Kristi Noem officially files to divorce husband Bryon after his ‘bimbofication’ scandal

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Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has officially filed for divorce from Bryon Noem following a family scandal in which her husband was accused of engaging in a “bimbofication” fetish.

Kristi Noem, 54, filed to end her marriage in a South Dakota court on Monday, according to reports. It came months after photos were released of Bryon, 56, wearing pink shorts and a skin-colored top with two balloons tucked into it to look like huge breasts.

“It's called bimbofication. People who modify their body to look like a doll. The Barbie look,” one of the adult entertainers who allegedly communicated with Bryon Noem online told the Daily Mail in a late March article where the photos were published. “His kink is for huge, huge ridiculous boobs.”

Kristi Noem was “devastated” by the news, a spokesperson for her former Cabinet official told the Mail at the time. “The family was blindsided by this. They ask for privacy and prayers at this time,” the spokesperson said.

Despite the spokesperson saying Kristi Noem was shocked, officials inside the Trump administration said they had heard rumors about Bryon Noem’s cross-dressing before.

“I have been hearing he was a cross-dresser since last year and that she was telling people about it – we assumed to justify her affair,” a senior Homeland Security official told the Mail in a follow-up report.

The official was referring to allegations of an affair between Kristi Noem and her close aide Corey Lewandowski, who is also married. Both Kristi Noem and Lewandowski have vehemently denied the affair, with the former previously describing the rumors as “tabloid garbage” at a House committee hearing in March.

Kristi Noem and her husband have been married for 34 years. They met in high school and tied the knot in 1992. They have three adult children and several grandchildren.

The divorce filing cited irreconcilable differences, according to Dakota News Now.

Kristi Noem’s mother, 77-year-old Corinne Arnold, first broke the news that her daughter started divorce proceedings in July.

“It has been difficult, but we knew this was coming, that they were going to get divorced,” Arnold told the Mail at the time.

The Independent has reached out to Noem for comment on the divorce filing.

Kristi Noem was no stranger to politics when Trump tapped her to carry out his massive immigration crackdown as Homeland Security secretary at the start of his second term. She previously served as South Dakota governor and, before that, as a state congresswoman.

Kristi Noem faced intense scrutiny as Homeland Security secretary, which included calls to resign after Senator Alex Padilla, a California Democrat, was forcibly removed from her press conference in Los Angeles in June 2025.

Backlash against her leadership intensified after U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti were gunned down in the streets of Minneapolis by federal immigration agents in January.

In early March, Trump announced that Senator Markwayne Mullin, an Oklahoma Republican, would take over as Homeland Security secretary.

Kristi Noem then became the special envoy for the “Shield of the Americas,” a security initiative the Trump administration created to stop drug trafficking and illegal immigration in the Western Hemisphere.