South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem asked a state ethics board to dismiss a complaint against her without a public hearing and to seal off certain records, documents released Friday by the state’s Government Accountability Board show.
The Republican governor argued in an April motion that the state's attorney general, a fellow Republican who filed the complaint, was out for political retribution and should be removed from the complaint. Noem had pushed for him to resign and later for his impeachment over his involvement in a fatal auto accident.
The attorney general's complaint was sparked by a report from The Associated Press last year that Noem had taken a hands-on role in a state agency shortly after it moved to deny her daughter a real estate appraiser license.
