Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MA) berated Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for allegedly misusing her department's resources to purchase luxury jets and forcing staff to protect her "special blanket."
During a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, Raskin confronted Noem's controversial management of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
"We're glad to meet you, even though it's been 13 months since you took office and more than five weeks since two American citizens were shot dead in Minneapolis," the Maryland Democrat began, explaining that DHS agents shot protesters Renee Good and Alex Pretti to death without good cause. "Madam Secretary, you've provided no evidence to back up your defamatory lie against either of these American citizens. There have been three homicides in Minneapolis in '26. Your agents committed two of them."
"And while you make a daily mockery of our courts and our Constitution, you're treating the billions of dollars our colleagues showered on your department like a personal slush fund. You budgeted an astonishing $220 million for media consultant contracts so you can star in self-promoting photo shoots," he continued. "You're living rent-free in the official waterfront residence reserved for the commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard."
"You spent $172 million to buy not one, but two luxury jets for your travel, and now you're using taxpayer funds to lease a third jet, a $70 million luxury 737 Max, with a queen-sized bedroom in the back, a deluxe serving bar, and four flat-screen TVs."
Raskin then told a story of what he called "an airborne episode of entitlement, arrogance, and contempt that I could hardly believe."
"Apparently, when your special blanket, your blankie, was left on one of the government jets and not transported over to the new one, your special government employee, Corey Lewandowski, chivalrously stepped forward to fire the pilot, midair, a 2003 Coast Guard Academy graduate and distinguished U.S. Coast Guard commander," he noted. "But then he had to be rehired immediately because there was no one else who could fly the two of you on the rest of the journey back home."
"Secretary Noem, you're flying high now, maybe even a little bit too close to the sun," Raskin added. "But with all these free planes and houses and pilots, you've traveled a long distance from your actual job and the things you should be doing as head of Homeland Security."