Kristi Noem Alleges Own DHS Staff Installed Spyware on Officials' Devices — and Elon Musk Helped Find It

The United States Secretary of Homeland Security has alleged that members of her own department secretly installed surveillance software on her personal government devices, and that she only found out because of Elon Musk.

Speaking on the PBD Podcast hosted by conservative commentator Patrick Bet-David, Kristi Noem revealed on 26 February 2026 that an undisclosed number of DHS staffers had allegedly downloaded spyware onto her government-issued phone and laptop, enabling them to record internal meetings and monitor her communications.

The alleged breach extended beyond Noem herself, she said, to multiple political appointees across the department. No criminal charges have been publicly announced, and a DHS spokesperson, when asked by the Daily Caller News Foundation for details, declined to elaborate, saying only: 'We will let the Secretary's post speak for itself.'

The Allegations: A Secret Surveillance Operation Inside DHS

Noem's account, delivered during an hour-long podcast interview and subsequently amplified via her official DHS account on X, is striking in its specificity. 'Elon and his team were extremely helpful to me,' she told Bet-David. '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. They had done that to several of the politicals.'

The secretary said the discovery prompted a broader internal sweep. Technology experts were brought in to examine all departmental laptops and phones. Those found responsible were, in her words, 'brought in, polygraphed, fired.'

She credited the intervention of Musk's team as essential, arguing the spyware would still be active today without outside expertise. She posted on X: 'Performing my role as Secretary of Homeland Security has shown me just how real and dangerous the deep state really is. @elonmusk helped us find that a few DHS staff had installed spying software on the phones and computers of myself and other political hires.'

Noem made an additional claim during the podcast: that her team had discovered an undisclosed room on the DHS campus that she described as a secret Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF), a secure space designed for handling classified material.

'We found secret, secure rooms with hidden files that we turned over to attorneys,' she wrote on X. The files held within that room, she alleged, related to some of the department's most sensitive and controversial topics. She confirmed that the matter has been placed with legal counsel, though she provided no further detail on the nature of those files or any resulting investigation.

DOGE has not issued a separate public statement specifically addressing the spyware disclosure. A spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for comment from multiple news organisations at the time of publication.

Musk's Role at DHS: Sanctioned Access or Conflict of Interest?

The involvement of Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team in DHS's internal security operations is not, in and of itself, new. In early 2025, Noem confirmed to CNN that President Trump had explicitly authorised Musk's access to DHS information for efficiency-related purposes. 'Elon Musk is part of the administration that is helping us identify where we can find savings and what we can do,' she said at the time, as reported by FedScoop.

What the spyware episode reveals, however, is the degree to which that access has extended to the forensic examination of officials' personal government devices — territory that critics argue raises its own civil liberties concerns. In September 2025, a report commissioned by Senator Gary Peters, the ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, concluded that DOGE 'operates outside of, and even counter to, federal law,' warning that its practices risk 'serious cybersecurity vulnerabilities, privacy violations, and risk of corruption.'

A separate Congressional Research Service analysis found that multiple lawsuits had been filed by early 2025 alleging violations of the Privacy Act of 1974 as a result of DOGE's data access activities.

A 2025 Senate DOGE oversight report found that DOGE personnel had 'circumvented IT rules to improperly share data on outside servers' and had retained access to sensitive data even after a federal judge temporarily halted it. Whether those findings relate in any way to the DHS internal security review Noem described has not been established.

A Department Under Siege — From Within and Without

The spyware allegations do not emerge in isolation. They cap more than a year of turbulence inside DHS under Noem's leadership, much of it focused on the secretary's aggressive efforts to root out what she characterises as disloyalty.

In February 2025, Noem issued an internal directive requiring that all polygraph examinations administered across DHS include a question about 'unauthorised communications with media and nonprofit organisations,' according to a directive subsequently released under a Freedom of Information Act request and reported by AntiPolygraph.org.

By May 2025, the Wall Street Journal had documented what it described as an unprecedented internal polygraph operation, with employees summoned to a small interrogation room in Virginia, fitted with blood pressure cuffs and chest monitors, and questioned about media contacts. Juliette Kayyem, a former DHS assistant secretary, told the Journal flatly: 'There's no precedent for this.' The Government Accountability Project's legal director, Tom Devine, told the same publication that the practice potentially violated federal whistleblower protection laws.

The personnel consequences have been severe. According to an Axios review, roughly 80 per cent of career leadership at ICE has been fired or demoted under Noem's tenure, and roughly 800 fewer employees now work at DHS headquarters.

The Wall Street Journal also reported that Noem had attempted to force out Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott, and that DHS had been using a leased luxury 737 MAX jet, in the process of being acquired for approximately £68 million ($53 million), for official travel.

In early February 2026, a class action lawsuit alleged that Noem and her agency had deployed surveillance technology to track observers of immigration enforcement operations in Maine. The House Committee on Homeland Security's oversight Democrats mocked her podcast claims on X in all-capital letters: 'ELON FOUND DEEP STATE BUGS IN MY PHONE! THEY FOUND SECRET ROOMS!!' The department has not addressed those remarks.

Whether this amounts to a genuine espionage scandal inside one of America's most powerful domestic security agencies, or a politically convenient narrative ahead of ongoing battles over DHS's direction, remains to be determined, and for that, independent oversight will be essential.