A criminal referral accusing fired Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem of lying to Congress was filed Monday by a pair of top Democratic lawmakers.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill) and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) – the top Democrats on the House and Senate judiciary committees – asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to open a perjury investigation into Noem over false statements she allegedly made under oath during congressional hearings earlier this month.
Noem “repeatedly misled” House and Senate lawmakers during testimony on March 3 and 4, according to Durbin and Rasking, who said the DHS chief made “a number” of statements that appear to violate federal perjury statutes, in their letter to Bondi.
“After 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,” the lawmakers wrote.
“She did so after affirming that her testimony to the Senate would be ‘the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth’ and that her testimony to the House, ‘under penalty of perjury,’ would be ‘true and correct.’”
The Democrats listed four categories of statements from the hearings where Noem “knowingly and willfully made false statements to Congress,” including the former South Dakota governor’s remarks about a $220 million publicity blitz.
Noem testified that President Trump personally approved the DHS ad campaign, which prominently featured the DHS secretary, when grilled by Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.).
However, in an interview with Reuters, Trump declared, “I never knew anything about it” when asked if he approved the ad campaign.
“These two statements are clearly inconsistent; one of them has to be false,” the lawmakers noted.
Noem also flatly denied that special government employee Corey Lewandowski – whom she’s allegedly having an affair with – had any role approving DHS contracts or policies, which the lawmakers argue “may also have been false.”
They cited media reports indicating Lewandowski “asserts approval authority over contracts and grants that exceed $100,000” and and has signed documents related to department policy decisions.
Durbin and Raskin also asked the Justice Department to scrutinize Noem’s responses to questions about DHS’s compliance with court orders, the detaining of US citizens and conditions in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers.
Noem testified that department employees “always comply” with court orders and that she was “not aware” of any instances in which a federal judge’s orders were defied by DHS.
The Democrats countered that a federal judge in Minnesota “found 210 instances of ICE violating court orders since December 2025 in Minnesota alone,” and included similar assertions from jurists in New Jersey and Maine.
They also claim Noem lied about ICE adhering to federal detention standards and when she declared “[w]e don’t detain American citizens.”
In their letter to Bondi, Durbin and Raskin acknowledged that they don’t expect their referral to lead to criminal charges under the Trump administration – but suggested a future administration could pursue a case.
“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,” they wrote.
Trump announced via Truth Social post earlier this month that Noem was out at DHS and would be replaced by Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.).
Noem will be shifted to a special envoy role, for “The Shield of the Americas” coalition, the president said.
DHS did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
