New, potentially embarrassing details have emerged about a midair incident involving Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and her senior adviser Corey Lewandowski.
According to published reports, Lewandowski fired – but then quickly rehired – a Coast Guard pilot after he refused to turn a plane around to retrieve Noem's weighted blanket from another plane, but three DHS insiders told the Daily Mail that the item that had been left behind was actually the agency head's bag.
"This was never about a blanket," said one insider with knowledge of the incident. "The blanket was a cover story for what really happened. The whole thing was really about the bag that was left."
It's not clear what was in the bag, but sources told the Daily Mail that Lewandowski, who is rumored to be having an affair with Noem, learned that at least two people were aware of the contents and that this could be embarrassing – and the news outlet speculated those two individuals were promoted afterward.
"Was it a mere coincidence then, that [Coast Guard commanding officer Keith] Thomas – who, weeks earlier, had been fired as a pilot – was promoted to become a DHS senior advisor, and the aide close to Noem on the trip, Kamryn Jones, 38, was also rewarded?" the outlet's correspondents wondered.
Thomas was commander of the Coast Guard's VIP transportation unit based in Washington, D.C., charged with transporting Noem and senior Coast Guard officers in the service's two Gulfstream C-37Bs, but he left that position in June, and two DHS sources told the Daily Mail that he was given a leadership role for a newly created air division serving DHS headquarters.
One DHS source said Thomas resigned in late January, just before news of Lewandowski's meltdown became public.
Noem awarded Jones with a Legion of Merit medal in September.