Former prime minister of Iceland and Centre Party leader Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson met with Republican staffers at a secret meeting in Gothenburg, Sweden, according to filings with the US Senate. The trip was funded by Turning Point Action, a political advocacy group founded by Charlie Kirk and connected to US President Donald Trump and his MAGA-movement.
According to filings of travel expenses with the US Senate, five chiefs of staff for US senators aligned with Mr Trump attended the trip, titled “The 2025 Transatlantic Study Trip”, on August 20-24 last year. The staffers met with high-level centre-right leaders in Nordic politics during stops in Stockholm, Haninge and Gothenburg in Sweden, and Oslo, Norway.
The staffers who filed reports were Sean Riley, chief of staff for senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Lisa Goeas, chief of staff for senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, Amelia Breinig, chief of staff for senator Peter Ricketts of Nebraska, Rebecca Angelson, chief of staff for senator Jon Husted of Ohio, and Tucker Knott, then chief of staff for senator Ted Budd of North Carolina, who now works for lobbying firm Ballard Partners.
“This trip is directly connected to my official duties through its focus on Arctic and transatlantic security, defense-industrial resilience, and Western cultural alignment - all of which support core U.S. national interests,” Knott’s filing with the US Senate details.
Turning Point COO Tyler Bowyer signed the documents on behalf of Turning Point Action, which is allowed to participate in political advocacy unlike its sister organisation, Turning Point USA. Bowyer is a defendant in the case against 11 Arizona Republicans and seven Trump associates accused of the fake electors plot, intended to falsely claim that Trump had won the state in the 2020 Presidential Election he lost to Joe Biden.
Sean Riley, who attended the trip was also revealed to have participated in an attempt to hand a list of fake electors to Vice President Mike Pence on January 6 2021, as a joint session of Congress was set to ratify Mr Biden’s election win. Turning Point aided the “Stop the Steal” mass protests on that day that turned into the infamous insurrection in the Capitol.
None of the trip’s attendees posted on social media about their attendance, as far as Heimildin can tell, suggesting a certain secrecy surrounding the events. Only Micah Rea, Director of Faith Based Initiatives at the US Department of Commerce, shared anything online about his travels. “Off to Sweden and Norway this week for a personal trip!” he posted on Instagram along with a photo of himself seated on an airplane. According to the itinerary, reported to the US Senate, Mr Rea met with the Republican staffers along with Baroness Philippa Stroud, a member of the UK House of Lords for the Conservative Party, in Oslo on the final day of the trip.
Funding from rich, right-wing US donors
According to the filings, the trip was organised by Nordic Republicans board member Katie Hagström, who operates the advisory firm Valstand Strategies in Sweden and the think tank Nordic Sidebar. Centre Party members have been invited to join events hosted by the think tank along with New Direction, a European Parliament-funded think tank connected to the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) Party, and financed partly by organisations that have received funding from US oil billionaire and supporter of right-wing causes Charles Koch and his late brother David. Robert Tyler of New Direction was a guest at the Gothenburg dinner panel along with Mr Gunnlaugsson, Ms Hagström and member of European Parliament for the far-right Swedish Democrats, Charlie Weimers.
None of Mr Gunnlaugsson, the five Republican staffers who filed reports with the US Senate, Ms Hagström, Mr Tyler or Mr Weimers responded to Heimildin’s inquiries. Mr Gunnlaugsson did not answer whether a foreign entity paid his travel expenses. Members of Alþingi, Iceland’s parliament, are required to report any gifts, such as travel expenses, to Alþingi according to ethics rules. Mr Gunnlaugsson has not reported any such gifts.
“Turning Point is funded by ultra-rich right-wing donors,” investigative reporter Jane Mayer with The New Yorker explains. “They also evidently want to export Kirk’s extremist ideology worldwide. Among the top donors are Isaac Perlmutter, who is a close friend of Donald Trump, and the Uihlein family, who are also major MAGA donors.”
"It was specifically the dark money group that financed that trip”
Ms Mayer has written extensively about billionaire donor funding in US politics, including the Koch-brothers, as detailed in her 2016 book Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. “Turning Point Action, which sponsored the congressional delegation that you described, is the dark money offshoot of the main organization, Turning Point USA,” she tells Heimildin. “So it was specifically the dark money group that financed that trip.”
Joining the ECR party
Mr Gunnlaugsson’s Centre Party is currently in the process of becoming a member of the ECR, Heimildin has found. Neither party responded to Heimildin’s inquiries to confirm this.
Iceland is not a member of the European Union, but many of the country's political parties are full or associate members of Europarties. ECR includes conservative and “Eurorealist” parties in the European Parliament, while parties such as Mr Trump’s Republican Party and Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party in Israel are “global partners”. The Financial Times have recently reported on the Trump administration’s plans to fund ideologically-aligned entities in Europe.
Europarties are not permitted to receive corporate funding from outside the European Union. However, their think tanks, including ECR’s New Direction, can do so. The think tank has received funding from entities connected Charles Koch such as the Heritage Foundation, while the Koch-funded Atlas Network is connected to Icelandic think tank The Icelandic Research Centre for Innovation and Economic Growth. Its director, Hannes Hólmsteinn Gissurarson, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Iceland, is a frequent contributor to New Direction and connected to activities of the Koch-funded groups the Cato Institute and Students for Liberty, and conservative Icelandic political parties the Independence Party and Mr Gunnlaugsson’s Centre Party.
“Their chief aim has been to keep America and the rest of the world reliant on fossil fuels because they are in the fossil fuel business,” Mayer says of the Koch-brothers' political advocacy.
Other Centre Party members have attended events organised by New Direction, Nordic Sidebar or ECR-affiliates, such as the Atreju festival of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, which was attended by several Centre Party youth members. Mr Gunnlaugsson was a speaker at the event and has been a keynote speaker at several New Direction events. One Centre Party candidate spoke at a Nordic Sidebar and New Direction-hosted event in Helsinki along with Trump-funded journalist and Turning Point conference speaker James O’Keefe, previously with Project Veritas.
They did not respond to Heimildin’s questions on who financed their travel to these events. Mr Gissurarson, however, said that New Direction generally pays the travel expenses of speakers at the think tank’s events, adding that the think tank has financed his published writing on conservative politics.
Mr Gunnlaugsson was Iceland’s prime minister from 2013 to 2016, then chairman of the agrarian Progressive Party. In the release of the Panama Papers he was revealed to have owned a company in the tax haven British Virgin Islands, which he had not disclosed. He resigned as prime minister, claiming that foreign billionaires, such as the Hungarian-American George Soros, had conspired against him. He went on to found the Centre Party, which became increasingly vocal about anti-immigration and climate sceptical views, while opposing European cooperation. It is now polling as the second-largest party in Iceland.
Athugasemdir