A raft of senior employees has quit the scandal-hit firm chosen by Kristi Noem to run Donald Trump’s $1 billion flagship self-deportation scheme—with three of them leaving in the same week.
The exodus from Salus Worldwide Solutions—founded and run by Trump crony and former State Department surgeon William Walters III—was revealed by PunchUp, the Daily Beast’s new sister investigations Substack outlet, which has been probing the controversial Department of Homeland Security contract for months.
The departures follow PunchUp’s June 30 revelation that the firm could be stripped of its three-year Department of Homeland Security contract to run Project Homecoming after burning through all its money within a year and delivering poor results.
Three senior employees left Salus, which court documents say employs around 300 people, within days of one another at the end of May, according to PunchUp. Two others had gone in the two months before that.
The exits come ahead of Salus likely being forced to re-compete for the remainder of the $915 million Project Homecoming contract. Last Friday, Rep. Bennie Thompson, the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, wrote to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, 48, citing PunchUp and the Daily Beast’s investigation, to demand he “take immediate action to stop this wasteful and corrupt spending” and “cancel” the deal.
DHS is facing wide-ranging investigations into how contracts were awarded under Noem, 54, and her chief adviser and rumored lover, Corey Lewandowski, 52.
The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday that Lewandowski “may have been involved in improperly awarding government contracts,” and that investigators are weighing a potential criminal referral to the Justice Department.
A Salus source told PunchUp the timing of the staff exits was “interesting,” and claimed the latest leavers could “see the writing on the wall.” There is no suggestion that the departures were linked to the Lewandowski allegations or those made by Thompson.
Most notable among those leaving are Ambassador William Todd, 64, the firm’s $450,000-a-year chief strategy officer, and Kyle Cullen, who was CEO of Walters-owned subsidiary Soteria Solutions.
Todd, an accountant, previously served as deputy undersecretary of management at the State Department under Secretary Mike Pompeo, where he had been Walters’ supervisor. He told PunchUp he had retired to spend more time with his family.
Company sources said Cullen, a former soldier who served with Walters in the military, left his $400,000-a-year role at Soteria—a Salus subsidiary company—the same week and was planning to move to Wisconsin with his wife to raise their family.
The third notable departure was in-house legal adviser Tom Wilson, PunchUp reported. Walters regularly outsources legal work to David Panzer, a partner at national security-focused law firm Fluet, which was integral in putting together the Project Homecoming contract. Sources said Wilson’s exit and Walters’ growing reliance on Panzer were especially intriguing as the firm’s dealings with DHS face fresh scrutiny.
A Salus spokesman attacked PunchUp’s sources, saying of those who had left: “When you ask them for comment, they will confirm these claims are baseless. We value every member of our team and are grateful for their service in this worthwhile endeavor.”
Todd later emailed PunchUp to say morale “remains exceptionally high” and that staff were “deeply proud” of their work. Cullen did not respond. Wilson could not be reached.
The three exits followed senior management analyst Carlos Vaquerano, another Army veteran, who left in May, and senior HR official Molly Droelle, who departed in early March after nine months, PunchUp reported. They also did not respond to the outlet’s requests for comment.
Salus was awarded a total of $1.1 billion in contracts starting last May, despite being founded just two years earlier and having never served as a lead government contractor, following an “unsolicited,” no-competition bid process that DHS’s own lawyers flagged as problematic. The department bailed the firm out in May with a $200 million extension.
According to NBC News, a Salus representative allegedly said the firm needed to “make sure we are properly thanking the person who gave it to us” to land a $20 million DHS contract—understood to mean Lewandowski. Both have denied wrongdoing.
DHS was asked if the churn of senior staff at Salus raised concerns and if it still had confidence in the company. A spokesperson repeated the same response as to previous Salus inquiries, saying that the department had “not sunset its contract” with the company, that the Project Homecoming contract had been issued legally, and that it “regularly reviews contracts to identify waste, fraud, and abuse.” It did not address the matter of staffing.
Tom Latchem exposes the secrets, scandals, and stories that powerful people and institutions want to keep under wraps. Follow all of his reporting at PunchUp on Substack.
