The U.S. Department of Homeland Security was slapped Tuesday with a new notice regarding the agency’s $464 million “ghost fleet” of jets, which were purchased in a controversial no-bid contract and have gone on largely unused.
Three Senate Democrats sent their demands to DHS on Tuesday in a letter reviewed by The New York Times.
“The waste generated by parking most of these aircraft compounds the loss of taxpayer funds involved in the suspect, no-bid process the Department hurriedly implemented to buy these jets,” the letter reads, signed off by Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Peter Welch (D-VT) and Adam Schiff (D-CA).
The jets were purchased by DHS during the second Trump administration, including a $172 million purchase of two luxury jets that have largely been used by former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and other top agency officials. However, as reported by CNN, the fleet “has largely sat idle,” in some cases “for months,” at a facility in Louisiana.
The three Democratic senators also hoped to learn answers regarding the fleet’s purchase. The entire fleet of jets was purchased from a Northern Virginia company known as Daedalus Aviation Corporation in a no-bid contract. In their letter, the Senate Democrats demanded the communication records “between Daedalus and both current and former” DHS leaders, the Times’ report reads.
Former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and current DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin have both pointed fingers at each other regarding the scandal. As noted by The Daily Beast on Tuesday, a spokesperson for Mullin’s DHS previously told the outlet that the “contract for Daedalus was made and approved by department leadership before Secretary Mullin was sworn in.”
A spokesperson for Noem later clapped back and insisted that it was actually under Mullin’s leadership of the DHS when the jet purchase deals were “finalized.”