Employees at the Department of Homeland Security celebrated after photos of ex-chief Kristi Noem were removed from the halls of the agency’s headquarters, according to a new report.
Following months of controversies and a pair of scathing congressional hearings, Noem was fired by President Donald Trump on March 5 and named special envoy to The Shield of the Americas, a new and little-known security initiative. Markwayne Mullin, a former GOP senator from Oklahoma, was sworn in as her replacement on Tuesday.
Before she had even officially left office, upwards of 10 framed “glamour shots” of her were being taken down from the walls of her Customs and Border Protection workspace in the nation’s capital, sources told The Washington Examiner.
The photos were installed sometime around last January, when Noem’s staff swiftly moved to redecorate, taking down pictures of rank‑and‑file federal agents and replacing them with images of the former South Dakota governor, who alarmed critics with some of her photo-ops while leading the agency.
“Every single picture had a picture of Noem, and it was such a turn off,” an unnamed department official told the outlet. “People were snickering about it, like, ‘Did you see the upgrade?’ No leader that I know would have allowed that to happen. If they walked in and saw their photo in every picture, they would say, ‘What were you thinking?’”
Among the framed photos was one of Noem standing between Border Patrol agents “with a hand on each of their shoulders,” while another showed her flying an aeroplane. A third depicted her driving an all-terrain vehicle while wearing a bulletproof vest and a pearl necklace, the report claims.
“In another picture, the four federal employees sitting next to Noem are out of focus, while Noem is perfectly in focus, sporting an ICE ball cap with the agency’s new logo,” The Washington Examiner reported.
One source said that Corey Lewandowski, a former special government employee at DHS, may have orchestrated the photo gallery. Lewandowski left the department alongside Noem, Politico reports.
Another official said that Noem may have been “so insulated” that she was oblivious to the resentment building against her within the agency.
Some DHS employees now hope that Mullin can repair the agency’s reputation, which was undermined by Noem’s handling of the Minnesota immigration crackdown, her $200 million ad blitz and her feuding with other departments, among other controversies.
Mullin “has the opportunity to be like a prince or knight in shining armor as he comes riding over the hill and saves everybody from this freaking chaos,” a senior official told the outlet. “All he has to do, literally, is put things back in a normal order.”
The Independent has reached out to DHS for comment.
