Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has lost it over an article detailing her controversial contract awards.
The New York Times reported that Noem awarded lucrative contracts in her final days as DHS secretary, buying five luxury jets from an associated political donor for millions more than they were worth.
Noem has since taken to social media to try to set the record straight.
“In response to the DISHONEST @nytimes about their factually incorrect article today…” she began.
She then referenced herself in the third person as she demanded that the outlet take down the article entirely.
“If the individual did not personally make political contributions to Secretary Noem, or if the term ‘donor’ instead refers indirectly to unrelated entities or legally distinct contributions, the article simply fails to meet the standards of precision expected of The New York Times,” she wrote.
Noem also proclaimed that “numerous times clarifications were made to the journalists responsible for this libelous story.”
“Such wording unfairly prejudices readers and creates an inference of impropriety that is not supported by the underlying facts,” she concluded.
The report found that DHS awarded a no-competition contract for the fleet to a Virginia-based company chaired by pro-Trump donor William Walters. Before these contracts, the company had never been awarded a government contract.
DHS paid $108 million for a Boeing 737 Max 8 from Daedalus Aviation Corporation, a donor firm that had purchased the luxury aircraft for just $90 million months earlier.
The agency also purchased two smaller luxury jets for $106 million from Daedalus, which had purchased the aircraft for $83 million, as well as a pair of almost 20-year-old Boeing 737 passenger planes for $45 million apiece, which aviation experts pointed out to the Times was far above market value.
Walters, a former State Department surgeon, is a big-time donor to pro-Trump causes.
During the 2024 presidential election, he donated $10,000 to a super PAC connected with Noem, whose sister nonprofit paid her chief adviser and rumored lover, Corey Lewandowski, more than $265,000 for consulting work. He has also donated to the pro-Trump America First Policy Institute.
Under Markwayne Mullin, DHS has attempted to distance itself from the purchase, writing in a statement to the Daily Beast last month: “The contract for Daedalus was made and approved by department leadership before Secretary Mullin was sworn in.”
In total, DHS paid the company around $464 million under Noem for ten unused aircraft.
In addition to a host of other scandals she faced, her contract awards came under heavy scrutiny by the time Trump canned her.
Trump fired Noem via a Truth Social post from her role leading DHS in March. Her alleged affair with Lewandowski was said to be part of the reason why she was dumped by Trump, along with several other scandals, including the deaths of two U.S. citizens by DHS agents, that plagued the agency under her leadership.
But the final straw for Trump was her $220 million advertising campaign that prominently featured her on horseback in her native South Dakota.
In addition to the exorbitant price, that contract also came under scrutiny. Noem’s former spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin’s husband, Ben Yoho, stood to financially gain from it, as his firm was paid through the ad campaign as a subcontractor.
