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Noem Lied About Phone Hacking, Falsely Implicated January 6th Committee

Back in January, Governor Kristi Noem claimed that her personal cell phone had been hacked and blamed the January 6th Select Committee that investigated her dear Donald Trump’s role in hacking our Constitutional democracy:

Following the leak of Governor Kristi Noem and her family’s personal Social Security numbers and other private information by the January 6th Committee, Governor Noem’s personal cell phone number has been hacked and used to make hoax calls. Governor Noem had no involvement in these calls.

“Callous mishandling of personal information has real world consequences,” said Governor Noem. “If you get such a phone call from my number, know that I had no involvement. I have urged both the United States Attorney General and multiple congressional committees to investigate the leaking of my family’s personal information, and I look forward to whatever resolution they can provide.”

The South Dakota Fusion Center has been notified of this breach [Office of the Governor, press release, 2023.01.23].

It turns out the Governor was lying. No one hacked her cell phone. There do not appear to have been hoax calls, plural. And the one prank call that appears to have prompted this false message from the Governor had nothing to do with the January 6th Committee.

That one very dumb prank call came from now-fired KSFY/KOTA political reporter Austin Goss, who on January 22 used PrankDial.com to send the transparently fake “Mafia Guy Got Vaccines” recording to former South Dakota Republican Party chairman Dan Lederman. Goss did not need to hack the Governor’s phone, and he likely lacks the skills to do so. He had numerous contacts with the Governor and with Lederman, including communications via their personal phone numbers. All Goss had to do was enter their numbers into the two boxes on the PrankDial.com webpage, and out went the dumb call, complete with the closing line, “You’ve just been pranked by PrankDial.com.”

Dan Lederman knew on January 22 this was one prank call. The call told him where to find the recording online and see how easily and non-hackily such pranks calls are sent. Yet Lederman evidently called Governor Noem to tell her about the use of her phone number for this prank, and Governor Noem issued a press release the day after the prank call blowing it up into a multiple criminal invasions of her privacy in which she implicated Nancy Pelosi and the investigators of the January 6 insurrection.

If Governor Noem steps forward with evidence that her phone was actually hacked, that that hacking facilitated multiple hoax calls, and that the hacking had anything to do with the January 6th Committee, I will promptly retract my statements here. But it looks like that official January 23, 2023, press release was a prank call of Noem’s own. At least Goss had the courtesy to tag his prank call with “You’ve been pranked!”

26 Comments

  1. e platypus onion

    I recently read it was a reporter for a news outlet in South Duhkota that was the leaker.

  2. Bonnie B Fairbank

    What?!? The South Dakota Embodiment of Truth, Sagacity, Compassion, and Fidelity telling porkies? I am appalled, just appalled.

  3. Donald Pay

    Bonnie sums up my thoughts. I don’t believe a whole lot that spews out of Noem’s mouth, at any point. Her press releases, I assume, aren’t written by her, but I don’t believe them either. That book? Not very good fiction. Unlike most non-righty journalists who make mistakes of fact, she will not apologize for, retract or correct her statements. She’s a transgender Trump, living completely in the fantasy she makes up.

  4. All Mammal

    First thing she does is run and cry to the FEDS. Hahaha. The very ones she talks T on day and night then runs to them like a B horror movie actress. Lousyass leader she is. And mamby pamby DL felt threatened? Go to church, guy. Y’all need Jesus. If your panties are in a bunch over a prank call, how the heck are you running for any leadership job?

  5. All Mammal

    Your*

  6. Cory, Republican’s have to learn to lie about trivial matters. Otherwise they can’t be MAGA’s.

  7. Bob Newland

    Mark! I am appalled by your indiscriminate use of apostrphes.

  8. “I no longer listen to what people say, I just watch what they do. Behavior never lies.”

    — Winston Churchill

  9. P. Aitch

    I completely agree with the previous comments . Falsely claiming victimhood can trivialize and undermine the experiences of those who have genuinely suffered, and it can also be harmful to others who may be falsely accused or wrongly blamed. It’s important to always approach claims with a critical eye and seek evidence before accepting them as fact.

  10. David Newquist

    I recall when a state legislator, a former teacher, reported to the local party after meeting Noem during her first term in the state legislature. He said he had met the airiest head he’d ever encountered, and that included special education students.

  11. BobJ

    Kristi, maybe, just maybe, you are not cut out for public life. Maybe fulltime grandmother would be a better occupation.
    Somebody needs to teach Little Addie how to shoot those guns.

  12. O

    Unfortunately, unless someone is wiling to “go Dominion” on those who lie, lying is free and wholly without consequence.

  13. Patty Jenkins

    Man, I’d like to know where her “Hero Ian Fury was when she was getting pranked or planked”? I thought he was the savior of the day for Krusti?

  14. “The Democrats don’t matter, The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with sh!t.”

    -Steve Bannon

  15. Jenny

    SD politics is all kinda funny when you don’t live there.

  16. “A doctor tells a woman she only has six months to live so the doc tells her to marry an economist and move to South Dakota so it will feel like an eternity.”
    -Garrison Keillor

  17. leslie

    Putin and Russia have no future in the world after Ukraine. Lying, scheming, thieving doesn’t cut it.

    Same with the GOP, Republican Party and Putin’s puppet Trump the grifter and the packed, lying SCOTUS 6-3 conservative majority, the climate, vaccine and science deniers, and the disinformationists. Economic equality must rise back up. Up the billionaires and all those guns.

    Same with Noem, Fury, the SD GOP and the rest of the lost-cause conservatives clinging to power by stripping voting and social, civil and physical rights from those of us who are more liberal, as demographics change.

  18. 96Tears

    That’s pretty much the whole idea, leslie.

    Maybe we’re all going to need assault guns to defend ourselves when this twisted, demented GOP agenda tightens the knot with the boots on the ground activists who are awaiting the signal to start purging the landscape of woke liberal commies, as defined by Noem, Trump, di Santis, QAnon, Tucker and the deep, widespread uber-Right echo chamber. As we learn more and more about Jan. 6, Trump’s fan club appears determined to prove that Jan. 6 was a mere taste of more to come.

    It’s the only card they have left to play. They will never again be this close. The window is open now. 2028 will be too late. Even the most spineless, milquetoast GOP officials like Dusty Johnson know the Rubicon will be crossed the minute that Donald Trump clinches the 2024 GOP nomination.

    Republicans, stand back and stand by. Your chosen destiny is coming.

  19. O

    “Money is accountability,” victorious Dominion attorney Stephen Shackelford declared in an interview with NPR, “and we got that today from Fox.”

  20. Why does Donald Trump still have a passport and why isn’t he under house arrest?

  21. Arlo Blundt

    Larry–the DOJ and Merrick Garland are proceeding very carefully and very professionally in building the case against Trump. They are establishing a direct line of communication between Trump and his lawyers (the incredible Rudy, John Eastman, Sydney Powell) and leaders of the seditious treason at the Capitol (the Jones fellow, OathKeepers, Proud Boys, etc.). As they convict the rioters, they receive more information regarding this communication and coordination. Now that these groups are bargaining for reduced sentences, the direct line of communication is becoming more evident. DOJ needs witnesses and they are getting them in line. Trump’s biggest legal problems may be in the Georgia state courts where the Secretary of State and others are in line to testify. The Republicans in Georgia have now passed legislation allowing them to remove from office the potential prosecutors of Trump…..stay tuned.

  22. How is Mrs. Noem not complicit in the Trump crimes? She knows where all the bodies are buried or else she’s too stupid to hold any office.

  23. 96Tears

    Larry – Mastermind has never been and will never be applied to the Queen of Snowflakes. Not complicit. She’s a dime deep.

  24. e platypus onion

    SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — Austin Goss, a former reporter for Dakota News Now and KOTA, pleaded guilty to using Gov. Kristi Noem’s personal cell phone number to make a prank call in January, according to Zach Nelson of KCCR Radio in Pierre.

    Goss was in court in Stanley County today where he pleaded guilty to a lesser class 2 misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct. The original charge of making threatening, harassing or misleading contacts, a class I misdemeanor was dismissed.

  25. The beast at Tanagra. Uzani, his army. Darmok and Jalad on the ocean.

  26. John

    Re: “Democrats don’t matter . . .” is spot on. Our hero senator in the NE Unicameral left the democratic party, becoming an independent because the corporate democrats love taking credit for her principled stand to filibuster everything until the republicans drop their gender hate bills, while the same corporate democrats refuse sending a dollar to rural state democrats. https://nebraskapublicmedia.org/en/news/news-articles/prominent-progressive-nebraska-lawmaker-leaves-democratic-party/

    The 1920s and 1930 taught 2 truisms. 1) Fascism marches over appeasers with impunity. 2) It requires bloodshed to defeat fascism.

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