On March 24, 2026, Kristi Noem had a few hours left as Secretary of Homeland Security. President Trump had already announced, nearly three weeks earlier, that he was replacing her. Her successor was set to take over that afternoon. Noem herself was in Guyana, starting her new job as a special envoy.

Late that morning, with Noem still in charge, her department approved a deal to buy five airplanes from a company run by one of her political donors. The price tag, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times, included $108 million for a Boeing 737 that had been turned into a flying mansion — with a stand-up bar, two bedrooms, marble showers and a table covered in manta ray skin.

The plane's owners had spent more than two years trying to sell it — and were asking less than $90 million.

Who got the money

The company is Daedalus Aviation Corporation. Its chairman is William Walters. In 2024, Walters gave $10,000 to American Resolve, a political committee that existed to support Kristi Noem. The company says Walters didn't know the group was tied to her. The Times points out that the group's website prominently showed a photo of her face.

After Noem took over Homeland Security, her department handed more than $900 million in contracts to companies led by Walters:

• His company Salus Worldwide Solutions was hired to encourage immigrants to leave the country on their own — and to fly Noem and her aides around on chartered jets.
• Daedalus got a no-bid contract to find planes for deportation flights. It could buy planes from other owners and resell them to the government, acting as a middleman.

Federal law normally makes an agency take competing bids. The department skipped that by claiming "unusual and compelling urgency," the Times reported in August. When the Times asked for the paperwork explaining why Daedalus got the contract without a bidding fight, the department refused, saying that releasing it would "compromise national security or create other security risks." The law generally requires those documents to be public.

What the five planes cost

Before March 24, the department had bought only old Boeing passenger jets from Daedalus — the kind you'd use to fly a lot of deportees at once. It paid between $17.6 million and $35 million each for five planes that were 17 to 23 years old.

The last-morning deal was different. Here's what Noem's department agreed to pay for:

• The luxury 737: $108 million. Its previous owners, the Las Vegas casino brothers Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta, listed it in early 2023 for $89 million. It sat unsold for more than two years, and in early 2025 its broker was still advertising it for less than $90 million. Daedalus bought it in September 2025. The Fertittas won't say what they got for it, citing a confidentiality clause. The plane's sales brochure bragged about electronic bidets, a wine chiller and four TVs.
• Two 10-year-old Gulfstream jets: $53 million each. Daedalus had bought them a few months earlier for $41 million and $41.8 million — roughly the going rate, according to the market firm Aircraft Post. That's a markup of more than $11 million per plane.
• Two Boeing 737 airliners more than 17 years old: $45 million each. They used to fly for Southwest and Avelo Airlines. Six aviation experts told the Times that planes of that make, model and age usually sell for $15 million to $30 million, depending on condition.

Add it up and the department agreed to pay Daedalus $304 million for those five planes. (That's our math, from the prices the Times reported.)

One aerospace consultant, Richard Aboulafia, told the Times he hoped the planes "came with buckets of caviar each," because otherwise the prices made little sense.

While Homeland Security was still renting the luxury 737 to fly Noem around, Daedalus repainted it in the same red-white-and-blue design as Trump's redesigned Air Force One. You can see it in the photo at the top of this page.

What Noem told the Senate

Three weeks before the deal, on March 3, Noem defended buying luxury planes in front of a Senate committee. She said they'd save taxpayers money because the department wouldn't have to rent as many jets. And she said the planes had two jobs:

"There are aircraft being purchased that will be utilized for executive air travel and for deportations."

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse asked her directly whether a plane like the luxury 737 would really be used to deport people. Noem said: "In the past, we have used jets of this size, in this configuration, for deportations." She added that she thought a bedroom was being taken out.

Here's what actually happened. The government paid to swap one of the two bedrooms for a conference room. The bar and the manta-ray table stayed, according to Daedalus.

And the deportation flights? Homeland Security officials now say four of the 737 airliners won't be used for deportations at all. They'll fly government leaders and members of Congress on overseas trips. The department won't say when — if ever — any of the 10 planes it bought from Daedalus will fly a deportation flight.

A fleet that mostly sits on the ground

This isn't the first time this fleet has made news. In August, the Times reported that Homeland Security had paid Daedalus $464 million for 10 used planes — and then barely used them. The department said it needed them urgently. But an internal document said it didn't have the staff to fly them. Seven of them sat at an airport in Lake Charles, Louisiana, for months at a time. One of the luxury jets was leased to the FBI to carry Director Kash Patel.

Storing the planes sent even more money to the same man. Walters's other company, Salus Worldwide, was hired to maintain the planes, and contracting records show it was paid more than $2 million in May and again in June. Only in August did the department hand most of that job to a company with no tie to Walters.

In June, Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee demanded that the department sell the luxury jets, calling the purchases "a slap in the face to the hardworking Americans who paid for them." They said selling them could save taxpayers more than $100 million.

Noem's excuse

Noem wouldn't answer the Times's questions about the prices. Instead she sent the same statement she gave the paper in August, saying the purchase "was not completed during Secretary Noem's tenure" and was "finalized under Secretary Mullin's leadership."

That's technically about paperwork. The planes didn't formally change hands until April, after Markwayne Mullin took over. But the deal was approved on her watch, on her last morning, after Trump had already said she was out.

And Mullin's side tells its own story. Two White House officials told the Times that Mullin looked into backing out of the deal but was afraid of a big financial penalty. They said White House chief of staff Susie Wiles told him not to block it. He didn't. His office's only comment: the planes "were purchased prior to Secretary Mullin's arrival."

So each secretary says it was the other one's purchase. Taxpayers paid either way.

Part of a pattern

When Trump announced on March 5 that Noem was leaving, it came right after she suggested to senators that Trump had signed off on her department's $220 million ad campaign — something an administration official flatly denied. According to the Times, that campaign had hired some of Noem's political allies. We've written about where Noem's ad money went: a push of more than $200 million telling immigrants to "leave on your own terms" — and a Missouri mother who did just that and was killed five weeks later.

The jets fit the same shape: big contracts, people close to Noem on the receiving end, and a department that won't show its work.

What the records show

On her last morning as Homeland Security Secretary — after Trump had already announced she was being replaced — Kristi Noem's department agreed to pay $304 million for five planes from a company whose chairman gave $10,000 to her political committee. That included $108 million for a luxury 737 that had been listed for less than $90 million, more than $11 million above what the firm had just paid for each of two Gulfstreams, and $45 million apiece for two old airliners experts value at $15 million to $30 million. Noem told senators the planes were for deportations too; her department now says four of the 737s won't fly deportees and won't say whether any of the 10 ever will.

Source

Kristi Noem's Agency Gave Her Donor a Lucrative Contract Just Before She Left — The New York Times, Oct. 4, 2026