Reporting Highlights:
Foreign Affairs: Thomas Dans has backed taking
over Greenland and advocated reestablishing ties with Russia, where he’s long
done business — even sharing pro-Kremlin posts.
Business Opportunities: As U.S. Arctic Research
Commission chair, Dans has championed a Dutch shipbuilder with which he had a
business relationship.
Scientific Blowback: Tensions over Greenland
flared after Dans, who has no formal scientific background, was appointed. Some
Danish researchers said they won’t join the U.S. in research.
These highlights were written by the reporters and
editors who worked on this story.
For more than 40 years, the U.S. Arctic Research
Commission has advised Congress and the president on what to study in the
frigid and dynamic far north, from the environment to military security. It’s
typically done so without making waves, led by people well-versed in science
and public policy.
That was until December, when President Donald Trump
appointed a Texas venture capitalist and MAGA influencer with no formal
background in science as the commission’s chair. Since then, Thomas Dans has
traveled the globe generating headlines. Serving as the administration’s main
voice on the Arctic, he’s advanced some of the president’s wildest ambitions,
like a takeover of Greenland, and rankled NATO allies in the process.
Yet as Dans holds forth in the U.S. and abroad, it’s not
always clear where the administration’s agenda ends and his own begins. He has repeatedly said, for example, that the U.S. needs
more icebreakers, ships that Trump has long viewed as critical to dominating
the Arctic. In doing so, Dans has championed
one shipbuilder in particular — Damen Shipyards, a Dutch company with which
he had a business relationship.
“They’re the largest builder of icebreakers and ice-class
vessels in the world,” Dans said at an event in Anchorage, Alaska, in April. At
the time, his consultancy was working to help Damen land an icebreaker contract
with the federal government.
As he’s spoken to audiences of government officials,
diplomats, academics and journalists, Dans — who wears his Arctic commission
lapel pin and exudes a professorial air — has also waded into foreign policy.
In the media and at public events, he’s backed Trump’s
push to take over Greenland. And he’s advocated enthusiastically for closer
U.S. relations with Russia — even as a bipartisan group of lawmakers calls for
tougher sanctions on the country and more aid to Ukraine. Dans and Damen have
long done business in Russia, and Dans has regularly
shared social media posts that reflect a pro-Kremlin viewpoint.
“We want a peaceful Arctic, we want a peaceful world,” he
said at an event a few days after he announced plans to travel to Moscow.
“Russia and the United States gotta get along for that to happen.”
A
nuclear-powered Russian icebreaker in the port of Murmansk after conducting ice
trials in the Arctic Ocean in 2020. The Arctic’s melting ice has geopolitical
consequences, with Russia and China conducting joint military exercises in the
region. Pavel Lvov/Sputnik via AP
Opining so broadly on foreign policy is “far beyond” the
Arctic Research Commission’s scientific mandate, said Fran Ulmer, who served as
commission chair for more than nine years before being replaced by Trump in
2020. “And certainly outside the bounds of what the U.S. Arctic Research
Commission has done in the past.”
Dans, whose consultancy Almiranta Strategies “advises investors and
businesses working in the Arctic,” according to his profile on the Arctic
commission’s website, is far from the first in the Trump administration to
mingle public and personal interests. The finances of many senior
officials and the industries they regulate have drawn scrutiny as Trump has
disarmed government safeguards against conflicts.
“It’s become standard for people to pursue their personal
financial interest,” said Robert Weissman, co-president of the nonprofit
watchdog Public Citizen.
Under the law, Dans’ position gives him access to
government information from other federal agencies — an arrangement that could
benefit his private interests. Such potential conflicts are typically governed
by federal ethics rules. But the nature of Dans’ role affords him more leeway
than other appointees. Commission members are not considered government
employees and thus not required to file an ethics form disclosing conflicts.
Do You Know About U.S. Government Deals, Finance and
Investments Abroad?
“Tom Dans is doing a great job leading the Arctic
Research Commission, and his shipbuilding expertise has helped him succeed in
this role,” said White House spokesperson Anna Kelly. “The President
appreciates all he is doing to advance American interests in the Arctic.”
The White House official said Dans is one of two
commission members the law designates as representatives of “the interests of
industry.” Even so, Dans’ lack of research experience stands out.
The other industry rep is a Ph.D. and former director of the United States
Geological Survey.
Dans declined multiple requests to be interviewed for
this story and did not respond to written questions from ProPublica, but he
told The
New York Times this year that his post did not preclude him from working in
private business.
The Arctic commission has arguably never been more
important. The region is warming at unprecedented rates, accelerating sea-level
rise and causing severe weather in the U.S. and elsewhere. The melting ice also
has geopolitical consequences. Russia and China are conducting joint military
exercises in the far north. New shipping lanes have opened there. And mineral
deposits are becoming potentially more
accessible.
At a public appearance in July, Dans cited the
commission’s four priorities: military and national security, energy security,
economic development in the Arctic and “what we’ll call ‘community security.’”
He did not define the term.
From Russia, With Love
Dans has long been taken with Russia, the country that
has by far the most Arctic coastline. His fondness dates back at least to
seventh grade, when he says he was recruited to learn Russian in his
Maryland public school. He later visited Moscow as an exchange student, then
returned to work in finance in the mid-1990s.
He worked at a private equity fund financed by the U.S.
Agency for International Development, which aimed to grow the private sector
after the Soviet Union’s breakup. In
a LinkedIn post last year, he reminisced about how he and Kirill Dmitriev,
a Harvard-educated banker who now serves as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s
intermediary with Trump officials, traveled in the same circles early in their
finance careers.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s
envoy Kirill Dmitriev last year. Dans has reminisced on social media about
working in similar circles as Dmitriev after the fall of the Soviet Union. Dmitri
Lovetsky/AP
Decades later, in Trump’s first term as president, Dans
landed a job in the Treasury Department as a senior policy adviser for
international affairs. There, he served on a secret National Security Council
task force on U.S. control of Greenland, a role first
reported by The New Yorker.
A former Trump administration official told
ProPublica the group’s purpose was to strengthen the United States’ strategic
position in Greenland and devise policies to bring the two closer.
Perhaps because of that work, Trump named Dans to the
Arctic Research Commission for the first time in late 2020. His tenure was
short-lived. When President Joe Biden took office in 2021, the new
administration fired Dans and three other Trump appointees.
Dans was angry.
“We were fired without notice and anonymously slandered
by the White House for ‘lacking relevant expertise,’” he wrote
in The Hill. “At the time, I was the first commissioner in the agency’s
37-year history to speak fluent Russian, the language of the world’s largest
Arctic nation.”
Dans launched an investment firm with two other former
Trump Treasury officials, but it was short-lived, closing
in late 2023. That year, Dans said on Substack that he was the “first
American” to launch an effort to buy the Helsinki Shipyard in Finland, where
about half the global icebreaker fleet was built. One of its Russian owners at the time was a
business partner of a former Putin deputy minister. The effort failed.
He traveled the world, talking with officials in places
like Uzbekistan,
Ukraine and Romania. He lobbied on behalf of the Kazakhstan
Embassy and that country’s state-owned national oil and gas company,
records show. He devised policy recommendations “for Ukraine’s postwar
reconstruction” as a visiting fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation,
his LinkedIn profile says.
He also contributed
to Heritage’s federal workforce-slashing Project 2025, of which his twin
brother Paul was director.
Then in May 2024, he launched a nonprofit called American
Daybreak. Its goal was to foster ties between the U.S. and Greenland.
After Trump’s victory, Dans
promised in comments on Substack that “the next Trump Admin is going to
Make America a Great Arctic (MAGA) nation!” In early January 2025, Dans and
American Daybreak helped arrange a visit by Donald Trump Jr. and late
conservative activist Charlie Kirk to the Arctic island. He then sought to
bring Vice President JD Vance’s wife, Usha, to watch a popular dog sled race
(the trip was scaled back after protests). Dans also enlisted Greenland’s most
outspoken MAGA enthusiast, a bricklayer named Jørgen Boassen, whom Dans has
called a “good
friend,” to generate support for U.S. control of Greenland.
“The Best Icebreakers in the World”
Dans was not named to a new full-time post in the second
Trump administration. But he remained in the Trump orbit. He was a frequent guest on conservative activist and
former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast. He spoke for one
episode from Romania, plugging far-right Romanian presidential candidate George
Simion (who was later seen with Republicans at the Kennedy Center cutting up a
cake shaped like
Greenland with American flag frosting).
“There’s a phenomenon here that’s
the silent George Simion voter, kind of like your silent Trump voter,” Dans
told Bannon. “And that’s significant.” (Simion lost and afterward
unsuccessfully sought
to have the election annulled.)
By August of last year, Dans found another opportunity in
the private sector. He posted on LinkedIn that he was “very excited to announce
that I am working with Damen Shipyards Group, one of the world’s leading
shipbuilders.”
At the time, Dutch prosecutors
were investigating the company for supplying Russia with equipment that they
said could be used for military purposes, in violation of European sanctions.
In his post, Dans shared a
photo of himself arm-in-arm with three high-ranking company executives,
including Rutger Dolk, who was later
detained by Dutch authorities as part of the probe. The case is ongoing.
(Dolk did not respond to a request for comment. In response to questions, Damen
shared a press release that said it “has always acted in accordance with the
applicable sanctions packages and that full transparency has been exercised
about its activities.”)
Dans’ LinkedIn post announcing his
work with Damen Shipyards. Dutch prosecutors were investigating the company at
the time for supplying Russia with equipment that could have been used for
military purposes. Rutger Dolk, far right, a company executive, was later
detained as part of the probe. Screenshot and redactions by ProPublica
Dans said he was working with the shipbuilder “to bring
some of the best icebreakers in the world to the United States” and noted that
the U.S. Navy had recently chosen Damen “to help it fast-track a new fleet” of
a different type of vessel: up to 35 medium-sized ships to move troops and
supplies to shorelines. According to records, the Navy bought the designs for
the ship from Damen for $3.3 million without going through the typical bidding
process, saying it would save time and money to go with a “proven” design. (The
Navy did not respond to requests for comment.)
In December, Trump appointed Dans to head the Arctic
Research Commission. The
announcement said Dans’ primary focus as a businessman was “shipbuilding
and transportation where, among other projects, he is leading an effort to
develop icebreakers and ice-class vessels for the United States while helping
restore America’s Maritime Base.”
Since then, Dans has championed Damen in conversations
and at a public appearance. In April, he said that “outside of the commission,
I wear a hat working for one of the world’s largest shipbuilders, which is a
group called Damen.”
While ProPublica was reporting this story, Damen
terminated its agreement with Dans, which would have paid him if the company
got a contract to build an icebreaker.
If Dans was seeking to advance Damen’s interests, he may
have been required under the law to register either as a lobbyist or a foreign
agent, said Josh Rosenstein, an attorney who is an expert on the Foreign Agents
Registration Act. Documents show he’d done neither.
“It certainly would raise questions, you know, in my mind
about what sort of interactions he, on behalf of Damen, had with the U.S.
government,” Rosenstein said. “And with whom.” The White House pushed back. “These so-called ‘experts’
have no idea what they are talking about,” said Kelly, the spokesperson.
Whether Dans has other business ties that could impact
his government job is unclear. When at the Treasury, he reported holding a
stake in Global Restaurant Management LLC, the parent company of a firm that
operated multiple Papa Johns restaurants in Russia at the time. The status of
that investment — which Dans reported had a value of between $250,000 and
$500,000 — isn’t publicly known today because he’s no longer required to
disclose his financial interests.
Christopher Wynne, who headed Global Restaurant
Management, said he could not discuss another person’s investments. Unlike most high-level presidential appointees, the
Arctic commission chair — who is eligible only for a stipend of up to about
$55,000 a year — is not a federal employee under the law. And while the
commission has a policy seeking to prevent conflicts of interest, there are no
penalties for violating it.
Dans’ outside commitments could be problematic if he used
his access to the federal government to improperly benefit another employer or
country, said Virginia Canter, who served as an ethics lawyer at the White
House and other agencies during Republican and Democratic presidencies. “The fact that he has foreign entanglements and access to
government-wide information,” she said, “it should raise national security
concerns.”
ProPublica asked the White House about Canter’s comments
but it did not respond.
A Chilly Reception in Greenland
Protesters gathered outside the
U.S. Consulate this January in Nuuk after Trump threatened to annex Greenland. Evgeniy
Maloletka/AP
Tensions over Greenland, which is a semiautonomous
territory of Denmark, have flared since Dans returned to the Arctic commission. A month into Dans’ tenure as commission chair, Trump said
he would take Greenland “one way or the other.” He initially refused to rule
out military force. Dans echoed Trump, telling the BBC that month that
“everything’s on the table.”
While Dans is a minor player in the federal government,
“when he speaks, international audiences and officials see him as representing
U.S. policy,” said Heather Conley, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise
Institute. In his first five months as chair, Dans spoke often to the foreign
press and traveled to locales that included Denmark, Norway, Italy and Canada —
as well as Mar-a-Lago in Florida and the Explorer’s Club in New York City,
records show. The commission spent about $87,000 on his travel expenses.
He did not return to Greenland. But the administration’s
rhetoric put Denmark
on a war footing. The country sent soldiers to Greenland armed with
explosives and plans to blow up airfields in the event of an American invasion.
At one point, a Greenlandic politician told ProPublica, some schoolchildren
were instructed to practice hiding under their desks in case of such an event.
Greenlanders have repeated a refrain: Open for business,
not for sale. Dans’ remarks only seem to have further deepened divisions. In
February, while at a conference in Norway, he was caught on a hot mic telling a
Greenlandic politician that “the
check’s in the mail.” A former chairman of the Arctic Research Commission,
Michael Sfraga, was at the same conference and publicly
told the politician to “rip the check up.”
Trump has continued to press the cause. In mid-July, he
posted a
picture on Truth Social of a map that included Greenland with the American
flag superimposed on it. The rhetoric has had consequences for Arctic research. Several
Danish researchers said they will no longer participate in research with
the U.S. One
noted that her colleagues avoided Dans at a recent conference.
Dans’ current role in Greenland is unclear. He said at a
recent conference he is not involved in talks
among negotiators for the U.S., Greenland and Denmark that began earlier
this year. In May, Trump’s special envoy to Greenland, Louisiana Gov. Jeff
Landry, and the U.S. ambassador to Denmark, Ken Howery, attended a business
conference in the capital of Nuuk without Dans. Landry and Howery appeared for
photo ops and opened a new, bigger consulate building, as protesters
shouted outside.
A White House official told ProPublica that Greenland is
“critical from the standpoint of U.S. national security” and “we are very
optimistic that we’re on a good trajectory” in the diplomatic talks. The
official did not address Dans’ role.
Reposting Russian Propaganda
Official visits to Russia have been exceedingly rare
since the U.S. and its European allies froze ties with the country after it
invaded Ukraine in 2022, yet at his appearance in Anchorage in April Dans announced
that he was planning to go to Moscow “probably in the next month” to
discuss research cooperation. The trip never happened; the State Department’s
official guidance on Russia is “Do Not Travel for Any Reason.”
Asked about Dans’ push for reestablishing ties and travel
plans, a State Department spokesperson referred questions to Dans. His social media feed on X is filled with foreign news
accounts, sometimes from outlets sympathetic to the Kremlin. He reposted a story last October from Kazakh media on
Putin’s warning that the U.S. would fracture relations with Russia if it
supplied Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles.
Dans’ repost on X of a Kazakh media
outlet. The post reads: “Putin warned that supplies of ‘Tomahawk’ missiles to
Kyiv would destroy relations between Russia and the United States.” Screenshot
by ProPublica
In May, he wrote of his grandfather’s participation in
the perilous Murmansk Run to supply the Soviet Union during World War II.
“Happy Victory Day,” Dans wrote in Russian and English, reposting a
video of Putin from Russian state media laying flowers at a soldiers’ memorial.
The original poster of the video has been called a source of Russian propaganda
by the
Ukrainian government.
“Everyone obviously needs to be incredibly cautious when
you’re reposting Russian information,” Conley said, because such posts could
promote a narrative that is “against U.S. national interests.”
Posting “Happy Victory Day” in Russian may sound
innocuous, but it is “a super-loaded thing to do right now,” she added. Putin
has conjured Russia’s World War II victory when talking about Ukraine, even
equating Ukrainians to Nazis in Germany.
The White House did not respond to questions about Dans’
Russia-related posts.
Under Putin, Russia has tied its future to the Arctic and
the region’s natural resources, including liquefied natural gas. U.S.
sanctions, which targeted the country’s energy sector, have set those efforts
back — something that Russia has sought to reverse in ongoing talks with the
Trump administration.
Dans has remarked on the developments on social media,
calling Dmitriev, the Russian who now serves as a key Putin negotiator with the
Trump administration, “the Kremlin’s ace in the hole.”
“We’re older now and have some grey hair, but it’s neat
to see who the Trump Administration is negotiating with,” Dans
wrote of Dmitriev, who rose to head one of Russia’s sovereign wealth funds
before being sanctioned
by the Biden Treasury Department in 2022 for his ties to Putin and work
raising funds from the U.S.
Asked about Dans’ calls for cooperation, Kelly, the White
House spokesperson, said: “President Trump and his entire administration are
willing to work with anyone in order to advance American interests, including
peace in the Russia-Ukraine War. This approach has helped the United States
bring both sides of the conflict together for historic peace talks.”
Dans seemed to downplay any differences with the Trump
administration over Russia in one recent appearance, where he told an audience
that included State Department officials, Russian Embassy personnel and
Greenlandic diplomats that “getting Russia-Ukraine war ended, I think, is a
priority. Stopping the killing.”
But the following month, in July, Dans opened and closed
his remarks at a conference in Aspen by calling Russia a “neighbor.” He again
urged that the U.S. repair its relationship. “We need to be able to communicate with the Russians,” he
said. “We’ve got some very important things to clear up with them with Ukraine,
absolutely, but we have to work towards peace in the Arctic.” Kelly said there was “nothing controversial about Mr.
Dans’ remarks calling for an end to years of bloodshed and expanded dialogue.”
Doris
Burke, Lynn Dombek
and Alex Mierjeski
contributed research. Joel
Jacobs contributed data reporting.
Contributors
Heather
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