A senior official to Kristi Noem deliberately destroyed messages during a federal court battle over sweeping job cuts to its disaster response agency, a judge has found.
Karen Evans, one of the ousted Department of Homeland Security chief’s most trusted aides, was found to have taken steps to delete potentially crucial correspondence from the messaging app Signal—just a day after staff were reminded to preserve them, PunchUp has reported.
In a September 11 ruling, Judge Susan Ilston said that Evans, a former acting Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) chief, had acted with “intent to deprive” plaintiffs of correspondence relevant to their case against measures to downsize the agency.
Ilston’s bombshell finding comes two months after PunchUp revealed that another top Noem aide had wiped nearly 30 secret chats involving the former DHS Secretary and her chief aide and rumored lover, Corey Lewandowski, who has been accused of widespread corruption during his time at the agency.
The court previously found senior officials had conducted government business involving Noem, 54, and Lewandowski, 52, through Signal on personal phones, with disappearing-message settings causing communications to vanish.
But Illston, a Clinton appointee, has found that Evans went further, the Daily Beast’s sister Substack reported on Monday.
On March 11, six days after Donald Trump fired Noem, Evans shortened the auto-delete timer on a Signal group called “FEMA 2.0”—which included fellow senior officials Joseph Guy and Kara Voorhies—from four weeks to just one.
Illston found that Evans’s conduct went “beyond gross negligence.” The judge had already ordered discovery from FEMA leadership at the time of Evans’s move, the ruling states.
The messages concerned the bitter battle over a massive reduction in FEMA staffing numbers. A coalition of federal employee unions, public-interest organizations, and local governments brought the case, challenging the Trump administration’s decision.
The ruling states: “Taking into account all of the circumstantial evidence, including officials’ continued use of the Signal auto-delete setting even after this Court ordered the production of relevant FEMA communications, the Court concludes that at least Evans deleted Signal chats with the intent to deprive plaintiffs of the use of the chats in this litigation.”
The destruction of the messages has had major consequences for the ongoing court battle. Ilston has barred the Trump administration from relying on hindsight testimony that denied its plan to slash FEMA staffing. She also ruled that the missing Signal messages would be presumed unfavorable to the government.
Noem trusted Evans as a major FEMA decision-maker before ultimately heading the disaster agency. The latter also admitted to using her personal cellphone for government business and to talk on Signal with senior DHS figures, including Noem and Lewandowski.
The judge made no finding that Noem or Lewandowski destroyed messages or knew that Evans was doing so.
The latest development comes two months after PunchUp first revealed that Guy, another senior Noem aide, had lost a huge cache of FEMA-related Signal communications.
The former DHS deputy chief of staff admitted 26 FEMA-related Signal group chats involving about 20 participants had disappeared from his personal phone as he left government. The groups included Noem and Lewandowski.
Guy’s lawyers insisted at the time that the loss was inadvertent, caused by reinstalling Signal, and that he had never intentionally deleted the messages. They also denied he had discussed deleting messages with Noem or Lewandowski.
Illston has now assessed Guy’s conduct. She called the timing of Guy wiping Signal “highly suspect” and said it was “not believable” that he did not know relevant communications remained on his phone.
But she stopped short of finding deliberate destruction, concluding there was insufficient evidence that he intended to deprive the plaintiffs of the messages.
Since PunchUp’s July exclusive, missing communications involving Noem and Lewandowski’s inner circle have become even more sensitive as scrutiny of the latter’s conduct at DHS has escalated dramatically.
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that investigators are examining allegations that Lewandowski used his extraordinary influence inside DHS to pursue personal financial opportunities and interfere in federal contracting related to Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and private-prison giant GEO Group.
The Journal had previously claimed that the DHS inspector general was considering a criminal referral.
Lewandowski, who followed Noem out the door after Trump fired her in March following a chaotic 15 months at DHS, denies wrongdoing and says the allegations against him are false and politically motivated.
Neither he nor Noem responded to a request for comment.
Separately, the Journal and Washington Post reported that DHS inspector general investigators had searched the office of Voorhies, a FEMA contractor who worked closely with Lewandowski and wielded extraordinary influence inside the agency.
Investigators were said to be examining her role in FEMA contracting, while grant and award decisions involving her work formed part of the watchdog’s broader review of spending under Noem.
There is no evidence that the Signal messages at issue in Illston’s finding concerned Lewandowski’s alleged attempts to profit from his DHS position.
DHS, and Evans through the department, were approached for comment. They did not respond. A spokesperson for Guy also did not immediately respond.
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.
