Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem revealed Thursday that members of her own department secretly installed surveillance software on government-issued devices used by Trump administration officials, including her personal phone and laptop. The software, she said, allowed staffers to record meetings and monitor internal communications without authorization.
Noem dropped the bombshell during an appearance on the PBD Podcast, where she also disclosed the discovery of a hidden secure facility on the DHS campus containing classified files that no one in leadership knew existed.
The materials have been turned over to attorneys. The scope of what they contain remains unclear.
According to Noem, the discovery of the secret facility was almost accidental. An employee walking past a door started asking questions, which led to a broader inquiry. What they found was a functioning SCIF, a sensitive compartmented information facility, staffed by individuals working on files connected to what Noem described only as "some of these most controversial topics."
"I just found the other day a whole room on this campus that was a secret skiff secure facility that had files nobody knew existed. So we just happened to have an employee walk by a door and wonder what it was and started asking questions."
Noem said the individuals working inside the facility had access to files that were invisible to the department's political leadership. She did not specify the topics covered in those files, but she made clear that the discovery prompted an immediate legal review.
"We went in there. There was individuals working there that had secret files that nobody knew about on some of these most controversial topics like that, and now I've got that turned over to attorneys, and we're getting to the bottom of what exactly happened there."
A DHS spokesperson declined to elaborate, telling the Daily Caller News Foundation only that they would "let the Secretary's post speak for itself." The Department of Government Efficiency did not respond to a request for comment.
Noem credited Elon Musk and members of his team with identifying the surveillance software embedded on her devices. Without their technical expertise, she said, the monitoring would still be active.
"Elon and his team were extremely helpful to me. They helped me identify that some of my own employees in my department had downloaded software on my phone and my laptop to spy on me to record our meetings."
The spyware wasn't limited to Noem. She said the software had been installed on devices used by "several of the politicals," meaning political appointees within DHS. The implication is straightforward: career staffers at a federal agency were conducting unauthorized surveillance on the people elected to lead it.
This is what bureaucratic resistance looks like when it stops being passive. Slow-walking directives are one thing. Planting recording software on the Secretary's phone is something else entirely.
Noem also revealed that her review of DHS records has turned up information with far broader implications. Customs and Border Protection, which falls under DHS jurisdiction, tracks every traveler entering the country and collects tariff data on all imported goods. Noem said CBP's records included detailed information about scientists connected to the Wuhan lab and their travel patterns during the COVID era.
"They're scientists that participated with that Wuhan lab, how they were traveling back and forth between each other and working on those experiments. It's been eye-opening."
She did not name specific scientists, labs, or experiments, but the suggestion is significant: DHS may have been sitting on records that could illuminate one of the most consequential and deliberately obscured questions of the last five years. The fact that this information existed within CBP's systems and apparently gathered dust raises its own set of questions about who knew what, and who chose not to act on it.
Noem painted a picture of an agency that was not merely resistant to new leadership but fundamentally degraded in its basic capabilities. She said that for her first four months as Secretary, DHS servers could not transmit a PowerPoint longer than six pages.
Think about that. The department responsible for protecting the American homeland from terrorism, cyber threats, and border incursions could not email a standard briefing document.
Noem framed this not as mere incompetence but as a pattern of institutional neglect that left the department vulnerable and, in some cases, actively working against its own stated mission. She called for continued partnerships with outside technology firms to modernize the department's infrastructure, arguing that government systems are simply too far behind the standard required for national security.
For years, the phrase "deep state" drew eye rolls from the political establishment. Media figures treated it as a conspiracy theory, a rhetorical crutch for populists who couldn't accept that bureaucracies simply move slowly. The standard dismissal was that career civil servants are professionals doing their jobs, not operatives running shadow operations.
Noem addressed that framing directly.
"I always believed when people talked about the deep state before, that it existed. I never would have dreamed that it was as bad as it is."
This is a sitting Cabinet secretary describing a scenario in which her own employees bugged her devices, maintained a hidden classified facility outside the knowledge of political leadership, and operated information systems so degraded that basic communication was impossible. If even half of what Noem describes holds up under legal review, the word "resistance" doesn't capture it. Espionage is closer.
The details still need to be confirmed. Attorneys are reviewing the files. The software will presumably be forensically analyzed. But the pattern Noem describes is consistent with everything Americans have watched unfold since 2016: an administrative state that views elected leadership as a temporary nuisance to be managed, monitored, and, when necessary, undermined.
The difference now is that someone found the room. And someone checked the phones.
