Politics
Coast Guard Pilot Reportedly Fired After DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s Blanket Left Behind on Plane
A pilot was reportedly fired after U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s blanket was left behind on a plane.
In a Thursday, February 12 Wall Street Journal report documenting the “constant chaos inside DHS,” sources described one incident in which Noem switched planes due to a maintenance issue.
Her blanket was not moved to the second plane — and Noem’s top adviser, Corey Lewandowski, later fired the pilot, according to people familiar with the incident.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the pilot was first told to take a commercial flight home; however, the pilot was reinstated because no one else was able to fly them home.
While a DHS spokeswoman didn’t address the claims about the blanket, she told WSJ that Noem, 54, has “made personnel decisions to deliver excellence.”
DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin told People on Friday, February 13, that the allegation is “categorically false,” while White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said President Donald Trump has “full confidence” in Noem.
Still, WSJ reported that Noem and Lewandowski have “fired or demoted roughly 80 percent of the career ICE field leadership that was in place when they started.”
Noem has come under fire amid the Department of Homeland Security’s immigration crackdown following the fatal shootings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of law enforcement.
After Pretti’s death, Noem called the 37-year-old ICU nurse a “domestic terrorist.”
According to various videos of the incident, Pretti was pinned on the street by multiple federal agents after it appeared he was using his phone to record the scene unfolding in Minneapolis.
He was reportedly pepper-sprayed and disarmed of a gun (he had a permit to carry a concealed handgun in Minnesota). He was then shot at multiple times and declared dead at the scene.
Noem later said, according to The Hill, “We were using the best information we had at the time, seeking to be transparent with the American people, and get them what we knew to be true on the ground.”
