DHS Secretary Kristi Noem dropped a series of extraordinary claims Thursday: members of her own department secretly installed surveillance software on her government-issued phone and laptop, along with devices used by other Trump administration political appointees, allowing staffers to record meetings and monitor internal communications.
Noem said the spyware would still be running today if not for outside technology experts, including Elon Musk and members of his team, who examined department hardware and flagged the suspicious software.
That alone would be a significant allegation from a sitting Cabinet secretary. But Noem wasn't finished.
According to the Daily Caller, speaking on the "PBD Podcast," Noem described stumbling onto a hidden secure facility inside the DHS campus, discovered only because an employee happened to walk past an unfamiliar door and started asking questions.
"I can't believe what I found since I've been in this department. I just found the other day a whole room on this campus that was a secret skiff secure facility that had files nobody knew existed. So we just happened to have an employee walk by a door and wonder what it was and started asking questions."
Inside, Noem said, individuals were working with classified files covering what she described as "some of these most controversial topics." She said she has turned the files over to attorneys and is working to determine what exactly was going on.
The specific topics covered in those files have not been disclosed. Neither have the names of the individuals found working in the facility. What Noem did make clear is that this was not a known operation within the department's official structure.
The spyware allegation is the sharper edge of Noem's claims. She said DHS employees downloaded software onto her personal government-issued devices, as well as devices belonging to "several of the politicals," meaning political appointees installed by the Trump administration. The software allowed staffers to record meetings and track internal communications.
Noem credited Musk and his team with identifying the problem:
"Elon and his team were extremely helpful to me. They helped me identify that some of my own employees in my department had downloaded software on my phone and my laptop to spy on me to record our meetings."
She emphasized that without outside technology expertise, the surveillance would have continued undetected. The department's own systems, she said, were so outdated they could barely function. During her first four months as secretary, Noem said she could not send a PowerPoint longer than six pages over email from DHS servers.
Six pages. The department tasked with protecting the homeland from threats, foreign and domestic, could not handle a mid-sized email attachment.
Noem also revealed that she has begun reviewing Customs and Border Protection records alongside information from national laboratories under DHS jurisdiction. She pointed to CBP data on travelers during the COVID era, specifically referencing scientists who she said "participated with that Wuhan lab" and traveled back and forth while "working on those experiments."
No supporting documentation for these claims was cited during the podcast, and the specific records have not been made public. But the implication is clear: DHS may be sitting on a significant body of evidence related to the origins of COVID-19 that previous leadership either ignored or buried.
If those records exist and confirm what Noem is describing, the question shifts from what the department found to why it took a new administration to find it.
Noem closed her remarks with a candid reflection on what she has encountered since taking the helm at DHS:
"I always believed when people talked about the deep state before, that it existed. I never would have dreamed that it was as bad as it is."
That statement carries a different weight coming from a Cabinet secretary with direct operational authority than it does from a pundit on cable news. Noem is not speculating about whether entrenched bureaucrats resist political leadership. She is describing, in her account, government employees who allegedly bugged her phone and hid classified files in rooms that did not appear on any official map of her own building.
A DHS spokesperson, asked for details supporting Noem's allegations, declined to elaborate: "We will let the Secretary's post speak for itself." The Department of Government Efficiency did not respond to a request for comment.
The facts as Noem presents them remain unverified by independent sources. No corroborating technical analysis has been made public. No specific software has been named. No individuals responsible for the alleged surveillance have been identified. The attorneys reviewing the hidden files have not been named, and no formal legal action has been announced.
Those gaps matter. Allegations this serious from a sitting Cabinet secretary require follow-through: names, evidence, and consequences. If DHS employees genuinely weaponized government devices to spy on their own political leadership, that is not a staffing problem. That is a criminal matter.
Noem says she is "getting to the bottom of what exactly happened." The American public deserves to see the bottom when she gets there. Because if even half of what she described on Thursday is accurate, the Department of Homeland Security was not just failing to protect the country. It was actively working against the people sent to lead it.