Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is demanding that The New York Times retract a report claiming DHS approved a lucrative contract for a political donor’s company on her last day leading the department.
According to the Times report, as Noem prepared to leave DHS, the agency purchased five airplanes from Daedalus Aviation Corporation at a steep markup.
The Times reported that Daedalus chairman William Walters gave $10,000 to Noem’s political action committee, American Resolve, in 2024. The paper noted the company said Walters “did not know the group was associated with Ms. Noem at the time.” However, an archived version of the PAC’s homepage shows it promoting only Noem.
Among the planes, the Times reported, was a Boeing 737 airliner converted into a massive private jet, for which DHS agreed to pay $108 million. The report said the aircraft featured a stand-up bar, two bedrooms, marble showers and a table covered in manta ray skin, and that the firm had purchased it just months earlier for under $90 million.
DHS also bought two Gulfstream luxury jets and two Boeing 737 passenger planes, all at a significant markup, according to the report.
The Times said Noem, who now serves as a special envoy at the State Department, “declined to answer specific questions about the sale or the prices that her agency had paid.”
After the story ran, Noem blasted it on X, calling the reporting “factually incorrect” and “libelous.”
“I write to formally request the retraction entirely or explicit correction of the article titled ‘Kristi Noem’s Agency Gave Her Donor a Lucrative Contract Just Before She Left,'” Noem wrote.
She argued that describing Walters as a “donor” was materially misleading, saying that claim had been “confirmed not to be the case” and that it falsely implied a direct financial relationship meant to influence official action.
Noem also wrote that if the individual did not personally make political contributions to her, or if “donor” referred indirectly to unrelated entities or legally distinct contributions, the article failed to meet the Times’ standards of precision.
She added that clarifications were made to the reporters “numerous times,” and said the wording unfairly prejudices readers and suggests impropriety not supported by the facts.
Noem’s response did not dispute any of the reporting on the contract itself.
Noem was fired from her DHS post in March over controversies surrounding immigration tactics as well as questions about her agency’s awarding of contracts, the Times reported. More than $900 million of those contracts went to companies led by Walters.
According to the report, Noem’s successor, Markwayne Mullin, “explored backing out” of the airplane deal and consulted White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, who shared his concerns about the potential financial consequences. The purchase moved forward anyway.
A Times spokesperson told Mediaite the paper is standing by its reporting.
“We stand by the characterization of the political donor and his firm. As our article makes clear, the Department of Homeland Security bought five airplanes from Daedalus at a substantial markup, a deal approved during Ms. Noem’s tenure. Daedalus’s chairman is William Walters, who gave $10,000 to the American Resolve political action committee, a group that existed to support Ms. Noem,” the spokesperson said.
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