Kristi Noem reportedly bought five luxury jets at inflated prices shortly before leaving the DHS. She calls the claim ‘libelous’

Kristi Noem used a social media post to reject a New York Times account of aircraft deals signed near the end of her run as Homeland Security secretary. The paper reported that, in her final days in the job, she awarded contracts to buy five luxury jets from a firm tied to a political donor, at prices millions of dollars above what those planes had cost.

She asked the newspaper to take the story down and wrote about herself in the third person. The X post opened, “In response to the DISHONEST @nytimes about their factually incorrect article today…” She also wrote that “numerous times clarifications were made to the journalists responsible for this libelous story.”

Her objection centered on how the paper described the seller. She wrote, “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 added, “Such wording unfairly prejudices readers and creates an inference of impropriety that is not supported by the underlying facts.”

Price gaps on the five aircraft and the firm that sold them

The Times said Homeland Security gave the fleet work to Daedalus Aviation Corporation without a competition. The Virginia company is chaired by William Walters, described in the report as a pro-Trump donor, and had not held a government contract before these awards.

One purchase was a Boeing 737 Max 8. DHS paid Daedalus $108 million for it, the report said, after the company had bought the same aircraft for $90 million months earlier. Two smaller luxury jets were a separate line item: the department paid $106 million, while Daedalus had acquired them for $83 million.

The other two planes were Boeing 737 passenger jets, each close to 20 years old, bought at $45 million apiece. Aviation experts told the Times those figures sat far above market value. Across a wider set of deals, the same reporting put DHS spending with the company at about $464 million under Noem, covering ten aircraft that had not been put into use.

Walters is a former State Department surgeon and has given to pro-Trump causes, according to the report. In the 2024 presidential election he donated $10,000 to a super PAC connected with Noem, and he has also given to the America First Policy Institute. A sister nonprofit linked to that super PAC paid her chief adviser, Corey Lewandowski, more than $265,000 for consulting work. Coverage of her tenure has called Lewandowski her rumored lover.

Markwayne Mullin took over the department in March. Asked about the Daedalus contract, DHS told the Daily Beast last month, “The contract for Daedalus was made and approved by department leadership before Secretary Mullin was sworn in.” Mullin’s tenure at DHS has already drawn scrutiny, as when Sen. Chris Murphy pressed the DHS secretary on complying with court orders.

President Donald Trump removed Noem in March in a Truth Social post. Reporting on that decision said an alleged affair with Lewandowski was described as one factor, alongside other controversies, including the deaths of two U.S. citizens involving DHS agents.

Those accounts also singled out a $220 million ad campaign that showed her on horseback in South Dakota, with filming at Mount Rushmore National Memorial on Oct. 2, 2025. The ad deal drew its own questions: her former spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin’s husband, Ben Yoho, had a firm paid as a subcontractor on the campaign.