In a Truth Social post on September 1, President Trump endorsed Attorney General Brenna Bird for reelection in Iowa. Among other praise, Trump said Bird knew what it took to “Advance Election Integrity” and “Stop Migrant Crime.”
The following week, the Bird for Iowa Facebook page posted a video clip of Bird speaking in a segment for Cedar Rapids’ KCRG-TV about election security. “As Attorney General, I take election integrity very seriously,” she said. “My office prosecutes crimes involving elections and we’ve prosecuted a few noncitizens for illegally voting in an Iowa election.”
Bird is referring to the criminal prosecutions of eight Iowans for alleged illegal voting, only one of which resulted in a conviction. But just two years ago, she and Secretary of State Paul Pate sued the Biden administration for refusing their requests for information about the citizenship status of 2,176 Iowa voters who Pate and Bird believed to be noncitizens.
Bird’s focus on election security and noncitizen voting, as well as her campaign financing, have come under scrutiny.
Dwindling voter fraud claims mirror extreme rarity of noncitizen voting in US
Bird and Pate announced their lawsuit against the Biden administration in December 2024 based on unproven claims of mass noncitizen voting. Five months later, their initial pursuit of 2,176 people had shrunk to just 277 “noncitizens who have voted or are registered to vote.”
This June, the Des Moines Register reported that just eight prosecutions had resulted, including three acquittals and one conviction. However, Bird spokesperson Jen Green confirmed that election integrity will remain a central issue to Bird’s role as attorney general.
“We’ve seen firsthand in Iowa that elections can be determined by very few votes, so it’s crucial every vote is a legal vote,” Green said in a statement.
Her focus on investigating noncitizen voting reflects federal priorities.
Trump has warned of widespread noncitizen voting since May 2016, cementing his position in October of that year by suggesting America was intentionally admitting undocumented immigrants to the country so they could vote and influence elections. In January 2017, he claimed that between three and five million undocumented immigrants had voted illegally in the 2016 US presidential election.
Several independent studies have shown that noncitizen voting in US elections is a non-issue. The Heritage Foundation, a prominent conservative think-tank, maintains a database of fraudulent voting that lists just 22 incidents of noncitizen voting between 2005-2022. But as recently as September 14, the Trump administration was accused of going so far as to break the law to find noncitizen voters: A whistleblower alleged that agents from the Department of Homeland Security used information from internal and external databases to find voter histories on state websites, even though access to those voters is limited by the states.
A March poll by The Economist found that fewer than half of Americans believe non-citizen voting is a serious problem.
Koch Industries, dark money, and Brenna Bird
A June survey by the Brennan Center for Justice found that more than nine out of 10 American voters see corruption as a “big problem” in government. In fact, about two-thirds of survey respondents specifically identified donations from billionaires and big corporations as causes of corruption.
Koch Industries is one of these large corporations. Founded by businessman Fred Koch in 1940, Koch Industries eventually became America’s second largest private company by revenue. When Fred died in 1967, his son Charles Koch took over. Since then, Charles and his brother David have funneled millions of dollars a year into libertarian and conservative causes. They provided significant financial backing to the Tea Party Movement that began in 2007 and have founded conservative think tanks like Cato Institute, Americans for Prosperity, and Stand Together Foundation to generate revenue for conservative politicians. Beginning in 2006, the Koch Brothers also held biannual “megadonor summits” which, for example, spent $250 million influencing Senate elections in 2016.
Koch-based political donations often come directly from Koch Industries—or Koch, Inc., as it was later renamed. However, they also founded and controlled well-known organizations which remain active today even though David Koch passed away in 2019.
And they’re putting big money into affecting Iowa’s elections this year.
One of the most popular recipients of contributions from Koch Industries and its subsidiaries is a nonprofit organization called the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA). RAGA functions as a “dark money vehicle.” In other words, it takes millions of dollars from anonymous donors and corporations and uses those funds to influence elections and policy, with little to no public knowledge about where the funds originate.
This practice isn’t always legal. The Federal Election Commission requires federal political committees to disclose the name, address, occupation, and employer of any person who contributes more than $200 in a year or election cycle to a political campaign or entity. In 2016, several Koch dark money groups were fined for refusing to disclose their donors.
So, where do Iowa and Brenna Bird fit in? Iowa Starting Line previously reported on Republican Iowa governor candidate Zach Lahn, who was hired as Montana’s state director for the Koch-founded Americans for Prosperity. There, he pushed to block Medicaid expansion in 2015 executive legislation, an effort that ultimately failed. Then, he moved to Wichita, Kansas, where he co-founded a private school financed by Charles Koch’s son, Chase.
The Koch empire’s interest in Iowa doesn’t end with Lahn.
In 2022, Koch Industries contributed $775,000 to RAGA to help elect Republican attorneys general. In the second fiscal quarter of 2022 alone, RAGA donated $200,000 to Bird’s campaign for Iowa’s attorney general.
On September 19, 2025, Bird posted pictures to the official Iowa Attorney General account on X (formerly Twitter) of her walkthrough of a fertilizer plant in Wever acquired by Koch Industries. “Koch Fertilizer in Wever helps fuel both our farmers and our economy,” she wrote. Critics, including lawmakers and agricultural groups, said the purchase “further consolidates the market at the expense of taxpayers.”
More recently, RAGA has donated more than $3.5 million to Bird’s reelection.On August 22, Bird appeared as a guest speaker at an event hosted by Americans for Prosperity.
Bird has several ties to the Koch empire. And though Americans may agree that major donations to elected officials are a cause of corruption, Bird has demonstrated support for deregulating political donations. In 2025, she filed an amicus brief, or legal written document from an uninvolved party to a lawsuit, supporting The Buckeye Institute in its ongoing 2022 lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The Buckeye Institute is suing to challenge the IRS’s requirements that federally recognized charities report their donors annually.
Bird said the donor disclosure requirement exploits donors’ privacy and undermines their First Amendment protections.
Bird has accepted and defended dark money contributions the size of which two-thirds of Americans say cause corruption. Her pursuit of noncitizen voters began with 2,100 names and has only netted one conviction. In November, Iowans will decide whether to support her or her opponent, Nate Willems.
The 2026 midterm elections take place on November 3. Make sure you’re registered to vote and have a plan to do so right here.
