Kristi Noem gets it (opinion)

Editor’s Note: Michael D’Antonio is the author of the book “Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success” and co-author, with Peter Eisner, of the book “High Crimes: The Corruption, Impunity, and Impeachment of Donald Trump.” The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. According to news reports, largely based on reporting from the Associated Press, Noem created the appearance of having used her position to pressure a state regulator into giving her daughter a real-estate appraiser’s license. After the South Dakota Appraiser Certification Program moved to deny the license application by Noem’s daughter, Kassidy Peters, the agency’s director, Sherry Bren, was summoned to the governor’s mansionto discuss “certification procedures.” There she encountered Noem, Peters, Noem’s former Chief of Staff Tony Venhuizen and Noem’s former legal counsel Tom Hart, as well as South Dakota Labor Secretary Marcia Hultman, Bren’s supervisor and director of Labor and Management Amber Mulder and senior staff attorney Graham Oey, according to Bren. I have been working for years to fix that process, and I signed legislation to that effect this past session.” And while her office declined to answer detailed questions about the meeting, a spokesman for Noem said that “The Associated Press is disparaging the Governor’s daughter in order to attack the Governor politically – no wonder Americans’ trust in the media is at an all-time low.” According to The Washington Post, “government ethics experts who reviewed the series of events at the AP’s request said Noem’s decision to include her daughter in the meeting created a conflict of interest regardless of what was discussed.” And after the AP report was published this week, the state attorney general’s office and a state senator said the matter would be reviewed. Rigidly opposed to mask mandates recommended by experts, Noem has talked as if she were managing to defeat the pandemic without taking much action, claiming in February that South Dakota, “got through it better than virtually any other state.” This wasn’t even remotely true, as South Dakota ended 2020 with the second highest rate of infection in the country.