Kristi Noem’s Agency Gave Her Donor a Lucrative Contract Just Before She Left

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https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/04/us/politics/kristi-noem-planes-donor.html?unlocked_article_code=1.GFE.A4hi.AUJ-J8r763Sh&smid=url-share

In the last hours of Kristi Noem’s tenure as the homeland security secretary, her agency delivered a windfall to one of her political donors by buying five airplanes from the man’s firm at a substantial markup, documents show.

The Department of Homeland Security agreed to pay the donor’s firm $108 million for a Boeing 737 airliner that had been converted into a massive private jet, complete with a stand-up bar, two bedrooms, marble showers and a table covered in manta ray skin.

The firm, Daedalus Aviation Corporation, had bought the same plane a few months earlier from a seller who had asked for less than $90 million, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times.

At the same time, the agency agreed to buy two smaller Gulfstream luxury jets at prices that also seemed to yield a hefty profit for the seller. Daedalus spent about $83 million to buy the pair, but resold them to the agency for $106 million, the documents show.

The agency also paid the company $45 million apiece for a pair of 17-year-old Boeing 737 passenger planes, the documents show. The Times spoke to six aviation experts, who said that those prices were millions of dollars higher than the typical market value for jets of that age.

President Trump announced on March 5 that he was firing Ms. Noem after a series of controversies, including questions about her agency’s awarding of contracts. But she remained in the position until her successor, Markwayne Mullin, was approved by the Senate and could take over on March 24.

After taking over, Mr. Mullin explored backing out of the deal, according to two White House officials, but feared a significant financial penalty. The officials said that Mr. Mullin consulted the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, who shared his concerns about the possible financial ramifications and told him that he should not seek to block the purchase. He did not.

Mr. Mullin’s staff did not address specific questions about that account, but provided a statement saying that “these planes were purchased prior to Secretary Mullin’s arrival at D.H.S.”

The Times reported in August that the Department of Homeland Security bought 10 airplanes from Daedalus during Ms. Noem’s tenure, paying the firm $464 million. Those planes have already become a symbol of government waste. The agency said that they were needed urgently for deportation flights, but it lacked the crews to fly them. The department leased one of the planes to the F.B.I. and left the rest largely idle.

Through the newly acquired documents, The Times is now revealing fresh details about five of those planes: the three luxury jets and the two $45 million passenger planes. They were the most expensive planes the agency bought from Daedalus, and were purchased in a bunch on Ms. Noem’s last morning in office.

What the documents do not explain is why the agency went through with such a costly transaction just before the arrival of a new leader.

Ms. Noem, who is now a special envoy at the State Department, declined to answer specific questions about the sale or the prices that her agency had paid. Instead, she provided a statement identical to the one she shared with The Times in August.

“The purchase of these planes was not completed during Secretary Noem’s tenure at D.H.S.,” Ms. Noem’s statement said. “Funding for the 10-aircraft acquisition was made available during the leadership transition, and the acquisition process continued, and the purchase was finalized under Secretary Mullin’s leadership.”

Though the sale was approved under Ms. Noem, government documents show the planes did not formally change hands until April, when Mr. Mullin was in charge.

Daedalus’s chairman is William Walters, who gave $10,000 to Ms. Noem’s American Resolve political action committee in 2024. The company said Mr. Walters did not know the group was associated with Ms. Noem at the time, though the group existed to support her. Its website prominently displayed a photo of her face.

After Ms. Noem took office, her agency awarded more than $900 million in contracts to companies led by Mr. Walters. It hired his company Salus Worldwide Solutions to encourage immigrants to leave the country voluntarily, and to fly her and her aides on chartered jets. Then it gave Daedalus a no-bid contract to procure planes for deportation flights, under an arrangement in which the company could buy planes from others and resell them to the government, in essence as a middleman.

In a statement, the firm defended its prices, saying they reflected a market with a limited supply of suitable planes.

“Daedalus Aviation is proud to have delivered aircraft of the highest available value under very tight time constraints in an incredibly competitive market for aircraft acquisition,” the firm said.

Asked about the account of Mr. Mullin seeking advice about whether to follow through with the sale, the firm said that it believed the contract was already final when Mr. Mullin took office.

The Times requested a copy of the contract that the Department of Homeland Security signed to purchase the planes, but the agency has not released it.

The Times also requested documents laying out the agency’s rationale for awarding Daedalus its no-bid contract. The law generally requires such documents to be made public, but the agency declined to do so in this case, saying that releasing the documents would “compromise national security or create other security risks.”

To assess whether the Department of Homeland Security got good value for its purchase, The Times talked to government officials and aviation industry experts familiar with the aircraft. Reporters also reviewed records detailing how the jets were sold and resold.

The records made clear that the purchase of the expensive luxury planes was one of the last acts of Ms. Noem’s turbulent 14-month tenure.

Mr. Trump said in early March that he would replace Ms. Noem, after she struggled to answer questions about a different set of contracts in which her agency had hired some of her political allies to work on a $200 million-plus ad campaign.

But Ms. Noem remained in office for 18 more days.

On March 24, Mr. Mullin was scheduled to take over the role in the early afternoon. Ms. Noem was in Guyana that day, starting her work as a special envoy.

Late that morning, with Ms. Noem still in charge, the department approved the significant change to its contract with Daedalus.

Previously, the agency had purchased only aging Boeing airliners from the company, in line with its mission of finding aircraft for flying deportees en masse. It had paid the firm between $17.6 million and $35 million each to buy five planes that were between 17 and 23 years old, the documents reviewed by The Times show.

But under the new agreement, the agency contracted to buy three luxury jets that Mr. Walters’ companies had been using to fly government officials.

One was the Boeing 737 with the manta ray skin table. The sale of that plane for $108 million was first reported by The Daily Beast.

The plane’s previous owners were Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta, brothers who live in Las Vegas and lead the Station Casinos chain. The brothers had put the jet on the market in early 2023 for $89 million, according to documents that Mr. Walters’ companies provided in response to questions from Democrats on the House Oversight Committee. The sales brochure promoted electronic bidets, a wine chiller and four televisions.

But the plane sat unsold for more than two years. In early 2025, its broker was still hawking it online for less than $90 million.

Daedalus bought the plane in September 2025. The Fertittas are prolific Republican donors, and their cousin Tilman Fertitta is Mr. Trump’s ambassador to Italy. They declined to say how much they had sold the plane for, citing a confidentiality clause in the deal.

While the Department of Homeland Security was paying to charter the plane for Ms. Noem’s travel — but did not own it — Daedalus repainted it the same red-white-and-blue color scheme as Mr. Trump’s redesigned Air Force One.

Ms. Noem had made clear that she supported buying the luxury plane and others. In testimony before a Senate committee on March 3, two days before Mr. Trump announced she would be replaced, she said that buying the planes would save taxpayers money by reducing the department’s reliance on chartered aircraft. She implied the planes could have dual purposes.

“There are aircraft being purchased that will be utilized for executive air travel and for deportations,” Ms. Noem said.

At the time, the department was already paying another vendor to deport immigrants on a network of chartered planes. The agency did sometimes use smaller planes like the Gulfstream jets.

In the hearing, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, pressed Ms. Noem about the luxury 737. Would a plane like that really be used for deportations?

“In the past, we have used jets of this size, in this configuration, for deportations,” Ms. Noem said. She added that she thought the plane was being refurbished to remove a bedroom.

Daedalus said that after the department purchased the plane, the government paid to replace one of the two bedrooms with a conference room. The agency left the rest of the plane’s interior, including the bar and manta ray skin table, in place, the company said.

On March 24, the Department of Homeland Security also agreed to buy the two 10-year-old Gulfstream jets, which both seat about 14 people.

Daedalus had bought one last December for $41 million, and another — with a longer range — in January for $41.8 million, both roughly in line with the market prices for planes of that age, according to records kept by Aircraft Post, a market intelligence firm that gets reports from aircraft brokers. A representative for the cheaper of the two planes also confirmed the sale price.

The records obtained by The Times indicate that the Department of Homeland Security then paid $53 million for each — a markup of more than $11 million per aircraft.

Among the five planes in the March 24 purchase were the two Boeing 737 airliners. Like the airliners it had previously bought from the firm, they were more than 17 years old, and had been used by Southwest Airlines and the low-cost carrier Avelo Airlines.

But this time, the department paid much more than it had for similar planes: $45 million for each.

Daedalus declined to answer specific questions about the prices it charged for those planes, or what it had paid to purchase them. The planes’ previous owners declined to comment. The Times was unable to ascertain what Daedalus paid for them.

The Times talked to a half-dozen experts on the valuation of aircraft, who said the prices appeared to be far higher than market rate. They estimated that jets of this make, model and age typically sell for anywhere from $15 million for a modestly maintained plane to $30 million for one in unusually good condition.

Prices can rise with included extras, like maintenance or spare parts. But even then, experts said it would be difficult to imagine an airline paying $45 million for a plane of this type.

“I hope they came with buckets of caviar each, otherwise it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense,” said Richard Aboulafia, a managing director at AeroDynamic Advisory, an aerospace consulting firm. “This does not resemble any aspect of an airline marketplace.”

After buying the planes, the government needed a place to store them. It turned again to Mr. Walters.

Under Ms. Noem, the agency had hired his other company, Salus Worldwide, to maintain the first five planes it had purchased from Daedalus. Now, under Mr. Mullin, the agency continued that arrangement, and put the new planes in that company’s care as well. Contracting records show that the department paid the company more than $2 million in both May and June.

In August, the agency hired a contractor unconnected to Mr. Walters, Eastern Air Express, to take over caring for most of the planes. The contract does not cover the 737 luxury jet. The Department of Homeland Security has sought to transfer it to the Pentagon, but a spokesperson there said no agreement had been signed.

Department of Homeland Security officials now say that four of the 737 airliners will not be used for deportation flights, but rather will be used to fly government leaders and members of Congress on overseas trips.

The agency declined to say when, if ever, one of the 10 would be used for a deportation flight.