakota. In many counties, DMV services are available only a few days each week, requiring lengthy travel for many residents.

The timing made Presler’s message even more disconnected from the state’s political reality. Less than twenty-four hours before Thune’s event, a South Dakota Republican lawmaker was charged with felony election fraud after allegedly falsifying signatures to place sixteen Republican candidates on the ballot without their knowledge. Weeks earlier, voters in multiple counties reported that primary ballots failed to arrive on time because of errors by the Secretary of State’s office. Those incidents followed previous election-administration mistakes, including acknowledged ballot-access errors and the public release of sensitive voter information affecting every registered voter in the state.

Those are South Dakota’s election controversies. They concern election administration, allegations of misconduct, and public accountability—not the sweeping national narratives that dominate influencer politics.

Perhaps the greatest irony was Presler’s repeated invocation of the word “grassroots.”

Grassroots politics begins with understanding the community one hopes to organize. It requires relationships, local knowledge, and credibility built over time.

This is not the first time Presler arrived with antics to be unwelcome in a state that did not belong to him.

He was denied a job at the RNC in 2016 after allegedly taking lewd photos of himself engaging in sexual activity in a Virginia office and posting them to Craigslist.

Sources close to the mater in Florida, describe him arriving in 2020 telling his followers he was registering people to vote in Florida which was not true because he was not legally able to register voters in Florida and the deadline passed, this created confusion according to staffers.

They also reported inappropriate advances and groping which made many staffers uncomfortable.

Similarly in South Dakota, Presler arrived with his national script.

South Dakota responded with a local reality.

A former Proud Boys member and a progressive feminist walked into an interview expecting to disagree about nearly everything.

Instead, we spent hours comparing notes on the same problem.

For most of the interview, it was difficult to imagine two people who should have agreed on less.

Jacob Engels is a former Proud Boys member, a longtime Florida political operative, and a freelance journalist who spent years moving through the same networks that helped shape the modern American right. I am a progressive feminist who came of age in Republican politics from the opposite direction. Our views on culture, government, religion, and power diverge so sharply that under most circumstances we would likely dismiss one another before a conversation ever began.

Yet after several hours comparing notes from our respective experiences inside Republican-controlled state legislatures, we arrived at a remarkably similar conclusion.

The greatest threat to public accountability in American politics may not be found in Washington at all.

It may be found in the state capitals.

Engels alleges that he was paid thousands of dollars to suppress reporting about sexual-harassment allegations involving Florida legislator Joe Gruters. He provided documents, messages, and financial records that he says support that claim. But what interested me most was not the allegation itself. It was how familiar the underlying mechanics felt.

Below is a screenshot of payment provided to MyrandaPolisci by Engels.

Though separated by geography and ideology, we had both witnessed the same pattern: small political circles operating largely outside public view, lobbyists and consultants exercising outsized influence, lawmakers dependent upon the same handful of donors and power brokers, and institutions with few incentives to police themselves.

Most Americans assume political corruption is primarily a federal problem. The reality is often more mundane—and potentially more dangerous. Much of the lobbying that shapes Americans’ daily lives occurs in state legislatures, where part-time lawmakers with limited staff are frequently asked to evaluate complex legislation drafted by the very interests seeking its passage.

In heavily one-party states, where political competition is weak and oversight weaker still, those systems can become insulated from scrutiny. What emerges is not always the dramatic corruption of Hollywood films. More often it is a culture of quiet accommodation—a world in which favors, contracts, appointments, consulting fees, and political protection circulate among a small and interconnected group of people.

Sometimes, according to current and former insiders, that culture extends beyond money and patronage into allegations of misconduct that would be difficult to conceal in more heavily scrutinized institutions.

The conversation that follows is, in part, about where Jacob Engels and I disagree. But it is also about the uncomfortable reality that people from opposite ends of the political spectrum can witness the same system and arrive at the same warning.

In the summer of 2021, reports emerged that Florida legislator Joe Gruters was facing allegations that he had sexually harassed a male aide during the legislative session. According to contemporaneous reporting, the allegations stemmed from an encounter that occurred after the aide offered Gruters a ride home.

A complaint was later filed with the Republican Party of Florida. The party retained an outside law firm to investigate. After approximately twelve weeks, the firm concluded that it was unable to substantiate the allegations.

For Jacob Engels, however, the story did not end there.

Engels alleges that he was later paid $3,000 to assist in suppressing public discussion of the allegations. He provided a record of a $3,000 Venmo payment that he says was connected to that effort, along with text messages he says were exchanged with Max Goodman, a longtime Gruters ally and consultant for Sydney Gruters’ congressional campaign.

What struck Engels was not merely the payment itself, but what he believed it represented.

“I told the chairman and his aide, Max Goodman, that the victims simply wanted the blackballing to stop,” Engels said. “They spoke up shortly after the encounters and, in their view, paid a price for it. Some believed they lost opportunities. Others felt they had been pushed out of political circles entirely. Then the money showed up. I didn’t ask for it. To me, it felt like a wink and a nod. What made it so offensive was what it seemed to say about the people I was trying to advocate for.”

Whether Engels’ interpretation is correct remains a matter of dispute. What is not disputed is Gruters’ continued ascent within Republican politics.

In the years that followed, Gruters continued his ascent through Republican politics, securing increasingly influential positions within the party’s national infrastructure. His wife, Sydney Gruters, would later launch a campaign for Congress.

To Engels and me, the trajectory illustrates what we might describe as “credential laundering”—a process by which political operatives accumulate titles, appointments, and elected offices in low-scrutiny environments and then leverage those credentials into positions of greater power. The office itself matters less than the credential. Each promotion becomes proof of qualification for the next. Each victory becomes evidence of merit. The cycle sustains itself.

Whether one accepts that terminology or not, the underlying dynamic is difficult to ignore.

As Engels described the allegations surrounding Gruters and the efforts he claims were made to contain them, I found myself thinking less about Florida than about South Dakota.

The details were different. The people were different. But the pattern felt familiar.

I thought about the sexual-harassment complaints, the whispered warnings, the stories everyone seemed to know but few were willing to discuss publicly. I thought about former South Dakota legislator Joel Koskan, who was ultimately convicted after sexually abusing his adopted daughter for years. What has stayed with me is not simply the horror of the crime, but the political culture that surrounded it. Rumors circulated long before the criminal case became public. People talked. People knew. Yet meaningful accountability arrived only after law enforcement intervened.

Even then, Koskan retained support. While incarcerated, he still received a substantial share of the vote in his legislative race.

That reality is difficult to explain to outsiders. In many communities, such a revelation would represent a political death sentence. In deeply partisan environments, however, political identity can become more important than personal conduct. Allegations are dismissed as attacks. Scandals become tribal disputes. Accountability becomes negotiable.

This is the danger of one-party political ecosystems.

When elections are effectively decided before Election Day, scrutiny weakens. Political circles shrink. The same consultants, donors, lobbyists, lawmakers, and party officials move through government, campaigns, nonprofits, and private industry in an endless rotation of influence. Relationships become currency. Familiarity becomes qualification. And over time, the distinction between public service and political protection begins to blur.

The result is not merely corruption. It is normalization.

The extraordinary becomes ordinary. The unacceptable becomes survivable. And the people closest to power become increasingly convinced that the rules apply to everyone except themselves.

For me, no number better captures this reality than 216.

That was the margin by which Kristi Noem won her first election to the South Dakota legislature.

Two hundred and sixteen votes.

At the time, she was not a national figure. She was not being discussed as a future governor, cabinet secretary, or one of the most powerful women in Republican politics. She was simply another candidate seeking a seat in a state legislature that few people outside South Dakota paid attention to.

Yet that is precisely the point.

The most consequential careers in American politics often begin in places the public barely notices.

A state-house seat becomes a congressional seat. A congressional seat becomes a governorship. A governorship becomes a cabinet position. Along the way, controversies that might have ended a career in a more scrutinized environment are forgotten, minimized, or absorbed into the background noise of partisan politics. The credential remains. The elevation continues.

Florida and South Dakota may appear to have little in common. One is a sprawling state of more than twenty million people. The other is a rural state whose population would fit inside many American cities. Yet both have become pipelines of influence within the modern Republican Party.

Consider the roster. Pam Bondi. Marco Rubio. Susie Wiles. James Blair. Kristi Noem. John Thune. Luke Lindberg. Different personalities. Different ambitions. Different controversies. Yet all emerged from political ecosystems where a relatively small number of actors wield extraordinary influence over who rises and who does not.

Even the politicians that receiving the most air-time like Randy Fine, who used to be roommates with Joe Gruters, are from Florida.

That is what ultimately struck me during my conversation with Engels.

We disagree about almost everything.

We disagree about politics. We disagree about culture. We disagree about history, policy, and the direction of the country. Yet despite beginning from opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, we arrived at the same observation: Americans spend enormous amounts of time arguing about the people at the top of the pyramid while paying remarkably little attention to the machinery that put them there.

The real story is not Joe Gruters.

The real story is not Kristi Noem.

The real story is not any single politician, consultant, donor, or operative.

The real story is the system that repeatedly elevates the same networks of people, rewards loyalty over scrutiny, and transforms obscure state-level actors into national power brokers before most Americans even know their names.

By the time the public begins paying attention, the decisions have already been made.

The credentials have already been earned.

And the rest of the country is left to live with the consequences.

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In 2022, a 24-year-old South Dakota state employee acquired a residential property valued at nearly $400,000 from a former economic-development official who had spent years helping shape some of the state’s most significant development projects.

The transaction received little public attention at the time. Property records show the home was acquired from Tobin Morris, a former official with the Governor’s Office of Economic Development, by Madison Sheahan, who would later rise through Kristi Noem’s administration before being appointed to a senior federal immigration post.

Yet years later, both Morris and Sheahan remained registered to vote at the same address, according to voter-registration records.

While it is unclear if this were a gift, adding to the speculation is Sheahan’s Louisiana financial disclosures, the home is listed only as an asset not a liability or debt.

Morris directed questions about the property to Sheahan who could not be reached.

This transfer and Sheahan’s financial disclosures, sit at the intersection of a network that connected economic-development officials, political consultants, media operatives, and future federal appointees. Those connections become more significant when viewed alongside communications involving Matt Palumbo, a conservative media figure affiliated with The Dan Bongino as his “Official Fact-Checker. Yes that is a real job apparently.

In addition to the property listed, Sheahan received payment from one of at least 5 American Resolve Entities associated with Noem. A 527 by the same name and address, paid Palumbo over $100,000 according to IRS documents 8871 and 8872 in 2023 demonstrating coordination between officials that would ultimately serve in Trump’s second term in both the FBI and DHS.

Indicating a prior financial relationship raising questions of conflict of interest in the way the two entities collaborated after assuming their federal roles including the designation of anti-data center and development projects Americans as domestic extremist while all parties had a financial interest in projects, as well as the FBI role in investigating the death of Renee Good.

The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has been a symbol of American history for generations. In 2025, the federal government paid $1.7 million for a solution to one of its most persistent problems: algae. The company chosen for the job was Green Water Service Co., a relatively new firm that promised to prevent the very problem that later returned in dramatic fashion.

But questions about the contract go beyond whether the technology worked.

They also involve the company that received the award — a relatively new firm with limited public history and a network of connections that raises questions about transparency, ownership, and influence.

Greenwater Solutions LLC was registered as a business in Ohio on May 5, 2025, according to records from the Ohio Secretary of State. The company was registered under the name Greenwater LLC, whose stated business purpose is listed as “environmental.”

Less than one year later, in April 2026, the company received a $1.7 million no-bid contract through a procurement process that has drawn questions about transparency and public oversight.

The company’s listed address is 6874 Strimbu Drive in Brookfield, Ohio — a small commercial building shared with another entity: JJ Cafaro Investment Trust.

Figure below depicts physical location of JJ Cafara Investment Trust and Greenwater Solutions LLC

Greenwater Services does not publicly present a straightforward ownership structure. Instead, corporate records list a registered agent rather than clearly identifying all ownership interests.

The company does, however, list Al George as CEO and Sharon Yauger as head of marketing.

Yauger’s name appears elsewhere in Ohio records connected to another organization sharing the same address.

In 2019 lobbying records show that JJ Cafaro hired Thomas Neuhaus as a lobbyist in Ohio. The listed lobbying purpose involved water-related issues, and Yauger was identified as the contact person on those filings. Additional registrations connected to the lobbying activity appeared in 2020 and 2021.

Yauger is also listed as an executive assistant to JJ Cafaro.

Figure below depicts Carafo lobbyist registration in Ohio

The connections are notable because JJ Cafaro is a prominent Ohio business figure whose name has appeared for decades in public controversies involving allegations of corruption, fraud, and criminal investigations.

Cafaro is part of the broader Cafaro family, one of Ohio’s most politically connected business families, with a history that has intersected with major legal and political controversies. Anthony Cafaro Sr., a member of the family, was also involved in a criminal case that was dismissed in July 2011.

The family’s legal network has also intersected with individuals who later became central figures in national investigations. Cafaro shared legal representation with Jeffrey Epstein through attorney Martin Weinberg, and newly released records from the Epstein files indicate that Epstein followed developments in the case.

According to emails contained in those records, Weinberg contacted Epstein shortly after the dismissal and discussed plans to travel to West Palm Beach to meet with him following the favorable outcome.

Figure below depicts e-mail to Epstein in regard to Anthony Cafaro case

The records do not establish wrongdoing by Cafaro or Greenwater Services. However, they provide additional context for the network of relationships surrounding the entities connected to the Strimbu Drive address — a network involving business figures, attorneys, and political influence.

The algae bloom has raised a simple question: did the government pay for a solution that failed?

But the deeper questions extend beyond the water itself. The company selected to protect one of the nation’s most recognizable landmarks has brought renewed attention to how public contracts are awarded, who benefits from government relationships, and how much transparency the public can expect when those decisions are made.

The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was built to mirror one of America’s most enduring symbols. Now, the controversy surrounding the failed cleanup effort offers a different kind of reflection — one on the systems, relationships, and decisions that shape how public money is awarded, often far beneath the surface.

McKenna Wendel disappeared on March 13. Six days later, investigators found the 14-year-old’s body in Brookings County.

The charges that followed would place a small South Dakota community at the center of a much larger debate over criminal justice, executive power, and the consequences of decisions made years earlier inside the governor’s office.

At a press conference Thursday morning in Sioux City, authorities announced charges against two men connected to Wendel’s disappearance and death.

Mark Milk, 51, of Sioux Falls, was arrested on five charges, including possession with intent to distribute cocaine, distribution of cocaine resulting in death, and transporting a minor with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity.

Jon Rogness, 38, of Brookings, was indicted as an accessory after the fact, accused of helping Milk avoid prosecution.

Both men had prior manslaughter convictions.

But Milk’s history has drawn particular scrutiny because of his relationship to the victim: he was Wendel’s uncle — and because he was released from prison early after former South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem commuted his sentence.

Milk had been serving a life sentence for the 1993 manslaughter death of a man in Tripp County. Nearly three decades later, in 2023, Noem reduced that sentence to 240 years, making him eligible for parole. He was granted parole in May 2024.

Now, Milk stands accused in the disappearance and death of his 14-year-old niece.

The allegations in the Wendel case are separate from his prior conviction, but the timing has intensified questions about how South Dakota’s clemency system operates — who is reviewed, who is consulted, and what safeguards exist before a person convicted of a serious violent offense is released.

A Clemency Process Under Scrutiny

Noem’s use of executive clemency has become the subject of growing criticism regarding selective enforcement since she left office.

Between 2022 and 2023, Noem issued 19 sentence commutations under circumstances that bypassed the customary review process involving the South Dakota Board of Pardons and Paroles.

That board process historically provided an additional layer of review and created an opportunity for victims and their families to provide input before a sentence was reduced.

Critics argued the departures from that process reduced transparency and removed a critical check on executive power.

Unlike the traditional parole process, where multiple officials weigh factors such as rehabilitation, risk, and public safety, Milk’s sentence reduction came through executive clemency — a decision made solely by the governor. The records surrounding the decision remained sealed, leaving unanswered questions about what information was considered before his sentence was reduced.

Several of the cases involved people convicted of serious offenses, including manslaughter, prompting objections from some victims’ families who said they were not adequately included before decisions were made.

The outcomes have since fueled further scrutiny.

According to reporting from South Dakota Searchlight, 12 of the 19 people who received early release through Noem’s no-review commutations have later been charged with new crimes. Nine have pleaded guilty to at least one subsequent charge.

One case involved a person whose sentence for vehicular homicide and vehicular battery was reduced. After release, that individual was cited for exhibition driving — a charge that can involve dangerous displays of vehicle control, including rapid acceleration, spinning tires, donuts, or other reckless driving behavior.

For critics, those cases represent a larger concern: when traditional review systems are bypassed, the public is left to rely almost entirely on one official’s judgment.

Uneven Enforcement and Questions of Priorities

The controversy surrounding Noem’s clemency decisions comes amid broader criticism from opponents who argue her administration showed inconsistent priorities in criminal enforcement.

Critics have pointed to cases where South Dakota pursued aggressive action against some individuals while declining to bring state charges or take similar action in other high-profile cases.

Joseph Schwartz, a former nursing home operator who owned multiple facilities in South Dakota, became the subject of federal allegations involving fraud, including Medicaid and tax-related charges spanning multiple states. During Noem’s tenure, South Dakota did not pursue state criminal charges against Schwartz. He was later pardoned by President Donald Trump during Trump’s second term.

Paul Erickson, a South Dakota businessman, was convicted in federal court in connection with a multi-state fraud scheme involving investors. Erickson, who was also previously in a relationship with convicted Russian agent Maria Butina, faced federal prosecution but was not charged by South Dakota authorities.

Together, critics argue, those decisions represent a pattern of uneven accountability — where some cases receive aggressive enforcement while others result in limited consequences.

The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Crisis — and Questions of Accountability

The case of McKenna Wendel has brought renewed attention to a crisis that has persisted in South Dakota for years: the disproportionate violence experienced by Indigenous women and girls and the unresolved challenges surrounding missing and murdered Indigenous people.

Wendel and Mark Milk are Indigenous. Their case unfolded against a backdrop of longstanding concerns raised by advocates, tribal leaders, and families who say Indigenous victims have historically faced barriers to justice, including fragmented data collection, overlapping law enforcement jurisdictions, and delays in investigations.

South Dakota has faced particular scrutiny over the issue. Advocates have repeatedly called for stronger coordination between tribal governments, local law enforcement agencies, and state officials — arguing that recognition of the crisis must be matched with measurable changes in how cases are investigated and prosecuted.

On May 5, 2022, then-Gov. Kristi Noem proclaimed Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Day in South Dakota, encouraging residents to acknowledge the crisis and support efforts to address it.

For many advocates, however, symbolic recognition has never been the central issue. Their focus has remained on whether the system delivers accountability — particularly in cases involving violence against Indigenous women, children, and other vulnerable victims.

The questions raised by the Wendel case extend beyond executive clemency. They touch on a broader concern about how South Dakota’s criminal justice system responds when serious crimes are committed against vulnerable people — from the decisions surrounding sentencing and release to the consequences faced by offenders after conviction.

One example cited by critics is the case of Joel Koskan, a Republican political operative and former South Dakota legislative candidate. Koskan was convicted of two felony counts of incest after prosecutors alleged, he sexually abused his adopted daughter, who is Indigenous, over several years.

In April 2023, Koskan was sentenced to 10 years in prison. He was released after serving approximately two years, according to court records.

At the time he was facing criminal charges, Koskan continued his campaign for public office, challenging Democratic state Sen. Shawn Bordeaux in South Dakota’s District 26 race. He received approximately 42% of the vote despite the pending allegations and conviction occurring during the broader political period surrounding the election.

For advocates, cases like Koskan’s illustrate a larger concern: that convictions alone do not always translate into outcomes that survivors and communities view as meaningful accountability — particularly in crimes involving children and sexual violence.

Like Schwartz and Erickson, Koskan’s accountability did not come from state investigations, in fact his daughter had gone to the police on multiple occasions to be turned away, it was external intervention after a friend of his daughter told her father who worked in law enforcement.

The debate comes amid a broader contradiction in South Dakota’s criminal justice system. The state has one of the highest incarceration rates in the United States, while critics argue that some serious cases involving violence against women and children have resulted in outcomes, they view as disproportionately lenient.

The issue is not only whether people are punished. It is whether the system consistently reflects the severity of the harm suffered by victims — and whether the same urgency applied to incarceration is also applied to prevention, investigation, and protection.

The Arrest Timeline

Two days before Wendel’s body was discovered, Sioux Falls police arrested Milk on charges related to DUI and eluding.

Police Chief Jon Thum said the arrest occurred as part of the ongoing investigation but declined to provide additional details.

“We were able to take him into custody at that point, at that time, as part of what we had in that investigation, what we were looking at,” Thum said. “We’re not going to go into much more detail than that.”

Rogness, meanwhile, had previously served prison time for manslaughter related to the 2007 killing of his friend’s father in Brookings. He was also paroled in 2024.

Prosecutors allege Rogness later helped conceal evidence and assisted Milk after Wendel’s disappearance.

All hearings involving Milk and Rogness are expected to take place in Sioux City.

The case now represents more than a criminal prosecution. It has become a test of a broader question facing South Dakota: when the state grants a second chance, who is responsible for evaluating the risks — and who answers when that decision is questioned?

I will try to be at court proceedings. This is a developing story, anyone with information on the matter is encouraged to make contact.