In what experts described as a highly unusual arrangement, the nonprofit routed funds to a personal company of Noem’s that had recently been established in Delaware. The payment totaled $80,000 that year, a significant boost to her roughly $130,000 government salary. Since the nonprofit is a so-called dark money group — one that’s not required to disclose the names of its donors — the original source of the money remains unknown.

Noem then failed to disclose the $80,000 payment to the public. After President Donald Trump selected Noem to be his secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, she had to release a detailed accounting of her assets and sources of income from 2023 on. She did not include the income from the dark money group on her disclosure form, which experts called a likely violation of federal ethics requirements.

Experts told ProPublica it was troubling that Noem was personally taking money that came from political donors. In a filing, the group, a nonprofit called American Resolve Policy Fund, described the $80,000 as a payment for fundraising. The organization said Noem had brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars.

There is nothing remarkable about a politician raising money for nonprofits and other groups that promote their campaigns or agendas. What’s unusual, experts said, is for a politician to keep some of the money for themselves.

“If donors to these nonprofits are not just holding the keys to an elected official’s political future but also literally providing them with their income, that’s new and disturbing,” said Daniel Weiner, a former Federal Election Commission attorney who now leads the Brennan Center’s work on campaign finance.

ProPublica discovered details of the payment in the annual tax form of American Resolve Policy Fund, which is part of a network of political groups that promote Noem and her agenda. The nonprofit describes its mission as “fighting to preserve America for the next generation.” There’s little evidence in the public domain that the group has done much. In its first year, its main expenditures were paying Noem and covering the cost of some unspecified travel. It also maintains social media accounts devoted to promoting Noem. It has 100 followers on X.

In a statement, Noem’s lawyer, Trevor Stanley, said, “Then-Governor Noem fully complied with the letter and the spirit of the law” and that the Office of Government Ethics, which processes disclosure forms for federal officials, “analyzed and cleared her financial information in regards to this entity.” Stanley did not respond to follow-up questions about whether the ethics office was aware of the $80,000 payment.

Stanley also said that “Secretary Noem fully disclosed all of her income on public documents that are readily available.” Asked for evidence of that, given that Noem didn’t report the $80,000 payment on her federal financial disclosure form, Stanley did not respond.

Before being named Homeland Security secretary, overseeing immigration enforcement, Noem spent two decades in South Dakota’s government and the U.S. House of Representatives, drawing a public servant’s salary. Her husband, Bryon Noem, runs a small insurance brokerage with two offices in the state. Between his company and his real estate holdings, he has at least $2 million in assets, according to Noem’s filing.

While she is among the least wealthy members of Trump’s Cabinet, her personal spending habits have attracted notice. Noem was photographed wearing a gold Rolex Cosmograph Daytona watch that costs nearly $50,000 as she toured the Salvadoran prison where her agency is sending immigrants. In April, after her purse was stolen at a Washington, D.C., restaurant, it emerged she was carrying $3,000 in cash, which an official said was for “dinner, activities, and Easter gifts.” She was criticized for using taxpayer money as governor to pay for expenses related to trips to Paris, to Canada for bear hunting and to Houston to have dental work done. At the time, Noem denied misusing public funds.

Noem’s personal company, an LLC called Ashwood Strategies, shares a name with one of her horses. It was registered in Delaware early in her second term as South Dakota governor, around 1 p.m. on June 22, 2023. Four minutes later, the nonprofit American Resolve Policy Fund was incorporated in Delaware too.

American Resolve raised $1.1 million in 2023, according to its tax filing. The group reported that it had zero employees, and what it did with that money is largely unclear.

In 2023, the nonprofit spent only about $220,000 of its war chest — with more than a third of that going to Noem’s LLC. The rest mostly went toward administrative expenses and a roughly $84,000 travel budget. It’s not clear whose travel the group paid for.

The nonprofit reported that it sent the $80,000 fundraising fee to Noem’s LLC as payment for bringing in $800,000, a 10% cut. A professional fundraiser who also raised money for the group was paid a lower rate of 7%.

In the intervening years, American Resolve has maintained a low public profile. In March, it purchased Facebook ads attacking a local news outlet in South Dakota, which had been reporting on Noem’s use of government credit cards. Noem’s lawyer did not answer questions about whether the group paid her more money after 2023, the most recent year for which its tax filing is available.

The nonprofit has an affiliated political committee, American Resolve PAC, that’s been more active, at least in public. Touting Noem’s conservative leadership under a picture of her staring off into the sky, its website said the PAC was created to put “Kristi and her team on the ground in key races across America.” Noem traveled the country last year attending events the PAC sponsored in support of Republican candidates.

American Resolve’s treasurer referred questions to Noem’s lawyer. In his statement, Noem’s lawyer said she “did not establish, finance, maintain, or control American Resolve Fund. She was simply a vender for a non-profit entity.”

While Noem failed to report the fundraising income Ashwood Strategies received on her federal financial disclosure, she did provide some other details. She described the LLC as involving “personal activities outside my official gubernatorial capacity” and noted that it received the $140,000 advance for her book “No Going Back.” The LLC also had a bank account with between $100,001 and $250,000 in it and at least $50,000 of “livestock and equipment,” she reported.

The fact that Ashwood Strategies is Noem’s company only emerged through the confirmation process for her Trump Cabinet post. South Dakota has minimal disclosure rules for elected officials, and Noem had not previously divulged that she created a side business while she was governor.

Noem’s outside income may have run afoul of South Dakota law, according to Lee Schoenbeck, a veteran Republican politician and attorney who was until recently the head of the state Senate. Thelaw requires top officials, including the governor, to devote their full time to their official roles.

“There’s no way the governor is supposed to have a private side business that the public doesn’t know about,” Schoenbeck told ProPublica. “It would clearly not be appropriate.”

Noem’s lawyer said South Dakota law allowed her to receive income from the nonprofit.

In early February, Sharon Cromer, U.S. ambassador to Gambia, went to visit one of the country’s Cabinet ministers at his agency’s headquarters, above a partially abandoned strip mall off a dirt road. It had been two weeks since President Donald Trump took office, and Cromer had pressing business to discuss. She needed the minister to fall in line to help Elon Musk.

Starlink, Musk’s satellite internet company, had spent months trying to secure regulatory approval to sell internet access in the impoverished West African country. As head of Gambia’s communications ministry, Lamin Jabbi oversees the government’s review of Starlink’s license application. Jabbi had been slow to sign off and the company had grown impatient. Now the top U.S. government official in Gambia was in Jabbi’s office to intervene.

Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency loomed over the conversation. The administration had already begun freezing foreign aid projects, and early in the meeting, Cromer, a Biden appointee, said something that rattled Gambian officials in the room. She listed the ways that the U.S. was supporting the country, according to two people present and contemporaneous notes, noting that key initiatives — like one that funds a $25 million project to improve the electrical system — were currently under review.

Jabbi’s top deputy, Hassan Jallow, told ProPublica he saw Cromer’s message as a veiled threat: If Starlink doesn’t get its license, the U.S. could cut off the desperately needed funds. “The implication was that they were connected,” Jallow said.

In recent months, senior State Department officials in both Washington and Gambia have coordinated with Starlink executives to coax, lobby and browbeat at least seven Gambian government ministers to help Musk, records and interviews show. One of those Cabinet officials told ProPublica his government is under “maximum pressure” to yield.

In mid-March, Cromer escalated the campaign by writing to Gambia’s president with an “important request.” That day, a contentious D.C. meeting between Musk employees and Jabbi had ended in an impasse. She urged the president to circumvent Jabbi and “facilitate the necessary approvals for Starlink to commence operations,” according to a copy of the letter obtained by ProPublica. Jabbi told confidantes he felt the ambassador was trying to get him fired.

The saga in Gambia is the starkest known example of the Trump administration wielding the U.S. government’s foreign policy apparatus to advance the business interests of Musk, a top Trump adviser and the world’s richest man.

Since Trump’s inauguration, the State Department has intervened on behalf of Starlink in Gambia and at least four other developing nations, previously unreported records and interviews show.

As the Trump administration has gutted foreign aid, U.S. diplomats have pressed governments to fast-track licenses for Starlink and arranged conversations between company employees and foreign leaders. In cables, U.S. officials have said that for their foreign counterparts, helping Starlink is a chance to prove their commitment to good relations with the U.S.

In one country last month, the U.S. embassy bragged that Starlink’s license was approved despite concerns it wasn’t abiding by rules that its competitors had to follow.

“If this was done by another country, we absolutely would call this corruption,” said Kristofer Harrison, who served as a high-level State Department official in the George W. Bush administration. “Because it is corruption.”

Helping U.S. businesses has long been part of the State Department’s mission, but former ambassadors said they sought to do this by making the positive case for the benefits of U.S. investment. When seeking deals for U.S. companies, they said they took care to avoid the appearance of conflicts or leaving the impression that punitive measures were on the table.

Ten current and former State Department officials said the recent drive was an alarming departure from standard diplomatic practice — because of both the tactics used and the person who would benefit most from them. “I honestly didn’t think we were capable of doing this,” one official told ProPublica. “That is bad on every level.” Kenneth Fairfax, a retired career diplomat who served as U.S. ambassador to Kazakhstan, said the global push for Musk “could lead to the impression that the U.S. is engaging in a form of crony capitalism.”

The Washington Post previously reported that Secretary of State Marco Rubio has instructed U.S. diplomats to help Starlink so it can beat its Chinese and Russian competitors. Multiple countries, including India, have sped up license approvals for Starlink to try to build goodwill in tariff negotiations with the Trump administration, the Post reported.

ProPublica’s reporting provides a detailed picture of what that push has looked like in practice. After Gambia’s ambassador to the U.S. declined an interview about Starlink — a topic seen as highly sensitive given Musk’s position — ProPublica reporters traveled to the capital, Banjul, to piece together the events. This account is based on internal State Department documents and interviews with dozens of current and former officials from both countries, most of whom requested anonymity for fear of retaliation.

In response to detailed questions, the State Department issued a statement celebrating Starlink. “Starlink is an America-made product that has been a game changer in helping remote areas around the world gain internet connectivity,” a spokesperson wrote. “Any patriotic American should want to see an American company’s success on the global stage, especially over compromised Chinese competitors.” Cromer and Starlink did not respond to requests for comment, nor did the office of the president of Gambia. Jabbi made Jallow available to discuss the situation.

During the Biden administration, State Department officials worked with Starlink to help the company navigate bureaucracies abroad. But the agency’s approach appears to have become significantly more aggressive and expansive since Trump’s return to power, according to internal records and current and former government officials.

Foreign leaders are acutely aware of Musk’s unprecedented position in the government, which he has used to help rewrite U.S. foreign policy. After Musk spent at least $288 million on the 2024 election, Trump gave the billionaire a powerful post in the White House. In mere months, Musk’s team has directed the firing of thousands of federal workers, canceled billions of dollars in programs and dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development, which supported humanitarian projects around the world. African nations have been particularly hard-hit by the cuts.

At the same time, Musk continues to run Starlink and the rest of his corporate empire. In past administrations, government ethics lawyers carefully vetted potential conflicts of interest. Though Trump once said that “we won’t let him get near” conflicts, the White House has also suggested Musk is responsible for policing himself. The billionaire has waved away criticisms of the arrangement, saying “I’ll recuse myself” if conflicts arise. “My companies are suffering because I’m in the government,” Musk said.

In a statement, the White House said Musk has nothing to do with deals involving Starlink and that every administration official follows ethical guidelines. “For the umpteenth time, President Trump will not tolerate any conflicts of interest,” spokesperson Harrison Fields said in an email.

Executives at Starlink have seized the moment to expand. An April State Department cable to D.C. obtained by ProPublica quoted a Starlink employee describing the company’s approach to securing a license in Djibouti, a key U.S. ally in Africa that hosts an American military base: “We’re pushing from the top and the bottom to ram this through.”

Musk entered the White House at a pivotal moment for Starlink. When the service launched in 2020, it had a novel approach to internet access. Rather than relying on underground cables or cell towers like traditional telecom companies, Starlink uses low-orbiting satellites that let it provide fast internet in places its competitors had struggled to reach. Expectations for the startup were sky high. Bullish Morgan Stanley analysts predicted that by 2040, Starlink would have up to 364 million subscribers worldwide — more than the current population of the U.S.

Starlink quickly became a central pillar of Musk’s fortune. His stake in Starlink’s parent company, SpaceX, is estimated to be worth about $150 billion of his roughly $400 billion net worth.

Although the company says its user base has grown to over 5 million people, it remains a bit player compared to the largest internet providers. And the satellite internet market is set to become more competitive as well-funded companies launch services modeled on Starlink. Jeff Bezos’ Project Kuiper, a unit of Amazon, has said it expects to start serving customers later this year. Satellite upstarts headquartered in Europe and China aren’t far behind either.

“They want to get as far and as fast as they can before Amazon Kuiper gets online,” said Chris Quilty, a veteran space industry analyst.

In internal cables, State Department officials have said they are eager to help Musk get ahead of foreign satellite companies. Securing licenses in the next 18 months is critical for Starlink due to the growing competition, one cable said last month. Senior diplomats have written that they hope to give Musk’s company a “first-mover advantage.”

Africa represents a lucrative prize. Much of the continent lacks reliable internet. Success in Africa could mean dominating a market with the fastest-growing population on earth.

As of last November, Starlink had reportedly launched in 15 of Africa’s 54 countries, but it was beginning to spark a backlash. Last year, Cameroon and Namibia cracked down on Musk’s company for allegedly operating in their countries illegally. In South Africa — where Starlink has so far failed to get a license — Musk exacerbated tensions by publicly accusing the government of anti-white racism. Since Trump won the election, at least five African countries have granted licenses to Starlink: the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Guinea-Bissau, Lesotho and Chad.

Now Musk’s campaign of cuts has given him leverage inside the State Department. A Trump administration memo that leaked to the press last month proposed closing six embassies in Africa.

The Gambian embassy was on the list of proposed cuts.

An 8-year-old democracy, Gambia’s 2.7 million residents live on a sliver of land once used as a hub in the transatlantic slave trade. For two decades until 2017, the nation was ruled by a despot who had his opponents assassinated and plundered public funds to buy himself luxuries like a Rolls-Royce collection and a private zoo. When the dictator was ousted, the economy was in tatters. Today Gambia is one of the poorest countries in the world, with about half the country living on less than $4 a day.

In this fragile environment, the telecom industry that Jabbi oversees is vitally important to Gambian authorities. According to the government, the sector provides at least 20% of the country’s tax revenue. Ads for the country’s multiple internet providers are ubiquitous, painted onto dozens of public works — parks, police booths, schools.

It’s unclear why Starlink’s efforts in Gambia, a tiny market, have been so intense.

Cromer’s efforts on behalf of the company started under the Biden administration, as she documented last December in a cable sent back to Washington. Last spring, Starlink began the process of securing necessary approvals from a local utilities regulator and the Gambian communications agency. The utilities regulator wanted Starlink to pay an $85,000 license fee, which the company felt was too expensive. Cromer spoke to local officials, who then “pressured” the regulator to remove “this unnecessary barrier to entry,” the ambassador wrote.

Gambian supporters of Starlink felt that its product would be a boon for consumers and for economic growth in the country, where internet service remains unreliable and slow. “The ripple effects could be extraordinary,” Cromer said in the December cable, contending it could enable telehealth and improve education.

Opponents argued that local internet providers were one of Gambia’s few stable sources of jobs and infrastructure investments. If Starlink killed off its competition and then jacked up its prices — in Nigeria, the company announced last year it would suddenly double its fees — authorities could have little leverage to manage the fallout. When Musk refused to turn on Starlink in part of Ukraine during the war there, it heightened concerns about handing control of internet access to the mercurial billionaire, industry analysts said. One Musk tweet about foreign regulators’ ability to police his company caught the attention of Gambian critics: “They can shake their fist at the sky,” Musk said in 2021.

The ultimate authority for granting Starlink a license lies with Jabbi, an attorney who spent years in the local telecom sector. Gambian telecom companies that don’t want competition from Musk see Jabbi as an ally.

Jallow, Jabbi’s top deputy, told ProPublica that the ministry is not opposed to Starlink operating in Gambia. But he said Jabbi is doing due diligence to ensure laws and regulations are being followed before opening up the country to a consequential change.

After Trump’s inauguration, Jabbi’s position pitted him against not only Starlink but also the U.S. government. In the weeks after the February meeting where Cromer reminded Jabbi about the tenuous state of American funding to his country, the ambassador told other diplomats that getting Starlink approved was a high priority, according to a Western official familiar with her comments.

The stance surprised some of Cromer’s peers. Cromer had spent her career at USAID before President Joe Biden appointed her as ambassador. Her tenure in Gambia often focused on human rights and democracy building.

In March, when Jabbi and Jallow traveled to D.C. to attend a World Bank summit, the State Department helped arrange a series of meetings for them. The first, on March 19, was with Starlink representatives including Ben MacWilliams, a former U.S. diplomat who leads the company’s expansion efforts in Africa. The second was with U.S. government officials at the State Department’s headquarters.

The meeting with the company quickly became contentious. Huddled in a conference room at the World Bank, MacWilliams accused Jabbi of standing in the way of his nation’s progress and harming ordinary Gambians, according to Jallow, who was in the meeting, and four others briefed on the event. “We want our license now,” Jallow recalled MacWilliams saying. “Why are you delaying it?”

The conversation ended in a stalemate. In the hours that followed, Starlink and the U.S. government’s campaign intensified in a way that underscored the degree of coordination between the two parties. The company told Jabbi it would cancel his scheduled D.C. meeting with State Department officials because “there was no more need,” Jallow said.

The State Department meeting never happened. Instead, 4,000 miles away in Gambia’s capital, Cromer would try an even more aggressive approach.

That same day, Cromer had already met with Gambia’s equivalent of a commerce secretary to lobby him to help pave the way for Starlink. Then she was informed about the disappointing meeting Starlink had had in D.C., according to State Department records. By day’s end, Cromer had sent a letter to the nation’s president.

“I am writing to seek your support to allow Starlink to operate in The Gambia,” the letter opened. Over three pages, the ambassador described her concerns about Jabbi’s agency and listed the ways that Gambians could benefit from Starlink. She also said the company had satisfied conditions set by Jabbi’s predecessor.

“I respectfully urge you to facilitate the necessary approvals for Starlink to commence operations in The Gambia,” Cromer concluded. “I look forward to your favorable response.”

In the weeks since, Jabbi has refused to budge. The U.S. government’s efforts have continued. In late April, Gambia’s attorney general met in D.C. with senior State Department officials, according to a person familiar with the matter, where they again discussed the Starlink issue.

Diplomats were troubled by how the pressure campaign could hurt America’s image overseas. “This is not Iran or a rogue African state run by a dictator — this is a democracy, a natural ally,” said another senior Western diplomat in the region, noting that Gambia is “a prime partner of the West” in United Nations votes. “You beat up the smallest and the best boy in the class.”

Gambia is not the only country being leaned on. Since Trump took office, embassies around the world have sent a flurry of cables to D.C. documenting their meetings with Starlink executives and their efforts to cajole developing countries into helping Musk’s business. The cables all describe a problem similar to what happened in Gambia: The company has struggled to win a license from local regulators. In some countries, ambassadors reported, their work appears to be yielding results. (The embassies and their host countries did not respond to requests for comment.)

The U.S. embassy in Cameroon wrote that the country could prove its commitment to Trump’s agenda by letting Starlink expand its presence there. In the same missive, embassy officials discussed the impact of U.S. aid cuts and deportations and cited a humanitarian official who was reckoning with America’s shifting foreign policy: “They may not be happy with what they see, but they are trying to adapt as best they can.”

In Lesotho, where embassy officials had spent weeks trying to help Starlink get a license, the company finalized a deal after Trump imposed 50% tariffs on the tiny landlocked country. Lesotho officials told embassy staff they hoped the license would help in their urgent push to reduce the levies, according to Mother Jones. A major multinational company complained that Starlink was getting preferential treatment, embassy documents obtained by ProPublica show, since Musk’s firm had been exempted from requirements its competitors still had to follow.

In cables sent from the U.S. embassy in Djibouti this spring, State Department officials recounted their meetings with the company and pledged to continue working with “Starlink in identifying government officials and facilitating discussions.”

In Bangladesh, U.S. diplomats pressed Starlink’s case “early and often” with local officials, partnered with Starlink to “build an educational strategy” for their counterparts and helped arrange a conversation between Musk and the nation’s head of state, according to a recent cable. The embassy’s work started under Biden but bore fruit only after Trump took office.

Their efforts resulted in Bangladesh approving Starlink’s request to do business in the country, the top U.S. diplomat there said last month, a sign-off that Musk’s company had sought for years.

There is a simple way to glimpse his effort’s expanding reach in Washington, however: Pay attention to who is walking out the front door of his Capitol Hill townhouse. New evidence suggests Berger may be running what amounts to a group house for conservative lawmakers, with multiple members of Congress living with him at his organization’s headquarters.

The six-bedroom, $3.7 million home is owned by a multimillion-dollar Republican donor.

Rep. Andy Ogles, a Tennessee Republican who is among President Donald Trump’s most aggressive allies in Congress, has been at the house on multiple days over the past two weeks, according to people who live in the area. Video reviewed by ProPublica showed Ogles leaving the townhouse with bags on Feb. 27. As he left, he locked up the front door and pocketed the keys to the house.

As ProPublica reported last week, House Speaker Mike Johnson is living in the townhouse. And Dan Bishop, a former congressman from North Carolina now nominated for a powerful post in Trump’s White House, appears to have lived there until recently as well.

Berger has said his goal is to “disciple” members of Congress so what “they learn is then translated into policy.” He has claimed to have personally spurred legislation, saying a senator privately credited him with inspiring a bill.

Berger, Bishop and Ogles did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for Johnson previously said the speaker pays fair-market rent for the part of the townhouse he occupies but didn’t answer questions about the specific rate. He said Johnson has not spoken to the pastor about “any matter of public policy.”

Ogles is in only his third year in Congress, but he’s drawn attention for his bombastic displays of fealty to Trump. He recently introduced a resolution to amend the Constitution so that Trump could serve a third term as president. He’s filed articles of impeachment against multiple judges who’ve ruled against the new administration. (Last week, Elon Musk posted a video of Ogles touting his impeachment efforts, set to the beat from the rap song “Shook Ones, Pt. II.”)

Ogles’ short tenure is also notable for the pace of scandal that’s followed it. He has faced allegations that he inflated his resume, claiming alternatively to have been an economist, a member of law enforcement and an expert on international sex trafficking, NewsChannel 5 in Nashville reported. (Ogles has acknowledged at least one mistake on his resume but said that “my body of work speaks for itself.”)

Last year, the FBI seized his phone during an investigation and obtained a search warrant to review records associated with his personal email address. Federal investigators were seeking evidence related to potential campaign finance violations, according to a court filing. The scope of the FBI investigation remains unclear.

Perhaps no one is more responsible for Ogles’ rise in politics than Lee Beaman, the Tennessee businessman who owns the Capitol Hill townhouse. When Ogles announced a short-lived Senate bid in 2017, Beaman said he planned to raise $4 million to support the run. Beaman, whose wealth derives from a large car dealership chain, then served as campaign treasurer in Ogles’ successful 2022 run for the House.

Beaman and Berger have publicly advocated together for numerous specific policy changes, in areas including foreign affairs, fuel efficiency standards and removing barriers to firing federal employees. After the 2020 election, they both signed a letter declaring that Trump was the rightful winner and calling for Congress to overturn the results. (Beaman did not respond to requests for comment. ProPublica could not determine whether he and the pastor have discussed policy issues with Ogles during his time in Congress.)

In sermons, Berger has devoted long stretches to attacking the separation of church and state, as well as COVID-19 vaccines. The pastor used violent language to describe his disdain for “LGBTQ+ Pride” parades and “drag queen story hour” during an interview for a podcast in 2022, according to unpublished footage obtained by ProPublica.

“If I was left to myself, I’d take a baseball bat and beat the hell out of every single one of them. And not feel bad about it,” Berger said. “I have to go, ‘You know what? That’s probably not the will of God, is it?’ And obviously it’s not.”

Beyond his ownership of the townhouse, Beaman’s role in the pastor’s influence project is unclear. After Beaman purchased the house in 2021, a lawyer sought to change it from a single-family dwelling to a “boarding house/rooming house,” according to Washington, D.C., property records. Around that time, Berger’s nonprofit group, Ambassador Services International, registered the home as its address.

Members of Congress are allowed to live anywhere, as long as they pay fair-market rent, experts said. Discounts on rent are generally seen as improper gifts and prohibited by House ethics rules.

Beaman has said he got to know Ogles when Ogles was the Tennessee director of Americans for Prosperity, part of the Koch brothers’ political network. Beaman and Ogles joined forces to fight a mass transit project in Nashville and reportedly worked together on a successful effort to repeal the estate tax in their home state. After leaving the Koch network, Ogles served four years as the mayor of a Middle Tennessee county with a population of roughly 100,000. He held that role until 2022, when he was elected to Congress.

Ogles’ 2022 campaign was the subject of a blistering House ethics report released this year. The nonpartisan Office of Congressional Ethics concluded that there is “substantial reason to believe” that Ogles’ campaign had accepted illegally large donations and then falsely reported that the funds had come from Ogles himself. Ogles has said he is “confident that any reporting problem was at worst an honest mistake.” (Beaman was not named in the report and has not been accused of wrongdoing.)

The report said that Ogles refused to cooperate with the investigation. It recommended that the House Ethics Committee issue a subpoena to the congressman.

Recently, the pastor scored a remarkable coup for a political influence project that has until now managed to avoid public scrutiny. He got a new roommate.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has been staying at the home since around the beginning of this year, according to interviews and videos obtained by ProPublica.

The house is owned by a major Republican donor and Tennessee car magnate who has joined Berger in advocating for and against multiple bills before Congress.

Over the past four years, Berger and his wife, Sarah Berger, have dedicated themselves to what they call their D.C. “ministry center.” In addition to Johnson, who is an evangelical conservative, the pastor has built close relationships with several other influential conservative politicians. Dan Bishop, now nominated for a powerful post in the Trump White House, seems to have also lived in the home last year while he was still a congressman, according to three people.

A spokesperson for Johnson said that the speaker “pays fair market value in monthly rent for the portion of the Washington, D.C. townhome that he occupies.” He did not answer a question about how much Johnson is paying. House ethics rules allow members of Congress to live anywhere, as long as they are paying fair-market rent.

The spokesperson added that Johnson “has never once spoken to Mr. Berger about any piece of legislation or any matter of public policy.” Berger and Bishop did not respond to requests for comment.

The Bergers have described their mission as galvanizing political allies to take action. “It’s just iron sharpening iron,” Sarah Berger said on a podcast last summer, explaining the couple’s approach to political influence. “Like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s why I’m standing firm on this policy.’”

Steve Berger claims to have personally spurred legislation. “It’s a humbling thing,” he said in a sermon in late 2022. “You get a text message from a senator that says: ‘Thank you for your inspiration. Because it has caused me now to create a bill that is going to further righteousness in this country.’”

Berger’s interests extend beyond his staunch social conservatism. He and the donor who owns the house, Lee Beaman, have publicly advocated together for numerous specific policy changes, including a bill that would make it easier to fire federal employees and a regulation that would reduce fuel efficiency standards for the automotive industry. After the 2020 election, they both signed a letter declaring that President Donald Trump was the rightful winner and calling for Congress to overturn the results.

Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, did not respond to questions about how he ended up staying at the home. Beaman did not respond to requests for comment.

The earliest date ProPublica was able to confirm Johnson being at the Berger house was in mid-December. A video reviewed by ProPublica shows Johnson visiting the home on Dec. 15 with two women who appear to be his wife and daughter. They lingered outside before entering, while Johnson pointed around the building and down to the basement entrance as if he was giving a tour. Two days later, Berger sent a note to his supporters on social media: “I so wish I could tell you all the massive doors that broke open this week.”

Since the beginning of the year, videos and interviews show, Johnson has regularly left the house in the morning and returned in the evening. One day that Johnson was there recently, Berger was also at the home, opening the front door barefoot in pajama bottoms. (It appears Johnson may primarily be staying in the home’s two-bedroom basement.)

Washington pieds-à-terre can prove a significant expense for members of Congress as they split time between the capital and their home districts. Johnson is less wealthy than many other lawmakers. He worked at conservative nonprofits before he entered public service, and on his most recent financial disclosure form he did not declare a single asset. When Johnson was elevated to the speakership in 2023, news reports indicated that rather than renting an apartment, he might be sleeping in his office. (Lawmakers must report debts, income and many financial holdings on disclosure forms but aren’t required to list living expenses like rent.)

The Berger home is in an upscale D.C. neighborhood full of lobbyists and corporate attorneys. Though it’s not clear what the home’s basement would fetch on the open market, it’s not unusual for two-bedrooms in the area to rent for as much as $7,000 a month. Discounts on rent are generally prohibited by House ethics rules as improper gifts, experts said.

In sermons and on social media, Berger has mentioned some of the topics he’s discussed with Johnson and other members of Congress. Last year, Berger, a passionate supporter of the Israeli right-wing, said he’d had “a great conversation” with the speaker about Israel.

Recently, Johnson has described his conversations with Trump to the pastor, according to Berger. After Russia invaded Ukraine, Berger said in a sermon that he’d advised “some congressmen” to see the conflict through the lens of Ezekiel 38 and 39, parts of the Bible some see as prophesying a great war before the Second Coming. He did not specify what that meant from a policy perspective.

An energetic 60-year-old with a white goatee and penchant for preaching in sneakers and jeans, Berger has strong views on a wide range of issues, including economic policy and public health. He is vehemently opposed to the World Health Organization, which Trump moved to withdraw the U.S. from last month, and recently predicted that COVID-19 vaccines will result in “young people dropping dead all over the place.” He attacked the World Economic Forum at length in a recent sermon, accusing it of “taking advantage” of COVID-19 “to implement their satanic plot.”

Berger is also against same-sex marriage, saying “it opens the door to all manner of sexual depravity and wickedness” — though he has said he has “friends who are practicing homosexuals, people I care about.” He opposes homosexuality and “heterosexual sin” in equal measures, he’s said, referring to acts like watching pornography and sex between unmarried adults.

Berger’s operation is organized as a nonprofit called Ambassador Services International, which runs on a budget of around $1 million per year, according to tax filings. The home where it is registered in Washington — and where Johnson has been staying — was purchased in early 2021. Once the home of abolitionist Frederick Douglass and later housing the Smithsonian Museum of African Art, it was advertised at the time as a “four-level Second Empire-style townhouse of impeccable elegance and exceptional scale,” offering “bespoke tranquility in a coveted location.”

The buyer was Crockett Ventures LLC. Corporate filings show its sole owner is Beaman, the donor and businessman, who built a fortune on a chain of car dealerships started by his father. He has given millions to Republican political groups, including large donations to the Trump campaign and political committees for the Heritage Foundation and the House Freedom Caucus. He’s also served as the treasurer of a congressional campaign.

Beaman was once so fed up with the restrictions that came with owning a home on a “government-controlled lake” that he bought a sprawling property with a 50-acre private lake of its own, according to a profile in an architecture book. He became a fixture of Nashville media in recent years because of sordid allegations made by his fourth wife during their divorce, including that he made her watch what he called “training films” of him having sex with a prostitute. Beaman’s lawyers wrote at the time that his wife’s filing contained “impertinent and scandalous matter only meant to harass Mr. Beaman.”

Beaman has attended a Tennessee church that Berger founded, but it’s not clear what role, if any, he plays in the pastor’s influence project in Washington. It’s also unclear whether the pastor’s nonprofit pays for the use of the Capitol Hill townhouse.

Berger came to prominence in his home state as the longtime pastor of Grace Chapel, a large church outside Nashville whose members have included the current governor of the state. In 2021, Berger left the church and he and his wife launched their project in Washington.

He soon began Bible study sessions with senators, representatives and congressional aides, according to the Bergers. Meanwhile, Sarah Berger spent her time “in relationship with and pouring into the lives of congressional wives,” tax filings say.

Steve Berger quickly made connections at the highest levels of the Republican Party.

“Listen, I have confessed things to Steve that I wouldn't normally confess to anyone else,” Mark Meadows, a White House chief of staff in the first Trump administration who remains an important ally of the president, said at a 2023 event with Berger. “We have been praying together, having a Bible study each and every week. Not just me, but several members of Congress.”

A group of congressmen gathered on stage together to speak at the pastor’s 60th-birthday party in October, including Bishop, Rep. Barry Moore, Rep. Andy Ogles and Rep. Warren Davidson. All four are current or former members of the hardline conservative House Freedom Caucus. (None of the four responded to requests for comment.)

Evidence suggests that Bishop also recently lived at the Capitol Hill townhouse. Three neighbors told ProPublica that the FBI visited them this month asking about Bishop, seemingly as part of the background check for his White House job. “They said that address,” said one neighbor, adding that the agent showed a photo of Bishop. “They said: ‘He lived there up to a couple months ago. Do you know him?’”

Trump has nominated Bishop to be deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, the powerful White House office that recently moved to freeze funding streams across the federal government. Berger celebrated the nomination on Instagram: “I want to congratulate my dear friend and brother, Congressman Dan Bishop, for accepting this incredible opportunity.”

Last month a major shareholder of a publicly traded company took to social media to complain that people — perhaps short sellers — were spreading lies that could hurt his firm’s stock price.

“There are fake, untrue, and probably illegal rumors,” the post read. “I hereby request that the people who have set off these fake rumors or statements, and who may have done so in the past, be immediately investigated by the appropriate authorities.”

The Securities and Exchange Commission doesn’t typically take its marching orders from shareholders on social media. But in this case, the poster was Donald Trump, who’s just weeks away from being inaugurated and gaining the power to appoint the head of the SEC.

When Trump takes office in January, a president will for the first time be the majority owner of a publicly traded company, Trump Media, which runs Truth Social. Former SEC officials are concerned about how Trump could try to use the agency to go after the foes of his company, which accounts for more than half his fortune. They also worry that the agency isn’t up for the job of taking on Trump Media should it run afoul of securities laws.

Cases involving public companies with aggressive lawyers are difficult “even if you don’t have conflicts of interest and concerns about pissing someone important off,” a current employee in the SEC’s enforcement division said. “I don’t think anyone would explicitly say, ‘Don’t do it,’ but they’d just be like, ‘I could do another case.’”

In Trump Media’s short history, it has had a combative relationship with the SEC, though it has never been charged with wrongdoing by the agency.

In 2022 as Trump Media was seeking to go public, which it did through a merger with an already traded company, it threatened to sue the SEC because of what it called “inexcusable obstruction” and “obvious conflicts of interest among SEC officials and clear indications of political bias.” CEO Devin Nunes posted on the platform, “NO MORE BS!” The company never sued.

The following year, the company that took Trump Media public settled fraud charges with the SEC for $18 million after the agency found it made misrepresentations in its filings. The SEC also brought insider trading charges against several people who invested in the deal.

Other, previously unreported issues have raised alarms inside the company that Trump Media could be violating securities laws by misleading investors, according to a person with knowledge of the company.

The company has long reported in its disclosure filings that it does not track basic performance numbers for Truth Social.

In its securities filings, the company says it “does not currently, and may never, collect, monitor or report certain key operating metrics used by companies in similar industries,” such as the number of active users and ad views. It has always been a puzzling claim — akin to a TV network choosing not to track ratings. Other publicly traded social media companies do track and report such fundamental measures of success for their platforms.

But according to interviews and records reviewed by ProPublica, the company does track the numbers, and the active user count is a tiny fraction of its competitors’. ProPublica reviewed images of an internal Truth Social employee dashboard from 2022 showing the company monitored the number of active users. Internal communications from this year show the practice continued.

The SEC investigates those types of discrepancies, experts said. Securities laws prohibit companies from knowingly misleading investors about information deemed to be significant to the company’s share price.

In a statement, Trump Media accused ProPublica of “willfully misrepresenting TMTG’s public filings and the content of stolen information” and relying on “unreliable individuals with known axes to grind.” The statement also alleged ProPublica was “conspiring with others to engage in market manipulations and fraud, and we will bring evidence of this malfeasance to the relevant local, state, and federal officials.” The company did not respond to a request to explain what was “misrepresented.”

While current and former SEC officials doubt the SEC will aggressively regulate Trump Media, the company is relatively small. The agency’s oversight of companies owned by Trump associates will also be fraught and could have broader market implications. Elon Musk’s Tesla, for example, is more than one hundred times the size of Trump Media. Musk has for years fought bitterly with the SEC. He settled a securities fraud case with the agency and later declared that, “Something is broken with SEC oversight.” After Musk became one of Trump’s most important financial backers, Trump appointed him to lead a commission to target government spending it deems wasteful.

Securities experts warned that if the SEC fails to aggressively regulate companies connected to the president or his allies, it could have disastrous consequences.

“If political power buys the power to defraud, that’s a problem, not just for our politics but for our markets. American companies have an easier time getting capital because there is faith in the way the American capital markets are regulated,” said Howard Fischer, an SEC trial lawyer during Trump’s first term.

Created after the stock market crash of 1929, the SEC is part of the executive branch but operates independently of the White House. Presidents appoint the agency’s chair, who leads a five-member commission that includes members of both parties. The agency’s nearly 5,000 employees report to that commission as they do the work of regulating the securities industry.

“How much impact is the president supposed to have on the SEC's day-to-day operations? The answer is none,” said Allison Herren Lee, a former Democratic SEC commissioner appointed during the first Trump administration.

The line between the SEC and the president on enforcement actions has been crossed before. President Richard Nixon’s aides pressured the SEC’s general counsel, G. Bradford Cook, to remove a reference to a financier’s illegal contribution to the Nixon campaign from an SEC complaint against the executive. Nixon then installed Cook as the SEC’s chair. But after the meetings with Nixon’s aides were revealed, Cook resigned as chair, saying “the effectiveness of the agency might be impaired” because of the perception of undue influence.

If Trump tries to make enforcement demands of the SEC, as he did in his Truth Social post calling for an investigation of short sellers, SEC officials would face a choice: either ignore the president and risk his wrath, or follow his orders and undermine their independence. Former SEC officials interviewed by ProPublica predicted a middle path, in which the agency would not seriously investigate baseless claims against the company’s foes but would claim it was doing so to satisfy him.

The co-director of the SEC’s enforcement division during Trump’s first term told ProPublica he knew of no instances of Trump getting involved in enforcement decisions during his first term.

“We didn’t have issues of political interference,” said Steven Peikin, who is now in private practice. “We investigated some significant political figures.”

The Trump-era SEC investigated former Rep. Chris Collins, a Republican Trump ally from New York, who pleaded guilty to insider trading. Trump later pardoned him. The agency also investigated former Republican North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr for insider trading after the coronavirus stock market crash. (Burr said the case was ultimately dropped.)

Still, during his first term, Trump did not shy away from asking the SEC to consider specific regulatory changes. In 2018, for example, he tweeted that after speaking with “some of the world’s top business leaders,” he had asked the agency to consider allowing companies to stop filing quarterly reports and move to twice-a-year reporting.

“This was highly unusual,” Lee, the former SEC commissioner, told ProPublica.

Trump’s SEC chair at the time, Jay Clayton, said the agency was looking into “the frequency of reporting,” before rejecting the idea months later.

Though Clayton was generally popular among the SEC’s staff, his chumminess with Trump, including multiple rounds of golf together, did raise concerns about his independence.

In 2020, Clayton was asked during a House hearing if he ever discussed SEC matters with Trump during their golf outings. “There are no conversations that I’ve had that make me in any way — in any way — uncomfortable with my independence,” he testified.

While the SEC investigates possible civil violations of securities law, it is up to the FBI and Department of Justice to pursue criminal cases. Trump’s selections to lead both those agencies in his second term have ties to his social media company: Kash Patel, the FBI pick, is on the Trump Media board. Pam Bondi, selected to be attorney general, was identified in an April filing as owning a stake in the company worth more than $4 million at current prices. It’s not clear if she still owns the shares. (Bondi did not respond to a request seeking comment.)

If federal authorities shy away from scrutinizing Trump Media, securities experts said the void could be filled by state authorities, who Trump has no authority over.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw blue state securities regulators opening investigations,” said Andrew Jennings, a law professor who teaches securities regulation at Emory University.

New York’s attorney general has already entered the fray. Letitia James’ office is examining an emergency loan provided to Trump Media before it went public from a trust connected to a bank in the Caribbean, according to records and a source with knowledge of the probe.

Last month, the Financial Times reported that Trump Media is in talks to buy a crypto trading venue called Bakkt. If that deal is consummated, it would be Trump’s second crypto venture following the September launch of a Trump-affiliated token by a company called World Liberty Financial.

Trump’s crypto investments create yet another area of potential conflict of interest with the SEC, whose current Democratic chair, Gary Gensler, led an enforcement campaign against the crypto market, which he described as rife with fraud and scams.

On Wednesday, Trump announced his nominee to chair the SEC: Paul Atkins, a Bush-era SEC commissioner who has spent the last seven years as co-chair of a crypto advocacy group.

Deregulating crypto was a theme of Trump’s campaign, with Trump telling a crypto conference over the summer: “The rules will be written by people who love your industry, not hate your industry.”

The firm’s use of workers in Mexico was confirmed by a spokesperson for Trump Media, which operates the Truth Social platform. The workers were hired through another entity to code and perform other technical duties, according to a person with knowledge of Trump Media. The reliance on foreign labor was met with outrage among the company's own staff, who accused its leadership of betraying their “America First” ideals, the person said.

The outsourcing to Mexico helped prompt a recent whistleblower letter from staff to Trump Media’s board that has been roiling the company.

That complaint, reported by ProPublica last month, calls for the board to fire CEO Devin Nunes, a former Republican congressman. The letter alleges he has “severely” mismanaged the company. It also asserts the company is hiring “America Last” — with Nunes imposing a directive to hire only foreign contractors at the expense of “American workers who are deeply committed to our mission.”

“This approach not only contradicts the America First principles we stand for but also raises concerns about the quality, dedication, and alignment of our workforce with our core values,” the complaint reads.

A Trump Media spokesperson said the company uses “two individual workers” in Mexico. “Presenting the fact that [Trump Media] works with precisely two specialist contractors in Mexico as some sort of sensational scandal is just the latest in a long line of defamatory conspiracy theories invented by the serial fabricators at ProPublica,” the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson declined to answer other questions about the company’s Mexican contractors, including how much they’ve been paid, how many have been used over time and how their hiring squares with Trump’s promises to punish firms that send jobs outside of the U.S. The Trump campaign did not respond to questions.

For a company of its prominence, Trump Media has a tiny permanent staff, employing just a few dozen people as of the end of last year, only a portion of whom work on the Truth Social technology.

Trump Media’s hiring of Mexican coders also prompted frustration within the staff, the person with knowledge of the company said, because they were perceived by staff to not have the technical expertise to do the work.

On its homepage, Truth Social bills itself as “Proudly made in the United States of America. 🇺🇸”

Both as president and in his campaign for a second term, Trump has criticized companies that send jobs abroad, particularly to Mexico. If elected, he has pledged to “stop outsourcing” and “punish” companies that send jobs abroad.

For example, Trump recently threatened agricultural machinery giant John Deere with tariffs if it went through with plans to move some of its manufacturing to Mexico.

“I’m just notifying John Deere right now, if you do that, we’re putting a 200 percent tariff on everything you want to sell into the United States,” Trump said.

He has made a similar threat against automakers building cars in Mexico, demanding they hire American workers and manufacture domestically.

“I'm not going to let them build a factory right across the border,” Trump promised, “and sell millions of cars into the United States and destroy Detroit further."

Trump owns nearly 60% of the social media company, a stake worth around $3.5 billion at the stock’s Friday closing price — more than half of the former president’s net worth.

The results of the election are widely seen as a major factor in the future value of the company. As the Nov. 5 election draws closer, Trump Media’s stock price has fluctuated wildly even as little or nothing has changed in the company’s actual business, which generates scant revenue. The stock closed Friday down 40% from its recent peak on Tuesday. Despite that drop, it has still nearly doubled since the beginning of October.

One Trump Media board member, Eric Swider, offered a defense of relying on foreign labor in a statement to ProPublica from his lawyer.

“President Trump maintains an America First policy, which includes prioritizing American workers. Trump Media, however, is a global multi-media company. For a global multi-media company to utilize subcontractors, which in turn may utilize coders located in a foreign country, is a practice common to the industry,” the statement said. “Such global multi-media companies like Trump Media would have no right to control the employment decisions of its subcontractors, which may employ workers in a multitude of different countries in addition to the United States.”

Swider, a businessman based in Puerto Rico, serves on the board alongside better known figures such as Donald Trump Jr. and Linda McMahon, the former Trump cabinet member who is now co-chair of his transition team.

The outsourcing to Mexico is not the only instance of Trump Media relying on foreign workers. ProPublica previously reported that the company used a foreign firm to source labor in the Balkans.

Nunes, for his part, is quoted in a new book about Truth Social, “Disappearing the President,” boasting about his ability to keep costs down at Trump Media, though he didn’t mention outsourcing.

“Nobody grew as fast as we did. I don't think there's any other example even close to us out there, especially with as little money as we spent,” Nunes said. “Don't forget that. We built this for a fraction of what these other companies were built for.”

Former President Donald Trump’s media company has forced out executives in recent days after internal allegations that its CEO, former Rep. Devin Nunes, is mismanaging the company, according to interviews and records of communications among former employees.

Several people involved with Trump Media believe the ousters are retaliation following what they describe as an anonymous “whistleblower” complaint regarding Nunes that went to the company’s board of directors.

The chief operating officer and chief product officer have left the company, along with at least two lower-level staffers, according to interviews, social media posts and communications between former staffers reviewed by ProPublica. The company, which runs the social media platform Truth Social, disclosed the departure of the chief operating officer in a securities filing Thursday afternoon.

ProPublica has not seen the whistleblower complaint. But several people with knowledge of the company said the concerns revolve around alleged mismanagement by Nunes. One person said they include allegations of misuse of funds, hiring of foreign contractors and interfering with product development.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Trump Media did not answer specific questions but said that ProPublica’s inquiry to the company “utterly fabricates implications of improper and even illegal conduct that have no basis in reality.”

“This story is the fifth consecutive piece in an increasingly absurd campaign by ProPublica, likely at the behest of political interest groups, to damage TMTG based on false and defamatory allegations and vague innuendo,” the statement said, adding that “TMTG strictly adheres to all laws and applicable regulations.”

Trump Media’s board comprises a set of powerful figures in Trump’s world, including his son Donald Trump Jr., former U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and the businesswoman Linda McMahon, a major donor and current co-chair of Trump’s transition planning committee.

Nunes was named CEO of the company in 2021, with Trump hailing him as “a fighter and a leader” who “will make an excellent CEO.” As a member of Congress, Nunes was known as one of Trump’s staunchest loyalists.

After the internal allegations about Nunes were made at Trump Media, the company enlisted a lawyer to investigate and interview staffers, according to a person with knowledge of the company.

Then, last week, some employees who were interviewed by the lawyer were notified they were being pushed out, the person said. The employees being pushed out include a human relations director and a product designer, along with Chief Operating Officer Andrew Northwall and Chief Product Officer Sandro De Moraes. The person with knowledge of the company said Trump Media asked the employees to sign an agreement pledging not to make public claims of wrongdoing against the company in exchange for severance.

On Thursday afternoon, Northwall posted on Truth Social announcing he had “decided to resign from my role at Trump Media,” adding that he was “incredibly grateful” to Trump and Nunes “for this opportunity.”

“As I step back, I look forward to focusing more on my family and returning to my entrepreneurial journey,” the statement said.

De Moraes now identifies himself on his Truth Social bio as the “Former Chief Product Officer” of the company.

Some word of the departures became public earlier this week when former Trump Media employee Alex Gleason said in a social media post that “Truth Social in shambles. Many more people fired.”

Trump personally owns nearly 60% of the company. That stake, even after a recent decline in the company’s stock price, is worth nearly $2 billion on paper, a significant chunk of Trump’s fortune. He said last month he was not planning to sell his shares. What role Trump plays, if any, in the day-to-day operations of the company is not clear.

Since it launched in 2021, the company has become a speculation-fueled meme stock, but its actual business has generated virtually no revenue and Truth Social has not emerged as a serious competitor to the major social media platforms.

Among Nunes’ moves as CEO, as ProPublica has reported, was inking a large streaming TV deal with several obscure firms, including one controlled by a major political donor. He also traveled to the Balkans over the summer and met with the prime minister of North Macedonia, a trip whose purpose was never publicly explained by the company.

Trump Media has a formal whistleblower policy, adopted when the company went public in March, that encourages employees to report illegal activity and other “business conduct that damages the Company’s good name” and business interests.

In early January 2000, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was at a five-star beach resort in Sea Island, Georgia, hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

After almost a decade on the court, Thomas had grown frustrated with his financial situation, according to friends. He had recently started raising his young grandnephew, and Thomas’ wife was soliciting advice on how to handle the new expenses. The month before, the justice had borrowed $267,000 from a friend to buy a high-end RV.

At the resort, Thomas gave a speech at an off-the-record conservative conference. He found himself seated next to a Republican member of Congress on the flight home. The two men talked, and the lawmaker left the conversation worried that Thomas might resign.

Congress should give Supreme Court justices a pay raise, Thomas told him. If lawmakers didn’t act, “one or more justices will leave soon” — maybe in the next year.

At the time, Thomas’ salary was $173,600, equivalent to over $300,000 today. But he was one of the least wealthy members of the court, and on multiple occasions in that period, he pushed for ways to make more money. In other private conversations, Thomas repeatedly talked about removing a ban on justices giving paid speeches.

Thomas’ efforts were described in records from the time obtained by ProPublica, including a confidential memo to Chief Justice William Rehnquist from a top judiciary official seeking guidance on what he termed a “delicate matter.”

The documents, as well as interviews, offer insight into how Thomas was talking about his finances in a crucial period in his tenure, just as he was developing his relationships with a set of wealthy benefactors.

Congress never lifted the ban on speaking fees or gave the justices a major raise. But in the years that followed, as ProPublica has reported, Thomas accepted a stream of gifts from friends and acquaintances that appears to be unparalleled in the modern history of the Supreme Court. Some defrayed living expenses large and small — private school tuition, vehicle batteries, tires. Other gifts from a coterie of ultrarich men supplemented his lifestyle, such as free international vacations on the private jet and superyacht of Dallas real estate billionaire Harlan Crow.

Precisely what led so many people to offer Thomas money and other gifts remains an open question. There’s no evidence the justice ever raised the specter of resigning with Crow or his other wealthy benefactors.

George Priest, a Yale Law School professor who has vacationed with Thomas and Crow, told ProPublica he believes Crow’s generosity was not intended to influence Thomas’ views but rather to make his life more comfortable. “He views Thomas as a Supreme Court justice as having a limited salary,” Priest said. “So he provides benefits for him.”

Thomas and Crow didn’t respond to questions for this story. Crow, a major Republican donor, has not had cases at the Supreme Court since Thomas joined it and has previously said Thomas is a dear friend. David Sokol, a conservative financier who has taken Thomas on vacation on a private jet, said in a statement that he and Thomas had never discussed the justice’s finances or when he might retire.

Thomas’ comments in 2000 were to Florida Rep. Cliff Stearns, a vocal conservative who’d been in Congress for 11 years and occasionally socialized with the justice. They set off a flurry of activity across the judiciary and Capitol Hill. “His importance as a conservative was paramount,” Stearns said in a recent interview. “We wanted to make sure he felt comfortable in his job and he was being paid properly.”

There’s an often-criticized dynamic surrounding most important jobs in the federal government: The posts pay far less than comparable jobs in the private sector, but officials can cash in once they leave. Ex-regulators sell advice to the regulated. Generals retire to join military contractors. Former senators get jobs lobbying Congress.

But there is no revolving-door payday waiting on the other side of a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. Justices generally stay on the bench past their 80th birthday, if not until death. In 2000, justices were paid more than cabinet secretaries or members of Congress, and far more than the average American. Still, judges’ salaries were not keeping pace with inflation, a source of ire throughout the federal judiciary. Young associates at top law firms made more than Supreme Court justices, while partners at the firms could earn millions a year.

Some of Thomas’ colleagues were extremely wealthy — Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was married to a high-paid tax lawyer and Justice Stephen Breyer to the daughter of a wealthy British lord. Thomas did not come from money. When he was appointed to the court in 1991, he was 43 years old and had spent almost all his adult life working for the government. At the time, he still had student loans from law school, Thomas has said.

The full details of Thomas’ finances over the years remain unclear. He made at least two big purchases around the early ’90s: a Corvette and a house in the Virginia suburbs on 5 acres of land. When Thomas and his wife, Ginni, bought the home for $522,000 a year after he joined the court, they borrowed all but $8,000, less than 2% of the purchase price, property records show.

Public records suggest a degree of financial strain. Throughout the first decade of his tenure, the couple regularly borrowed more money, including a $100,000 credit line on their house and a consumer loan of up to $50,000. Around January 1998, Thomas’ life changed when he took in his 6-year-old grandnephew, becoming his legal guardian and raising him as a son. The Thomases sent the child to a series of private schools.

In early January 2000, Thomas took the trip to the Georgia beach resort. Thomas was there to deliver a keynote speech at Awakening, a “conservative thought weekend” featuring golf, shooting lessons and aromatherapy along with panel discussions with businessmen and elected officials. (A founder and organizer of the annual event, Ernest Taylor, told ProPublica that Thomas’ trip was paid for by the organization. Thomas reported 11 free trips that year on his annual financial disclosure, mostly to colleges and universities, but did not disclose attending the conservative conference, an apparent violation of federal disclosure law.)

On a commercial flight back from Awakening, Thomas brought up the prospect of justices resigning to Stearns, the Republican lawmaker. Worried, Stearns wrote a letter to Thomas after the flight promising “to look into a bill to raise the salaries of members of The Supreme Court.”

“As we agreed, it is worth a lot to Americans to have the constitution properly interpreted,” Stearns wrote. “We must have the proper incentives here, too.”

Stearns’ office soon sought help from a lobbying firm working on the issue, and he delivered a speech on the House floor about judges’ salaries getting eroded by inflation. Thomas’ warning about resignations was relayed at a meeting of the heads of several judges’ associations. L. Ralph Mecham, then the judiciary’s top administrative official, fired off the memo describing Thomas’ complaints to Rehnquist, his boss.

“I understand that Justice Thomas clearly told him that in his view departures would occur within the next year or so,” Mecham wrote of Thomas’ conversation with Stearns. Mecham worried that “from a tactical point of view,” congressional Democrats might oppose a raise if they sensed “the apparent purpose is to keep Justices [Antonin] Scalia and Thomas on the Court.” (Scalia had nine children and was also one of the less wealthy justices. Scalia, Mecham and Rehnquist have since died.)

It’s not clear if Rehnquist ever responded. Several months later, Rehnquist focused his annual year-end report on what he called “the most pressing issue facing the Judiciary: the need to increase judicial salaries.”

Several people close to Thomas told ProPublica they believed that it was implausible the justice would ever retire early, and that he may have exaggerated his concerns to bolster the case for a raise. But around 2000, chatter that Thomas was dissatisfied about money circulated through conservative legal circles and on Capitol Hill, according to interviews with prominent attorneys, former members of Congress and Thomas’ friends. “It was clear he was unhappy with his financial situation and his salary,” one friend said.

Former Sen. Trent Lott, then the Republican Senate majority leader, recalled in a recent interview that there were serious concerns at the time that Thomas or other justices would leave.

The public received hardly a hint that such conversations about Thomas were unfolding in Washington. Thomas did once allude to government salaries, in a 2001 speech praising the value of public service. “The job is not worth doing for what they pay. It’s not worth doing for the grief,” he said. “But it is worth doing for the principle.”

Around that time, Thomas was also pushing to allow justices to make paid speeches — a source of income that had been banned in the 1980s. On several occasions, Thomas discussed lifting the ban with appellate Judge David Hansen, who chaired the judiciary’s committee responsible for lobbying Congress on issues like pay, according to Mecham’s memo.

At Sen. Mitch McConnell’s request, a provision removing the ban for judges was quietly inserted into a spending bill in mid-2000. Why McConnell made the proposal became a subject of scrutiny in the legal press. After the Legal Times reported the measure had been dubbed the “Keep Scalia on the Court” bill, Scalia responded that the “honorarium ban makes no difference to me” and denied that he would ever leave the court for financial reasons. (The ban was never lifted. McConnell did not respond to a request for comment.)

During his second decade on the court, Thomas’ financial situation appears to have markedly improved. In 2003, he received the first payments of a $1.5 million advance for his memoir, a record-breaking sum for justices at the time. Ginni Thomas, who had been a congressional staffer, was by then working at the Heritage Foundation and was paid a salary in the low six figures.

Thomas also received dozens of expensive gifts throughout the 2000s, sometimes coming from people he’d met only shortly before. Thomas met Earl Dixon, the owner of a Florida pest control company, while getting his RV serviced outside Tampa in 2001, according to the Thomas biography “Supreme Discomfort.” The next year, Dixon gave Thomas $5,000 to put toward his grandnephew’s tuition. Thomas reported the payment in his annual disclosure filing.

Larger gifts went undisclosed. Crow paid for two years of private high school, which tuition rates indicate would’ve cost roughly $100,000. In 2008, another wealthy friend forgave “a substantial amount, or even all” of the principal on the loan Thomas had used to buy the quarter-million dollar RV, according to a recent Senate inquiry prompted by The New York Times’ reporting. Much of the Thomases’ leisure time was also paid for by a small set of billionaire businessmen, who brought the justice and his family on free vacations around the world. (Thomas has said he did not need to disclose the gifts of travel and his lawyer has disputed the Senate findings about the RV.)

By 2019, the justices’ pay hadn’t changed beyond keeping up with inflation. But Thomas’ views had apparently transformed from two decades before. That June, during a public appearance, Thomas was asked about salaries at the court. “Oh goodness, I think it’s plenty,” Thomas responded. “My wife and I are doing fine. We don’t live extravagantly, but we are fine.”

A few weeks later, Thomas boarded Crow’s private jet to head to Indonesia. He and his wife were off on vacation, an island cruise on Crow’s 162-foot yacht.

The Supreme Court on Monday released a code of conduct governing the behavior of the country’s most powerful judges for the first time in its history. But experts said it was unclear if the new rules, which do not include any enforcement mechanism, would address the issues raised by recent revelations about justices’ ethics and conduct.

The nine-page code, with an accompanying five pages of commentary, was signed by all the sitting justices and covers everything from the acceptance of gifts, to recusal standards, to avoiding improper outside influence on the justices. The step followed months of reporting by ProPublica detailing undisclosed gifts to Supreme Court justices from wealthy political donors.

The code does not specify who, if anyone, could determine whether the rules had been violated.

The new Supreme Court code’s lack of any apparent enforcement process is “the elephant in the room,” said Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas who studies the court. “Even the most stringent and aggressive ethics rules don’t mean all that much if there’s no mechanism for enforcing them. And the justices’ unwillingness to even nod toward that difficulty kicks the ball squarely back into Congress’ court.”

Nevertheless, some leading observers of the court described the creation of an explicit, written code as a landmark in the court’s 234-year history.

“The Supreme Court’s promulgation of a code of conduct today is of surpassing historic significance,” former federal appellate judge J. Michael Luttig told ProPublica. “The court must lead by the example that only it can set for the federal judiciary, as it does today.”

A statement released by the court on Monday accompanying the code said it was formulated to dispel “the misunderstanding that the Justices of this Court, unlike all other jurists in this country, regard themselves as unrestricted by any ethics rules.” It said the code “largely represents a codification of principles that we have long regarded as governing our conduct.”

A series of ProPublica stories this year detailed a pattern of behavior by Supreme Court justices that legal ethics experts said was far outside the norms of conduct for other federal judges. ProPublica disclosed that Justice Clarence Thomas has accepted undisclosed luxury travel from Dallas billionaire Harlan Crow and a coterie of other ultrawealthy men for decades. Crow purchased Thomas’ mother’s home and paid private school tuition for a relative Thomas was raising as his son. Thomas also spoke at donor events for the Koch network, the powerful conservative activist group. Separately, ProPublica revealed that Justice Samuel Alito accepted a private jet trip to Alaska from a hedge fund billionaire and did not recuse himself when that billionaire later had a case before the court.

Reporting from other outlets, including The Washington Post and The Associated Press, has added to the picture. The New York Times revealed that Thomas received a loan from a wealthy friend to purchase an expensive RV. A Senate investigation later found Thomas did not repay the loan in full.

Federal judges below the Supreme Court have long been subject to a written code of conduct, the foundations of which were set down a century ago following a major ethics scandal in the judiciary. Lower court judges are subject to oversight by panels of other judges, who review allegations of misconduct.

The high court’s new code of conduct is separate from an existing federal law that requires all federal judges including the justices on the Supreme Court to annually report income, assets and most gifts on a publicly available disclosure form. The law, which passed after the Watergate scandal, has been at the center of the controversies involving Thomas’ undisclosed gifts. Thomas and Alito have argued they were not required to disclose the luxury travel, and Thomas’ lawyer has said that “any prior reporting errors were strictly inadvertent.”

The new document largely echoes the code that applies to lower court judges. Many of its prescriptions are lofty but vague. It requires the justices to “act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.” It prohibits justices from soliciting gifts, practicing law or sitting on cases where their “impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” It states that the justices should not engage in “political activity,” but it does not define what that means.

Court observers are likely to spend weeks parsing the differences between the new code and that of the lower courts. Small changes were made without explanation. For instance, lower court judges are prohibited from lending “the prestige of the judicial office to advance” their own private interests. The justices are merely prohibited from “knowingly” doing so.

Whether any of the conduct that sparked the push for a formal ethics code would now be prohibited seems to remain open for interpretation. Take Thomas’ appearances at Koch network events. A federal judge told ProPublica that if he’d done the same as a lower court judge, it would’ve violated prohibitions against fundraising and political activity and he would’ve been subject to a disciplinary proceeding. It’s unclear if the high court’s new code would bar such activities or if each justice would answer such questions for him or herself.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., who has introduced a bill that would require the Supreme Court to adopt an enforceable code of conduct, said in a statement that the new code fell short of what is needed.

“The honor system has not worked for members of the Roberts Court,” he said. “This is a long-overdue step by the justices, but a code of ethics is not binding unless there is a mechanism to investigate possible violations and enforce the rules.”

Whitehouse’s bill advanced out of the Senate Judiciary Committee in July, but it has since stalled in the face of GOP opposition. It would create an enforcement mechanism for the court’s code of conduct and set up a process where panels of appellate judges would investigate potential ethics violations.

It’s unclear whether the court’s release of the code will affect the ongoing Senate investigations into justices’ relationships with businessmen and others involved in undisclosed travel and gifts. For months, the Senate Judiciary Committee has been seeking information from Crow and others about undisclosed gifts to Thomas.

Last week, Senate Judiciary Democrats deferred an effort to subpoena Crow in the face of intense Republican opposition on the committee. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the panel’s chair, said last week the committee would continue its efforts to authorize subpoenas in the near future.

The court’s new ethics standards are in many ways more lenient than those governing employees of the executive and legislative branches. There are still few restrictions on what gifts the justices can accept. Members of Congress are generally prohibited from taking gifts worth $50 or more and would need preapproval from an ethics committee to take many of the gifts Thomas and Alito have accepted.

Jeremy Fogel, a retired federal judge in California who had publicly called for the Supreme Court to adopt an ethics code, said Monday that he was “heartened to see that the justices unanimously have recognized the need for an explicit code of conduct.”

“Whether it will make a difference in the justices’ day-to-day actions or in public perceptions of the court remains to be seen,” Fogel said.

For months, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his allies have defended Thomas’ practice of not disclosing free luxury travel by saying the trips fell under a carve-out to the federal disclosure law for government officials.

But by not publicly reporting his trips to the Bohemian Grove and to a 2018 Koch network event, Thomas appears to have violated the disclosure law, even by his own permissive interpretation of it, ethics law experts said. The details of the trips, which ProPublica first reported last month, could prove important evidence in any formal investigation of Thomas’ conduct.

Thomas’ defense has centered on what’s known as the personal hospitality exemption, part of a federal law passed after Watergate that requires Supreme Court justices and many other officials to publicly report most gifts.

Under the exemption, gifts of “food, lodging, or entertainment received as personal hospitality” don’t have to be disclosed. The law provides a technical definition of “personal hospitality.” It only applies to gifts received from someone at that person’s home or “on property or facilities” that they or their family own. A judge would generally not need to disclose a weekend at a friend’s house; they would need to report if someone paid for them to stay at the Ritz-Carlton.

Numerous ethics law experts have said that gifts of transportation, such as private jet flights, must be disclosed under the law because they are not “food, lodging, or entertainment.”

Thomas has laid out a different view of the disclosure requirements. In his financial disclosure released in late August, Thomas asserted that the personal hospitality exemption extended to transportation. Justice Samuel Alito has made the same argument in an op-ed where he elaborated on his reasoning: private jets would count as “facilities” under the law’s definition of personal hospitality. In this view of the disclosure requirements, a key question would be whether the person providing a private jet flight actually owned the jet. So, for example, Thomas would not need to report flights on his friend Harlan Crow’s private plane because Crow owns it.

Thomas and Alito’s position is incorrect, many experts said, because it simply ignores the statute’s language: that the personal hospitality exemption only applies to food, lodging, or entertainment.

But there’s an additional reason the newly revealed trips should have been disclosed.

ProPublica recently reported that in 2018, Thomas traveled on a Gulfstream G200 private jet to Palm Springs, California, to attend a dinner at the Koch political network’s donor summit. He didn’t hitch a ride on a jet owned by a friend. Instead, he flew there on a chartered plane: a jet available through an Uber-like service that lets wealthy individuals rent other people’s planes. The owner of the jet at the time, Connecticut real estate developer John Fareri, confirmed to ProPublica that he didn’t provide the plane to Thomas and that the Palm Springs flight was a charter flight. That means someone else — not the owner — paid.

A Koch network spokesperson said the network didn’t pay for the flights. Because Thomas didn’t disclose the trip, it’s still not clear who chartered the plane. Jet charter companies told ProPublica the flights could have cost more than $75,000.

Experts told ProPublica they couldn’t think of an argument that would justify not disclosing the Palm Springs trip. “Even using Thomas’ flawed logic about the personal hospitality exception, there’s no way this chartered flight fits into that exception,” said Kedric Payne, a former deputy chief counsel at Congress’ ethics office.

Thomas and his attorney did not respond to questions about why he didn’t disclose the flight or if he paid for it himself. After the Palm Springs donor event, the plane flew to an airport outside Denver, where Thomas appeared at a ceremony honoring his former clerk, then back to northern Virginia, where Thomas lives.

Thomas’ undisclosed trips to the Bohemian Grove present a similar issue. As ProPublica reported last month, Thomas has for 25 years been a regular at the Grove, an all-men’s retreat held on a 2,700-acre property in California. Thomas has been hosted by Crow, who is a member of the secretive club, and stayed at a lodge there called Midway. Members typically must pay thousands of dollars to bring a guest, according to a Grove guest application form obtained by ProPublica and interviews with members.

Crow does not own the Grove nor does he own the lodge where Thomas has stayed. Experts said in these instances again, even by Thomas’ own characterization of the rules, he appears to have violated the law by not disclosing the trips.

“It makes a mockery of the statute,” said Richard Painter, who served as the chief ethics lawyer for the George W. Bush White House. Painter said that if charter flights and trips to Grove don’t need to be disclosed, “you could call everything personal hospitality. Broadway show tickets. A first-class ticket on Delta Air Lines. A trip on the Queen Mary.”

Following ProPublica’s reporting on Thomas’ failure to disclose gifts earlier this year, members of Congress sent a complaint to the Judicial Conference, the arm of the judiciary responsible for implementing the disclosure law. In April, the Judicial Conference said it had referred the matter to a committee of judges responsible for reviewing such allegations.

The law says that if there is “reasonable cause” to believe a judge “willfully” failed to disclose information they were required to, the conference should refer the matter to the U.S. attorney general, who can pursue penalties. But that would be unprecedented. As of May, the Judicial Conference said it had never made such a referral. The committee’s process appears to be ongoing.

In his filing in August, Thomas said that his view of the disclosure rules was based in part on conversations he had with staff at the Judicial Conference. Thomas did not respond to questions about the advice he received. A judiciary spokesperson declined to comment on whether it was ever the Judicial Conference’s position that gifts of private jet flights didn’t need to be reported.

This March, the judiciary revised its regulations to make explicit that private jet travel must be disclosed because transportation is not covered by the personal hospitality exemption. Experts said the update merely clarified what was always the case. (ProPublica reviewed other federal judges’ financial disclosure filings and found at least six recent examples of judges disclosing gifts of private jet travel before the regulations were updated.)

More than a decade ago, Thomas’ disclosure practices came under scrutiny following research by a watchdog group and a story in The New York Times about his relationship with Crow. Democratic lawmakers wrote to the Judicial Conference in 2011, saying that Thomas had failed to report the sources of his wife’s income and that he “may” have also received free private jet trips without reporting them.

What happened after that remains opaque.

In a four-sentence letter the following year, the secretary to the Judicial Conference said that the complaint had been reviewed. “Nothing has been presented,” he wrote, “to support a determination” that Thomas improperly failed to report gifts of travel. The letter did not detail what steps the conference took, the reasoning behind its decision or what information it had been presented with.

At the time, nothing in the public record had established that Thomas had ever accepted undisclosed private jet flights. But Thomas’ attorney Elliot Berke has cited the 2012 letter as vindication of Thomas’ practices. “The Judicial Conference issued a letter confirming that Justice Thomas had not improperly failed to disclose information concerning his travel,” Berke wrote.

ProPublica asked the Judicial Conference for details on the 2012 episode, including whether the committee conducted an investigation and an explanation of its ultimate conclusion: Did it determine that private jet flights need not be reported? Or did it determine that it wasn’t clear if Thomas had actually accepted such a gift?

A Judicial Conference spokesperson declined to comment.