One of Kristi Noem’s final acts as Homeland Security secretary was to buy five luxury jets from her political donor for millions more than they were worth.
On the final day of Noem’s botched tenure, the agency 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 New York Times reported Sunday.
Additionally, the agency purchased two smaller luxury jets for $106 million from Daedalus, which 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 told the Times was far above market value.
In April, the Daily Beast reported that President Donald Trump was obscuring the true cost of the Boeing 737 MAX 8, with the agency initially claiming it had only spent $70 million on the jet, which came with marble showers, lavish bedrooms, and a manta ray skin table.
Despite Trump firing Noem in March, largely because she awarded questionable contracts to agencies she had political or personal ties to, the former South Dakota secretary apparently had the wherewithal to continue her shopping spree for the three weeks she remained in office, until her successor, Secretary Markwayne Mullin, took over.
Mullin, for his part, attempted to back out of the deal, the Times reported on Sunday, but feared the agency would lose even more money in the process. White House officials told the outlet that White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles shared his financial fears, and advised him not to block the purchase.
The no-competition contract for the fleet went to the Northern Virginia company chaired by pro-Trump donor William Walters III, which had never held a federal contract and was run by a CEO whom the Daily Beast revealed in March had led his previous airline into bankruptcy.
Walters, a former State Department surgeon, had donated $10,000 to a pro-Noem super PAC whose sister nonprofit paid her chief adviser and rumored lover, Corey Lewandowski, 52, more than $265,000 for consulting work. Walters has insisted the PAC was not openly affiliated with Noem, 54, or Lewandowski when he gave, though it is publicly available information, and the website displayed a photo of Noem herself.
The only other donation publicly tied to Walters went to the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute.
All told, DHS paid Daedalus some $464 million under Noem for ten unused aircrafts, which have become a hallmark of “ICE Barbie’s” explosive tenure. The fleet included three luxury jets—including then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s notorious Big Beautiful Jet, which were touted as vital for enacting Trump’s mass deportation policy, which had “unusual and compelling urgency.”
Instead, they were used to ferry Trump officials around the world—and seven older 737s. They have now been left for months in Lake Charles, Louisiana, with an internal document obtained by The New York Times saying DHS lacked the crews to fly them.
Under 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.” They added that DHS “reserves the right to adjust course in an environment with evolving requirements and demands.” A spokesperson for the agency did not immediately respond to questions from the Daily Beast on Sunday.
This is the latest in a series of fallouts for Noem, who is now a special envoy for the State Department. Earlier this month, she filed for divorce from her estranged husband, Bryon Noem, following his “bimbofication” fetish scandal.
The couple met in high school and married in 1992, when Kristi was 20. They share three adult children, Kassidy, Kennedy, and Booker.
