Disgraced Kristi Noem Official Handed Top DHS Fraud Job

Photo Illustration by Victoria Sunday/The Daily Beast/Getty Images A former official to Kristi Noem who deliberately destroyed court evidence has been handed an extraordinary new assignment —fighting fraud at the Department of Homeland Security.

The Daily Beast’s sister investigation Substack, PunchUp, revealed last week that Karen Evans was found to have deleted work-related correspondence she had been told to preserve for a federal lawsuit over the Trump administration’s efforts to gut FEMA.

In her explosive finding, Judge Susan Illston said Evans, Noem’s acting FEMA chief, intentionally changed the settings on the messaging app Signal to make correspondence with senior DHS aides disappear.

These included groups featuring Noem, 54, and her corruption-accused chief aide and rumored lover, Corey Lewandowski, 52.

After Donald Trump, 80, fired Noem in March, Evans was dumped as FEMA’s acting administrator after less than six months in the role.

But rather than following her boss out of the door, she was made the department’s director of the Waste, Fraud and Abuse Task Force—three weeks before the court found her to have deleted evidence, PunchUp reports .

A beleaguered department insider told the outlet: “That sounds pretty appropriate for this admin.” Evans’s actions have brought grave consequences for the Trump administration.

The ruling by Illston, a Clinton appointee, means the court will now assume the missing messages would have helped prove that DHS directed and carried out the plan to slash FEMA staffing.

However, she returned to DHS headquarters 15 days before Illston issued her damning September 11 ruling to lead the department’s role in Trump’s government-wide Task Force to Eliminate Fraud.

In an August 27 announcement to staff, DHS undersecretary for management Brian Cavanaugh praised Evans’s credentials.

He wrote that “Karen’s extensive background in federal IT and cybersecurity leadership, along with her deep experience in public service” made her suited to the assignment.

He said Evans—who had already earned the nickname “The Terminator” among FEMA staff over her aggressive cost-cutting while running the disaster agency—would safeguard taxpayer funds and ensure DHS acted as a responsible steward of public money.

But as PunchUp notes, Judge Illston’s ruling raises questions about why Evans still runs a task force dedicated to rooting out fraud after the finding, and what Cavanaugh and the department knew when she was rehired.

DHS was asked whether Evans has faced any disciplinary measures over the destruction of government records, and if it still considers Evans an appropriate official to lead its efforts to combat fraud.