Three former Department of Homeland Security aides who followed Kristi Noem to her new State Department post were swiftly placed on paid leave and effectively told to find the door, the New York Post reported, citing a government insider familiar with the moves.
Troup Hemenway, Josh King, and Octavian Miller, all former DHS staffers, made the jump when Noem was removed as DHS secretary and appointed to the newly created role of special envoy for the Shield of the Americas. They were among 10 staffers who followed her to Foggy Bottom. The other seven were allowed to keep their jobs.
The three who lost out were allegedly told, in so many words, that their presence was temporary. A government insider described the message this way: "We're going to help you for a little bit, but you're obviously not welcome." The reason, the insider said, was their ties to top DHS aide Corey Lewandowski and the fallout from Noem's firing.
Lewandowski served as an unpaid special government employee at DHS but reportedly wielded outsized influence. He would introduce himself as Noem's chief of staff, the Post reported. That reputation followed the three aides to the State Department, where officials were not eager to import controversy from Noem's turbulent DHS tenure.
One source, however, pushed back on the premise. That source disputed Hemenway's closeness to Lewandowski, suggesting the connection was overstated. The basis for that claim was not detailed.
Noem's time leading DHS was marked by a string of personnel disputes and political friction. She reportedly fired a Coast Guard pilot over a missing blanket before having to reverse the decision, an episode that drew attention to her management style well before her removal from the department.
The State Department did not immediately respond to the Post's request for comment on the paid-leave decisions.
Noem's appointment as special envoy for the Shield of the Americas, a program described as aimed at fighting drug trafficking, organized crime, and illegal immigration in the Western Hemisphere, was supposed to be a fresh start. Instead, it has been shadowed by questions about her standing and her attendance.
Senior State Department officials told the Daily Mail that Noem's days in the position "might be numbered." The Daily Mail first reported the broader situation roughly two weeks before the Post's account, and its reporting included details about personal controversies involving Noem's husband, Byron Noem, an insurance executive.
The controversies did not end at the professional level. Byron Noem was revealed, through messages and selfies published by the Daily Mail, to have been living what the outlet described as a "cross-dressing double life" in a fetish scene, images that included some with his face visible. Whatever the private dimensions of that story, it compounded the political turbulence already surrounding the former governor.
Democrats, meanwhile, have spent months escalating pressure on Noem. House Democrats pursued impeachment over her leadership at DHS, and the political attacks have not relented even after her departure from the department.
What stands out here is not the political maneuvering at the top, that is Washington's permanent condition, but what happened to the people below. Hemenway, King, and Miller followed their boss to a new agency, presumably in good faith. They were met with paid leave and a clear signal that loyalty to the wrong person had made them unwelcome.
That kind of guilt-by-association treatment should trouble anyone who cares about fair dealing in government. If these staffers did something wrong, say so. If they didn't, placing them on leave because of who they worked near is a bureaucratic shiv, not accountability.
Noem herself has alleged that DHS staffers planted spyware on her phone and laptop to monitor Trump officials, a claim that, if accurate, would suggest the internal hostility she faced at the department ran deeper than policy disagreements. The full picture of what happened inside DHS under her watch remains incomplete.
The broader context is hard to ignore. Noem's controversial $220 million TV ad campaign drew fire. Her management decisions generated headlines. And her political opponents, including Senator Ed Markey, who called for defunding ICE and impeaching her, have treated every stumble as an opportunity to press their own agenda.
Several basic facts remain unclear. Who specifically ordered the paid-leave decision? Was it a State Department initiative, or did the directive come from elsewhere in the administration? Are there official records or memos documenting the rationale? None of that has been disclosed publicly.
The exact dates of Noem's removal from DHS and the aides' placement on leave are also unconfirmed in public reporting. The timeline is described only in relative terms, after Noem's firing, before the Post's account, leaving a gap that invites speculation but resists firm conclusions.
And the core question lingers: Were these three staffers removed because of something they did, or because of who they were associated with? The government insider's account points squarely at the latter. If that is true, it is not accountability. It is cleanup, the kind where the people at the bottom absorb the cost of decisions made far above them.
Washington has a long memory for scandal and a short one for the staffers who get caught in the blast radius. Hemenway, King, and Miller are learning that lesson now, on paid leave, with no public explanation, and no one at the State Department willing to go on the record.
Loyalty in government should not be a firing offense. But in this town, it often is, especially when the person you followed is no longer useful to the people running the building.
