Former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has filed for divorce from her husband Bryon, months after a report detailed his messages to models and a provocative personal photo.
The New York Post reported that Noem filed papers Monday in Hamlin County Court in her home state, citing irreconcilable differences. The filing ends a marriage that began in 1992 and produced three children.
Noem, 54, is the former South Dakota governor who later served as Homeland Security secretary. President Trump fired her from that post. She has since been named special envoy for the Shield of the Americas, a State Department multinational security and anti-cartel effort, with an office at the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace near the Lincoln Memorial and the National Mall.
Her husband, Bryon Noem, has been at the center of the personal storm that preceded the court papers.
In late March, days after Noem lost the Homeland Security job, the Daily Mail reported that Bryon regularly chatted up women from the “bimbofication” scene, adult performers known for extreme breast enhancement with saline. The outlet cited hundreds of messages to three models and said he described craving “huge, huge ridiculous boobs.”
The same report said he shared a photo of himself wearing pink hot pants and a flesh-colored, well-endowed bodysuit. That coverage landed on a family already under public pressure.
A representative for Noem told the Post at the time that she was “devastated” by the revelation.
"The family was blindsided by this, and they ask for privacy and prayers at the time."
Kassidy, 31, and Kennedy, 29, both have children of their own. Their brother Booker is 23. The couple’s long marriage had been part of Noem’s public biography through her years as governor and in Washington.
While the marriage unraveled in public view, Noem’s longtime romance with Corey Lewandowski continued to draw attention. Lewandowski, a former Trump campaign adviser credited with engineering the 2016 New Hampshire primary win, is married and has four children.
He served as Noem’s de facto chief of staff at DHS as a special government employee. After that arrangement ended, he returned to Lewandowski Strategic Advisors, his government and public affairs firm.
Sources told the Post the two kept pursuing the relationship. Last month they were spotted biking and showing affection along the shores of Lake Minnetonka in Minnesota.
Last week Noem attended a meeting between Trump and South American leaders on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. The president greeted her with a “hello.”
She has kept the new envoy role and the Washington office even after the DHS firing. The divorce filing in Hamlin County Court now puts a legal marker on a personal break that had already spilled into headlines through the Daily Mail account and the subsequent reporting on her private life.
The papers list irreconcilable differences. No further petition language was detailed in the reporting. Absolute calendar dates for the Monday filing, the precise docket number, and the full text of the petition were not included in the available account.
For a figure who rose from South Dakota politics to the cabinet, then to a special envoy post, the sequence is straightforward: a decades-long marriage, a damaging report on her husband’s private messages and photo, an acknowledged family shock, a continuing relationship with Lewandowski, and now a divorce case at home.
Washington will treat this as another personnel soap opera. The people who have to live with it are the ones named in the caption, and the grandchildren who did not ask for any of this.
