South Dakota Federal Judge Lawrence L. Piersol, Pennington County, and the pro-Marxist non-governmental organization, NDN Collective appear to have mutual longstanding financial and, or, family ties to the same far leftist organizations that are creating DOGE headlines in recent weeks, creating potential conflicts of interest in multiple criminal and civil cases involving NDN Collective and their leadership that have been ignored by both federal and state courts.
Opposing counsel for at least one plaintiff currently mired in civil litigation against NDN Collective is demanding an investigation of these shared ties questioning Judge Lawrence Piersol’s ability to maintain impartiality in ongoing legal matters and whether Pennington County’s grant relationships have also influenced an inequitable dispensation of justice in previous cases.
Documents obtained independently to the scrutiny of the Elon Musk, DOGE corruption investigation of USAID and other federal departments show U.S. Federal Court Judge Lawrence L. Piersol and NDN Collective have both family and financial affiliations with the Bush Foundation, a Democrat leftist NGO that has given upwards of $100-million to NDN Collective. Judge Lawrence Piersol’s wife Catherine served on the Bush Foundation’s Board of Directors until at least 2014, according to visible foundation records and has been an advocate for social justice programming at the University of South Dakota School of Law, involved in the cultivation and early identification of future public servants under the guise of philanthropic interest.
Lawrence and Catherine Piersol also shared a long affiliation of support for former Democrat Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. That relationship became a matter of national scrutiny in 2004, when U.S. Senator Tom Daschle filed a lawsuit against opponent Republican John Thune on the eve of the 2004 U.S. Senate race in South Dakota. Judge Lawrence Piersol presided over that case and handed Daschle a favorable ruling, above the cries for personal recusal by critics alleging both political and personal bias. A complaint for judicial misconduct resulted in no action.
Over the past seven years, Judge Piersol has presided over multiple federal criminal and civil cases involving NDN Collective, or their CEO, Nick Tilsen, and has repeatedly refused calls by opposing counsel for his recusal on basis of personal bias, while handing down procedural rulings and verdicts consistently favorable to NDN and their associates.
In 2019, Piersol sided with native protesters in the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s NODAPL blockade of the Keystone XL pipeline, blocking a riot boosting law as unconstitutional that would have enhanced penalties for organizing riots and encouraging out-of-state participation.
In granting plaintiff’s motion for a preliminary injunction, U.S. District Judge Lawrence L. Piersol wrote:
“Imagine that if these riot boosting statutes were applied to the protests that took place in Birmingham, Alabama, what might be the result? . . . Dr. King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference could have been liable under an identical riot boosting law[.]”
Judge Piersol is currently presiding federal justice in two civil actions between NDN Collective and Rapid City’s Retsel Corporation, the ownership group of Grand Gateway Hotel that became the target of a national boycott after a native-on-native shooting death sparked a racial controversy.
Meanwhile, NDN Collective CEO Nick Tilsen’s 2020 charges of robbery and simple assault were dismissed by prosecutorial discretion in 2022 in Pennington County, a jurisdiction also sharing mutual NGO beneficiary status with NDN Collective, receiving more than $5-million in grants from the MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge, a DEI law enforcement program requiring maintained racial quotas for both arrests and total jail inmate populations.
While full financial disclosure of NDN’s funding sources has been partially prevented by similarly entangled court rulings, visible online documents show NDN Collective also received at least $3-million from the MacArthur Foundation in 2020 as part of a $25-million “anti-racism” program and an undisclosed operational grant of an unknown size. NDN’s total acknowledged MacArthur grants total $4.5-million
On July 4th, 2020, Nick Tilsen and a group of at least 30 native American protestors scuttled a pair of 15-passenger rental vans on the roadway to Mt. Rushmore in an attempt to blockade visitors traveling to see President Donald Trump’s nationally televised Independence Day address at the Rushmore monument. In an ensuing scuffle with police, Tilsen is seen on multiple videos tearing a plexiglass riot shield out of the hands of a much smaller female officer, leading to robbery and assault charges that were later dismissed after a murky two year delay by Pennington County prosecutors.
The ongoing DOGE-Elon Musk investigation into government corruption has revealed a vast network of NGOs as the preferred pass-through for federal grant moneys eventually funding far leftist political campaigns, their NDN, BLM and ANTIFA allies and others in the democrat camp.
An estimated $100-million given to NDN Collective by the EPA for “climate justice initiatives” has since been halted and rescinded by the DOGE team.
