The Kiowa Legislature voted 6-0 on Valentine’s Day to begin removal proceedings against Chairman Lawrence SpottedBird and set March 2 as the date of his impeachment hearing. Under the Kiowa Tribe’s Constitution, the legislators will have to vote unanimously to trigger his removal.
The allegations put forth against SpottedBird are wide-ranging, from allowing his wife to purchase a trip to meet with a controversial church in South Korea and gifting $50,000 to a Kiowa citizen’s toilet company to dodging compliance with federal regulators over the alleged misuse of tribal gaming revenue.
During his weekly Facebook livestream Feb. 21, SpottedBird blamed the impeachment on Kiowa Legislator Cole Delaune and promised to fight the charges while acknowledging “mistakes in using that credit card.”
“I felt like this was coming because Qop-aydle (District 4 Legislator) Cole DeLaune — our newest legislator — has been leading that process. That’s been his primary agenda to basically focus on me. He really doesn’t care what is best for the tribe. He just came on to try and target me and try to get Richard McMahon and our [Kiowa Casino Operations Authority] and he’s never swayed from that,” SpottedBird said. “I’m going to fight this because the [situation] has been heavily distorted. Again, when a leader is trying to do something, they get attacked for doing something. I’ve been following our constitution, and I haven’t broken any laws. There have been some things that happened that we’ve had to correct because of mistakes in using that credit card for instance. One time. It was an error, but I repaid that right away.”
The order setting SpottedBird’s impeachment hearing included seven charges justifying impeachment:
- a charge of “failure to safeguard financial assets, corruption, gross incompetence, and violation of Kiowa law” for SpottedBird’s alleged role in overseeing Indian City Screen Printing, a tribal business that allegedly cost the tribe $458,993 while generating only $10,699 in revenue;
- a charge of “failure to safeguard financial assets, malfeasance, gross incompetence, and violation of Kiowa law” for SpottedBird’s alleged approval of a $50,000 “business investment” given to Ted Nuncio for his “top hat” toilet company;
- a charge of “failure to safeguard financial assets, corruption, and violation of Kiowa law” for SpottedBird’s alleged use of casino operation funds for donations and sponsorships in violation of Kiowa law;
- a charge of “failure to safeguard financial assets, embezzlement, and violations of Kiowa law” for SpottedBird allegedly allowing his wife to use tribal credit cards to make personal purchases at Costco and to purchase a trip to South Korea in 2024;
- a charge of “contempt and violations of Kiowa law” for allegedly failing to produce tribal credit card statements to the Legislature;
- a charge of “failure to safeguard financial assets, malfeasance, gross misconduct, (and) failure to protect the tribe’s best interest” for allegedly failing to pursue repayment of stipend overpayments to board members of the Kiowa Casino Operations Authority; and
- Â a charge of “failure to safeguard financial assets, fraud, malfeasance, violation of Kiowa law, and failure to protect the tribe’s best interest” for SpottedBird allegedly attempting to purchase a building for a clinic without legal authority to do so and allegedly signing more than 13,000 checks with former Vice Chairman Jacob Tsotigh’s signature after he left office.
The impeachment comes after SpottedBird sat for a more than five-hour hearing in front of the Kiowa Legislature on Oct. 29 to answer questions about how the tribe’s businesses were being operated. Near the beginning of the hearing, SpottedBird argued he was elected to office with a strategic plan and invoked his faith to argue God was leading his initiatives.
“When I came into office, I was sworn in on July 15, 2022. I brought a 10-year, three-part strategic plan for building our tribe with the ultimate goal of providing for the needs of our people,” SpottedBird said during his opening statements. “And I can assure you there has never been a plan like that brought to our tribe. And I really believe God led initiatives along the way, especially in my role as elected chairman, leader of the Kiowa Tribe.”
SpottedBird is not the first Kiowa Tribe chairman to face impeachment. His predecessor, Matthew Komalty, also saw impeachment efforts during his tenure and faced his own allegations of economic malfeasance, although his impeachment was delayed and he ultimately chose not to seek reelection.
A successful impeachment vote in March would immediately remove SpottedBird — a political newcomer elected in July 2022 — from office and bar him from running for or being appointed to any office in the tribe for four years.
The order for the impeachment hearing came on the same day that the Kiowa Legislature released its October 2025 Legislative Hearing Final Report, which provided more details to some of the allegations against SpottedBird. The report details the Legislature’s findings from three days of hearings in October during which SpottedBird, Kiowa Casino Operations Authority Chairman Richard McMahon, Tribal Treasurer William Weaver and executive director of tribal operations Marland Toyekoyah were interviewed by legislators.
South Korea trip reveals odd connection to new religious movement
While the Kiowa Legislature’s objection to SpottedBird’s trip to South Korea stemmed from using tribal funds for his wife, the junket also revealed an odd connection between the Kiowa chairman and the South Korean Christian new religious movement Good News Mission.
Founded in 1972 by Ock Soo Park, the Good News Mission is controversial in South Korea, with Park’s daughter being convicted of abuse resulting in the death of a child last year, according to machine-translations of Korean news coverage. Her conviction was upheld on appeal in January. Allegations of abuse by Good News Mission church leaders have also been lodged in the United States.
The South Korea trip was for a meeting with Park, who also has a church in Oklahoma City. The visit coincided with South Korea’s prosecution of Park’s daughter, although it is unclear if Kiowa officials were aware of the allegations when the trip was approved.
According to documents released by the Kiowa Legislature, the Indigenous Leaders of North America Inc. — a nonprofit affiliated with the Good News Mission aimed at engaging with Indigenous youth in the United States — issued a $2,479.44 reimbursement check to the Kiowa Tribe on behalf of Lanie Spottedbird for portions of her plane ticket. The same group of documents also show ILNA invoiced the tribe $3,900 for attending the event in 2025 and $1,200 for 2024. The documents do not indicate whether the Kiowa Tribe paid the $5,100 invoiced to the tribe by the nonprofit.
Both Spottedbird and Kiowa Vice Chairman David Sullivan serve on the board of directors for the ILNA. It is unclear why tribal funds were authorized to send Sullivan to the event in 2025 while he was also serving on the board of the ILNA — a possible conflict of interest.
Legislature irked by SpottedBird’s stance toward federal regulators
According to the Kiowa Legislature’s formal report, the National Indian Gaming Commission Compliance Division sent a letter of concern Nov. 2, 2023, to the the Kiowa Tribe informing leaders they were likely in violation of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act for overpaying KCOA board members and could face a “notice of violation and civil fine.”
The chief compliance officer for the NIGC, Tom Cunningham, recommended the tribe develop a corrective action plan that would include recovery of “non-compliant stipend amounts paid to KCOA board members identified” — which included McMahon, Joe Poe Jr., Dr. James Kennedye, Susan Dunlap and Luke Yeahquo — between 2017 and 2020, which would have primarily spanned Komalty’s term as tribal chairman. (Komalty faced significant criticism within the tribe for allegedly making inappropriate expenditures on Netflix, music services and male enhancement pills.)
Initially, SpottedBird executed a corrective action plan Feb. 1, 2024, but the following day McMahon sent a letter declaring that he would not return the alleged overpayments. SpottedBird allegedly met with the other KCOA members over the following months and “unilaterally determined the subject to warrant no further investigation.” On March 11, 2025, the NIGC sent a letter reminding the tribe its investigation was ongoing, and Kiowa Attorney General Randal Homburg responded April 10 indicating the tribe was still pursuing repayment.
During the October hearings, SpottedBird again argued the KCOA payments were justifiable and should not be repaid by the board members. Poe, Dunlap, Kennedye, and Yeahquo are no longer members of the board. McMahon hired attorney Richard Grellner in August 2025 to represent him regarding the NIGC letter, but he represented himself during the October hearings.
“I would not defy a court order,” McMahon testified.
The legislative report alleges the following overpayments to board members:
- $98,050 to Poe;
- $76,700 to Dunlap;
- $35,100 to McMahon;
- $14,100 to Kennedye; and
- $100,100 to Yeahquo.
In a statement to NonDoc, Poe said due process has not been provided to the KCOA members.
“The Legislature has declared the KCOA guilty without any due process,” Poe said. “There is material information that has been omitted that is catastrophically devastating to their proclamation of guilt.”
With SpottedBird’s brother-in-law at helm, company lost nearly $500,000
The Kiowa Legislature’s report also alleges SpottedBird hired his brother-in-law, Hollis Asenap, to run Indian City Screen Printing for the tribe and that Asenap failed to develop a business plan despite drawing a salary. Legislators allege Asenap was paid $75,000 a year to lead the company, which reportedly generated only $10,699 in revenue between July 31, 2022, and Dec. 15, 2023.
Among other issues, the report alleges SpottedBird allowed Asenap to set up “his personal RV” at the site of Indian City Screen Printing and connect it to tribal utilities. The report lists no value estimating the “utilities pirated” from the tribal business.
SpottedBird is also accused of failing to manage the company’s inventory after it failed.
“More bizarrely still, Chairman SpottedBird could not explain why approximately $60,000 to $70,000 of t-shirts remained unused upon ICSP’s closure or exactly where that stock can currently be found,” the report reads. “In the testimony he provided to the Legislature, the chairman acknowledged no inventory on the leftover t-shirts has ever been conducted and suggested that indeterminate quantities may have been stolen. No meaningful oversight, operational controls, or responsible custodianship of tribe property and money were ever implemented by the chairman in conjunction with ICSP. ”
‘Toilet company’ said to have received $50,000 of tribal funds
The report also alleges that SpottedBird gave a $50,000 “de facto gift” to Kiowa citizen Theodore “Ted” Nuncio through Native Brands of Oklahoma LLC, a now-inactive “toilet company.” In June 2023, SpottedBird wrote Nuncio promising his company an “initial cash outlay of $50,000.”
Despite providing the money to Nuncio, SpottedBird allegedly never executed any written agreement between the tribe and Native Brands of Oklahoma.
“With neither an ownership stake nor terms of repayment/interest memorialized via written or oral contract, this outlay can only be reasonably construed as a de facto gift,” the report reads. “And while fielding follow-up interrogatories about what exactly Kiowa Tribe monies have been subsidizing given the organization’s multi-year failure to launch, [SpottedBird] suggested that Mr. Nuncio had been ‘living off’ the funds.”
Details about Nuncio’s toilet dreams are sparse, but correspondence with SpottedBird indicates Nuncio — who also owns the defunct OK Porcelain LLC — was working to establish a manufacturing operation near Anadarko.
Nuncio has been promoting a reportedly patented “top hat toilet” invention since at least 2018 in association with a Colorado company called Challenge LLC. In a YouTube video posted by an apparent Challenge partner, Todd Brophy, Nuncio explains how his toilet features a hatch at the top that allows for the dislodging of cell phones or other objects accidentally dropped into the commode.
“The hotels — the high-rise hotels — the casinos, the night clubs,” Nuncio says of his market potential while demonstrating the toilet. “The hospitals, schools.”
Meanwhile, SpottedBird nominated Nuncio as the Kiowa business and commerce commission secretary Sept. 12, 2023, but the nomination was withdrawn less than two months later on Nov. 7. According to documents posted on Facebook, SpottedBird wrote to Nuncio on Nov. 1 of that year to offer him a $48,000 annual salary to be the tribe’s contracts coordinator, but it’s unclear whether Nuncio accepted that job.
Other allegations include improper charity payments, signing checks with former vice chairman’s name
The lengthy legislative report also alleges SpottedBird approved illegal charitable donations. While Kiowa law limits charitable donations by the tribe to $10,000, SpottedBird allegedly authorized $25,000 to be used for a “Chairman’s golf tournament” in 2024, $75,000 for an August 2023 Indian relay race in Anadarko, and $100,000 to rebuild Rainy Mountain Kiowa Indian Baptist Church in 2025.
Another finding in the report is the allegation that SpottedBird’s department signed approximately 13,000 checks with the signature of former Vice Chariman Jacob Tsotigh, who had been removed from office in November 2024. Legislators discovered the signatures after learning in May 2025 that SpottedBird had begun to purchase a property in Anadarko for use as a tribal clinic. Upon investigation, legislators found SpottedBird had already spent $14,500 toward the property and had signed the check with Tsotigh’s name.
“Given this nakedly improper and arguably fraudulent use of the Tsotigh signature, the Legislature requested in its July 2025 subpoenas copies of the checks from accounts owned by the tribe or its related entities issued since November 2024 that included the former vice chair as a signatory,” the report reads. “An unsigned memorandum delivered by the executive branch during document production indicated that ‘over 13,000 checks’ had been printed with Tsotigh’s signature between the November 2024 affirmation of his removal from office by the Kiowa Trial Court and July 2025.”
The report also alleges that SpottedBird failed to turnover the full records for his tribal credit card in response to a legislative subpoena.
The final allegation levied against SpottedBird’s administration in the legislative report is aimed at the tribe’s attorney general, Randal Homburg. While vague on details, the report alleges that Homburg used “a sexually oriented slur” and “structurally racist metaphor” to describe members of the Kiowa Legislature when communicating with other officials.
While the report fails to include the exact language attributed to Homburg, it does indicate the “sexually oriented slur” was aimed at LGBTQ individuals by including Homburg’s explanation for what he said.
“I probably am [a homophobe]. A lot of us Southern Baptists are,” the report alleges Homburg said in his defense.
Watch the full Kiowa Legislature investigative hearing
