Kristi Noem is accused of posting a fake press release on State Department letterhead to explain why her time as a special envoy came to an end. The former Homeland Security secretary shared the statement on X on October 16, and people inside the department now say it was never an official release.
Politico first reported the story, citing two people familiar with Noem’s work at the State Department. According to their account, department leadership never signed off on the statement. “This was not a press release put out by the State Department,” one of them said. The same source accused Noem of going rogue and creating the letterhead herself so she could post it online.
A State Department official later confirmed the claim to CBS News, saying the statement Noem posted to both her official envoy account and her personal X account was made using fabricated State Department letterhead and was not an official department press release.
The statement Noem shared was designed to look like it came straight from the department. It said her special envoy job “was always a six-month appointment” and that she remains at the State Department as a senior adviser. It also came as rumors were spreading that she had fallen out of favor inside the administration.
To understand why that matters, it helps to look at how Noem got here. Trump fired her as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security on March 5, 2026, following a congressional hearing, and named Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin as her replacement. In the same announcement, Trump gave Noem a new title: special envoy for the Shield of the Americas, a U.S.-led security partnership with countries in the region. A special envoy is a representative appointed to handle a specific diplomatic mission on behalf of the United States.
That role is now over. The State Department confirmed to CBS News that her appointment as special envoy had expired and that she now works as a senior adviser to Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau, the same official she reported to as envoy. Inside the department, going from special envoy to senior adviser is widely viewed as a step down, which is exactly the impression the statement she posted seemed meant to push back on.
There are other loose ends too. Noem’s social media profiles still listed her as special envoy after the role ended, and her X bio linked to the Department of Homeland Security, the agency she was fired from in March, rather than the State Department.
Neither Noem nor the State Department responded to requests for comment from Politico. Noem has not publicly addressed the accusation.
Posting a document that falsely appears to come from a federal agency is not a small thing. Official letterhead signals that a statement speaks for the government, and the State Department controls what goes out under its name. Whether the department takes any action over the post remains to be seen.
