South Dakota governor's office wants court to reseal Noem credit card spending
The Dakota Scout receives threat of legal action after auditor's office turned over invoices this week
PIERRE — A lawyer for Gov. Larry Rhoden is asking the Attorney General’s Office to rescind a legal agreement that the office made with The Dakota Scout this week to provide the paper with former Gov. Kristi Noem’s credit card records.
The request also asks that the office force The Scout to return the records.
Those records were obtained Feb. 6 after The Scout agreed to settle a lawsuit the paper brought last year after months of negotiations with Attorney General Marty Jackley and State Auditor Rich Sattgast. They reveal the exact details of how Noem and her office charged more than a half-million dollars during much of her tenure. Much of the former governor’s spending was on extravagant hotel suites, entertainment expenses and private airfare.
The paper filed suit in September after Sattgast denied a request under the state’s open records law to release the detailed receipts in May. State law requires that financial records be available to the public.
But the Attorney General’s Office and auditor argued their release would be a security threat to the governor, contending that the records reveal where she traveled while governor.
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But after Noem’s departure from office to serve as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security last month, the state agreed to settle and release the credit card invoices.
However, in an email sent Saturday to The Scout’s attorney, Jon Arneson, another lawyer who is also in Jackley’s office, Ryan McFall, demanded that the records be returned in order to undergo additional redacting. The records released to The Scout were already thoroughly redacted by the Auditor’s Office and the Attorney General’s Office.
McFall, representing Rhoden’s office, said the governor was threatening to intervene and move for a restraining order to stop the newspaper from publishing the records.
Those records are more than 3,000 pages of Noem’s spending on two state credit cards from the time she entered office until April of last year. Over that period she spent nearly $650,000, spending at a significantly higher rate than her predecessor, Gov. Dennis Daugaard. The credit card charges in Daugaard’s last year in office were also included in what The Scout negotiated in its settlement. Previous years were no longer available.
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Because of the amount of information provided in the records, a systematic analysis of them has not been completed by The Scout since receiving the records Thursday. A cursory review of them, however, confirmed that South Dakota’s often-out-of-state former governor spent thousands of dollars on travel expenses for herself, staff and a security detail.
The Scout intends to publish more stories thoroughly detailing Noem’s expenses while governor regardless of any further attempts by the state to seal government spending of taxpayer dollars.
The financial vouchers and receipts show that Noem frequently stayed at high-end, lavish hotels across the country. Taxpayers also appeared to have paid for expenses related to a trip to Houston in early 2024 where Noem got veneer dental work done — she later was threatened with a lawsuit for promoting the dental company that performed the service for her on social media.
“The Dakota Scout has a legally binding agreement with the State Auditor’s Office and the Attorney General’s Office for access to these records,” the newspaper said in a statement. “While initially publishing them in full was not our intent, the threat of legal action could force our hand. This is public information. Period.”
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Stay strong and continue to share what you have learned about Ms Noem's spending on those credit cards. Must be some questionable spending on those cards if our new Governor wants the information returned to him.
Good for you! We need more transparency.
We all suspected she was using tax payer money to promote herself and for personal use.
Perhaps she needs to reimburse the state of SD for any of her personal charges that she could pay for with all the money she raised while promoting herself out of state.