{"id":5403,"date":"2026-08-27T05:36:03","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T05:36:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=5403"},"modified":"2026-08-27T05:36:03","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T05:36:03","slug":"christian-maga-group-accused-of-playing-loose-with-taxpayer-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=5403","title":{"rendered":"Christian MAGA group accused of playing loose with taxpayer money"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

President Donald Trump’s political movement, Make America Great Again (MAGA), heavily relies on Christian nationalists who ignore the Founding Fathers’ secularism to argue the United States was founded as an explicitly Christian country. Yet according to a groundbreaking new report, Christian nationalists are engaging in self-dealing on a massive scale \u2014 and through connections with American government entities.<\/p>\n

Read more GOP caught in the crossfire in Trump\u2019s nightmare war on auto industry<\/a><\/p>\n

“Ballrooms, slush funds, jumbo jets. Worship services in the Pentagon, electioneering in churches, the Ten Commandments in schools,” reported Zeteo’s Lauren Windsor on Wednesday based on over a year’s worth of reporting. “Conflicts of interest and Christian nationalism have been hallmarks of Donald Trump\u2019s second presidency. The epic flood of corruption swamping Washington isn\u2019t just overwhelming American politics \u2013 it\u2019s also obscuring the grift occurring in red states across the country, as officials work to put public investment funds under the control of their friends at Christian finance firms.”<\/p>\n

Windsor added, “A major conduit for that corruption is the State Financial Officers Foundation (SFOF), a small but powerful nonprofit that convenes Republican state treasurers and auditors, right-wing activists, and Christian finance executives to strategize over how to defeat liberals and weaponize state treasuries against allegedly woke corporations, while steering state treasury money to their ideological allies. Much of their \u201cWar on Woke\u201d consists of boosting the fossil fuel industry and crushing efforts to mitigate climate change, under the notion that corporate safeguards are bad business.”<\/p>\n

Although Windsor’s report briefly mentioned the state of affairs in Kentucky, she focused on Alaska, including a character named Derek Kreifels.<\/p>\n

“Derek Kreifels was the CEO of the State Financial Officers Foundation for more than a decade,” Windsor wrote. “He resigned from this role in the fall of 2024, but he remains an SFOF board member, and his wife serves as one of its top executives. Now, Kreifels is lobbying SFOF treasurers to put public retirees\u2019 savings and other funds they oversee into faith-aligned financial products and services offered by his firm, Prospr Aligned, and its affiliates in the Christian finance industry.”<\/p>\n

Windsor added, “Kreifels\u2019s firm has already won business from the Kentucky auditor\u2019s office, which is led by a member of the State Financial Officers Foundation\u2019s leadership team, as I can report for the first time. Another state Kreifels has targeted heavily is Alaska, where he has friends in former Revenue Commissioner and ex-SFOF Vice Chair Adam Crum and Alaska Permanent Fund Chair Jason Brune.”<\/p>\n

Read more Trump saddles swing state GOP with a new $69 million bill<\/a><\/p>\n

She also said that in an interview with her in Anchorage last year, “Brune defended Crum and his collaboration with Kreifels as efforts to promote resource extraction in the Arctic \u2013 arguing that he and Crum, as members of the governor\u2019s cabinet, ‘are pimping for the state.'”<\/p>\n

Describing one event, Windsor reported that “in the weeks leading up to the event, SFOF honored Crum, naming him its vice chair for 2025, and Kreifels announced he was resigning as CEO to embark on a private business venture he would soon reveal.<\/p>\n

She added, “‘I have been called to a new mission,’ Kreifels declared. The Anchorage summit presented great synergies for Kreifels. He could, using nonprofit money, convene right-wing finance officials and industry executives who lobby them \u2013 while lobbying those officials himself on the services offered by his new business venture and celebrating his tenure at SFOF with friends and family in an exotic locale. According to emails from Kreifels that I obtained, SFOF covered travel costs for public officials and their staff.”<\/p>\n

The State Financial Officers Foundation has also helped support Kreifels\u2019s private business ventures. According to state travel disclosures, SFOF paid for at least one treasurer\u2019s travel to the New York Stock Exchange launch party for Prospr\u2019s Alaska investment fund, reports Windsor, adding that SFOF also arranged for a special speaker: longtime ally Paul Atkins, who as chairman of the Trump Securities and Exchange Commission regulates the Prospr fund.”<\/p>\n

IRS rules prohibit self-dealing and private benefit from nonprofit money, Windsor said.<\/p>\n

Read more Companies that told Trump to get lost outperformed competitors that caved: study<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump’s political movement, Make America Great Again (MAGA), heavily relies on Christian nationalists who ignore the Founding Fathers’ secularism to argue the United States was founded as an explicitly Christian country. 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