John,

You may have seen the headlines about how CREW exposed Toyota’s donations to 38 members of Congress who voted to overturn the election, and the company’s subsequent commitment to stop giving to the Sedition Caucus, after we campaigned on social media for them to reverse course. But that’s not all we’ve been up to lately. Here are just a few of our latest investigations:

• Our long-running investigation into former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s lavish and controversial “Madison Dinners” uncovered that the dinners cost taxpayers nearly $65,000—$21,000 more than previously known. In addition, records we obtained indicate that the State Department attempted to obscure costs relating to the dinners in reports to Congress, including more than $16,000 spent on custom Madison Dinner pens and journals given to the high-profile political donors and others who attended the events. For more, read CREW’s full investigation.
• Recently, it was reported that South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem used a “private donation” from Willis Johnson, a billionaire GOP donor from Tennessee, to deploy up to 50 National Guard troops to the US-Mexico border. Noem’s use of a private donation in this way is highly unusual and raises serious questions about allowing donors to influence decisions about deploying the military. We’ve sent records requests and are investigating the decision.
• We also uncovered that Trump Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross earned at least $53 million in outside income while serving in the administration. Even in an administration marked by incredible corruption, Ross stood out—an inspector general report released in December 2020 revealed that Ross was under investigation for multiple ethics issues tied to his financial interests for nearly the entire time he served as Commerce secretary. For more, read our full investigation.

We couldn’t do any of this without you, so thank you for being with us in the fight for a better, more equitable government, no matter how long it takes.

The CREW Team

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