Ousted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s spending on a controversial $220 million ad campaign included $20,000 for horse rentals and nearly $3,800 for hair and makeup, according to documents released by Democrat lawmakers on Monday.
The ad featured the former South Dakota governor wearing a cowboy hat and chaps and riding on a horse with Mount Rushmore in the background, a spectacular setting for the expensive spot that Democrats wasted little time in pouncing on.
Kristi Noem is out at DHS. Here’s a TV commercial of her on a horse, filmed five months ago at Mount Rushmore, for an ad campaign that cost more than $200 million pic.twitter.com/U1RtvlYc4w
— Drew Harwell (@drewharwell) March 5, 2026
Details of the expenses were made public on Monday by Peter Welch (D-VT) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), who are probing the ad’s exorbitant costs. The payments were a part of an invoice to The Strategy Group Company, a subcontractor run by the husband of DHS spox Tricia McLaughlin, which handled the production for the ad.
In addition to the hair and makeup and horse rental costs, the partial accounting of invoices provided to the senators include: “$107,405 for labor costs to the company, a $60,000 signing bonus, $52,599 for videography, photography and production vendors, $500 to a magic store and other items for a total of $286,137 in taxpayer funds.
A $60,000 signing bonus. $20,000 for horse rentals. $3,700 for hair and makeup.
These are just some of the spending @SenBlumenthal and I have uncovered from Kristi Noem’s taxpayer-funded ad campaign.
I’m releasing new details about this outrageous misuse of government funds.
— Senator Peter Welch (@SenPeterWelch) March 23, 2026
“This looks like waste, fraud, and abuse to me,” Welch said in a statement. “While leading the Department of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem and her senior team allowed tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars to be spent on wasteful production costs, a shady signing bonus, and a very expensive horse rental—and that’s just what we know so far.”
“Today, we are pulling back the curtain on the tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars Kristi Noem squandered on extravagant production costs for her personal ad campaign while leading the Department of Homeland Security,” said Blumenthal.
“This absurd waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer funds is completely unacceptable. I will continue to demand the answers the American people deserve about how these funds were used and whether any federal officials profited from DHS contracts,” added the senator, who notoriously lied about his Vietnam War service.
“I never knew anything about it,” President Donald J. Trump said of the ad, which was at least partially a reason for his decision to fire Noem and replace her with Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) who was confirmed to run the agency on Monday.
Shortly after her ouster, an unnamed administration official told NBC News that Noem’s termination was “a culmination of her many unfortunate leadership failures including the fallout in Minnesota, the ad campaign,” along with the “mismanagement of her staff, and her constant feuding with the heads of other agencies, including CBP and ICE.”
“How do you square that concern for waste, which I share, with the fact that you have spent $220 million running television advertisements that feature you prominently,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) asked of Noem during a Senate Judiciary Committee grilling before she was dumped by Trump and given a much lower profile spot at the new Shield of the Americas.
“Earlier this month, Senators Welch and Blumenthal requested documents and information from companies involved in producing and placing advertisements featuring Secretary Noem riding a horse at Mount Rushmore. The taxpayer-funded ads were produced after the Secretary and her senior leadership bypassed a competitive bidding process to award no-bid contracts to firms in which she and her senior advisors, including Corey Lewandowski and Tricia McLaughlin, had ties,” the senators’ statement read.
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