During congressional testimony, which was under oath, then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem made two claims that Dems believe they have debunked, and now she is staring down the barrel at a criminal referral.
Noem stepped down from the Department of Homeland Security not long after that hearing, with Trump reportedly upset over one of the claims she made, referring to the $220 million budget for self-deporting.
It is the budgetary claim that Noem made, as well as a claim about her alleged lover, Corey Lewandowski, that has her in hot water.
There were two claims made by Noem that Democrats are contesting.
The first is that top adviser Corey Lewandowski, who Noem allegedly had or is having an affair with, did not approve contracts for her department, but Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) says he can prove otherwise.
The second claim was regarding the $220 million Noem spent on a self-deportation ad blitz, which many are calling a vanity campaign by Noem.
When Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) asked Noem if Trump knew that she was going to do this, she replied simply, “Yes,” reported News Nation.
Noem stepped down, but the general consensus was that Trump fired her, frustrated over her handling of Minnesota as well as her performance during that hearing.
More specifically, there were whispers that Trump was not happy about the ad spend, which Trump himself backed up.
When Trump was specifically asked about the ad campaign, he responded, “I wasn’t thrilled with it. I spent less money than that to become president. I didn’t know about it,” according to NBC News.
Trump did allow Noem to save face by making up a position for her, announcing she would serve as the “Envoy for The Shield of the Americas.”
The criminal referral for having lied to Congress was filed by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD).
The request was sent to Attorney General Pam Bondi, reported the New York Post, stating, “After months of evading our Committees’ requests to testify in routine oversight hearings, Secretary Noem made a series of demonstrably false statements in a brazen attempt to undermine critical congressional oversight of the Department of Homeland Security.
“She did so after affirming that her testimony to the Senate would be ‘the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth’ and that her testimony to the House, ‘under penalty of perjury,’ would be ‘true and correct.’”
This has put the administration in a bit of a pickle. Trump is on the record saying he didn’t know that she was going to spend that money, and Noem is on the record as saying that Trump had known about it and approved it. One of them has to be lying. And if it’s Noem, well, she has Bondi backed into a corner.
