Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem took heat from several lawmakers over former associates of hers receiving a massive government contract for an ad campaign.

Noem on Tuesday faced the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify on Department of Homeland Security funding. Throughout the hearing, numerous senators confronted Noem about the $220 million that DHS spent on an ad campaign in which she stars. The ads focused on the department’s deportation efforts in the country.

According to a November 2025 report by ProRepublica, one of the beneficiaries of that ad deal was the Republican firm Strategy Group. The firm, the report continued, “played a central role in her 2022 South Dakota gubernatorial campaign.” Noem served as governor of South Dakota from 2019 to 2025.

Corey Lewandowski, Noem’s adviser and alleged romantic partner, also reportedly worked “extensively” with the firm.

The lion’s share of the deal went to a Delaware-based company called Safe America Media. It was founded just days before it was awarded the contract.

When Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) was given time to question Noem, he honed in on that potential conflict of interest:

SCHIFF: You don’t want to confirm the president’s role in this, and I can understand why. But you say it was a competitive process, and yet this contract went to a company that didn’t exist two weeks before they got the contract, and–
NOEM: Sir, I can’t speak to that. I don’t know the name of that company.
SCHIFF: You’re saying you can’t speak to it, but let me ask you this: are you saying it’s just a coincidence, it’s just a happy circumstance, it’s just a fortuitous event that $143 million of that went to a subcontractor that you worked with extensively as governor in South Dakota — or during your campaign — that that is just coincidental?
NOEM: The same process was followed for this media contract than any other media contract that’s happened [with] the Department of Homeland Security–
SCHIFF: So just a coincidence then?
NOEM: –I had nothing to do and no political– had no choosing of who the contractors, and we don’t have a legal process for weighing in on subcontractors. Also it doesn’t exist.

Schiff then asked Noem to go on the record and state that neither she nor any of her associates had anything to do with the companies receiving the ad contract.

“To the best of my knowledge,” she responded, “none of us were involved in deciding who got those contracts.”

At another point in the hearing, Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) also brought up the contract. During his questioning, he got Noem to confirm that her former assistant won the “no-bid contract” from DHS.

WELCH: Mr. Yoho is also the husband of your former spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin?
NOEM: Yes
WELCH: So your former assistant and her husband are the ones that got the DHS no bid contract for $143m. Any dispute about that?
NOEM: No. pic.twitter.com/5YSQBoFfVX
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 3, 2026

Watch above via C-SPAN

The post Kristi Noem Grilled in Senate Hearing Over DHS Giving Former Associates Massive Government Contract first appeared on Mediaite.

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