Former Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem and her husband, Bryon Noem, racked up millions of dollars in debt prior to their rise to national prominence, according to a report.
The 33rd governor of South Dakota was dismissed by President Donald Trump last month after ICE’s disastrous Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis left two American citizens dead, and shortly before, Bryon was outed by a tabloid newspaper over a “Bimbofication” cross-dressing scandal.
Now, The New York Post reports that the couple listed debts ranging from $2.6 million to $3.25 million dating back to 2020, citing a federal financial disclosure filed by the ousted secretary.
The debt was accumulated from six loans, five of which were taken out to support Bryon Noem’s insurance and car wash businesses between 2015 and 2022, the filing indicates.
The other was a joint mortgage taken out in 2020 on their personal residence, valued between $101,000 and $250,000.
Prior to joining the administration, Kristi Noem had been a rancher, congresswoman, and then state governor, and was even tipped as a potential vice-presidential pick for Trump’s second tilt at the presidency.
However, she damaged her chances by publishing No Going Back, a 2024 memoir in which she boasted about shooting a puppy named Cricket she had been unable to train, an anecdote that was received with a mixture of horror and ridicule.
She campaigned with Trump anyway, memorably dancing on stage with him to fill time while two audience members received medical attention at a town hall event in Pennsylvania, with favorites by Andrea Bocelli, Sinead O’Connor, Guns N’ Roses, and James Brown providing the surreal soundtrack to the emergency.
She was subsequently nominated and confirmed as his Homeland Security secretary, only for her 13-month tenure as the face of the administration’s illegal immigration crackdown to end in disaster.
But growing opposition to ICE troops being sent into Democrat-run cities like Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, D.C, to hunt for undocumented migrants reached a crescendo in January when poet Renee Good and intensive care nurse Alex Pretti were shot dead by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis.
Noem and other Trump officials falsely accused the late protesters of being “domestic terrorists” and then refused to apologize when the claim was disproved by footage filmed by eyewitnesses at the scenes.
The following month, The Wall Street Journal published a bombshell report in which Noem was accused of engaging in an extramarital affair with her top adviser, Corey Lewandowski, which both parties vehemently denied.
The president had reportedly grown weary of the “constant chaos” surrounding Noem’s DHS and was then “incensed” by her claim during a congressional hearing that he had known in advance about her signing off on a $220 million TV ad campaign for ICE in which she appeared on horseback before Mount Rushmore. It proved to be the final straw.
“I never knew anything about it,” he fumed to Reuters shortly before announcing her exit on March 5.
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Noem was demoted to a new role as Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas and former Oklahoma Republican senator Markwayne Mullin was swiftly sworn in as her replacement.
She left office reportedly feeling she had been “thrown under the bus” by the president but the news left DHS staffers “actually crying out of happiness,” according to The Washington Examiner.
If all of that wasn’t enough, Bryon Noem was then exposed by The Daily Mail over his involvement in the “Bimbofication” fetish scene, which saw him sending out compromising photos and thousands of dollars in cash to “Barbie Doll” sex workers he had met online.
In one image acquired by the Mail, he was seen sporting an enormous pair of fake breasts, a gift to the late show satirists.
His wife, a high school sweetheart he married in 1992, with whom he has three children, was said to have been “blindsided” and “devastated” by the revelations.
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