Democrats ask Justice Department to investigate Kristi Noem for perjury

Congressional Democrats have accused former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem of lying under oath during the heated congressional hearings that predated her ouster from President Donald Trump’s Cabinet earlier this month. 

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the top Democrats on the House and Senate Judiciary committees, asked the Department of Justice to conduct a criminal investigation into whether Noem knowingly committed perjury during her congressional testimony. 

Noem was removed from her position as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security one day after the hearings cited in the letter, during which she faced intense grilling from lawmakers over everything from DHS officers’ aggressive immigration enforcement tactics in Minnesota to her relationship with Corey Lewandowski, a Trump ally and DHS special adviser.

“Ater months of evading our Committees’ requests to testify in routine oversight hearings, Secretary Noem made a series of demonstrably false statements in a brazen attempt to undermine critical congressional oversight of the Department of Homeland Security,” Durbin and Raskin wrote in a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi. 

The Democrats cited Noem’s answers to questions about whether the taxpayer-funded $220 million television ad campaign that prominently features her and was produced by a firm with which she has close ties was subject to a competitive bid. Noem said Trump knew about and had approved the ad campaign, but the president said in a phone interview with Reuters the next day that he “never knew anything about it.” 

“Even if Secretary Noem was the one telling the truth about the President’s knowledge, and she may well have been, she flatly misrepresented that the contract had been subject to a competitive bid,” the letter said. 

The DOJ did not immediately respond to MS NOW’s request for comment.

Noem’s position that DHS has consistently complied with court orders to release individuals from Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention was also a point raised in the letter. Under Noem, the department repeatedly defied court orders and refused to release individuals in ICE custody for days or weeks after a court-ordered date, the Democrats argued in the letter. 

Judges across the country have accused ICE of ignoring their orders requiring the release or return of detained immigrants and for presenting misleading arguments in court to defend the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda. 

Noem’s statements about how long ICE detentions usually last and about whether her department has mistakenly detained U.S. citizens were another point of concern. Her answers about the conditions in ICE detention facilities were also raised in the letter. 

The recommendation for the criminal probe contained dialogue of Noem’s heated exchanges with both Democrats and Republicans during the hearings as evidence.

In their letter, Durbin and Raskin acknowledged that it is highly unlikely Bondi will mount a federal criminal investigation into her former Cabinet colleague. A recommendation does not require the DOJ to take any action. 

“While we have low expectations that you will pursue this matter given your partisan weaponization of the Department of Justice, we note that the statute of limitations for perjury and for knowingly and willfully making false statements to Congress is five years,” the letter said.