It's Not Just Noem. Trump's National Security Team Is Compromised.

It is the simple reality that in national security, exposure is risk.There is a basic rule in national security that has nothing to do with morality and everything to do with leverage: it’s not what you do in private that matters. It’s what someone else can use against you.

That principle, long understood inside the intelligence community, is often described through the concept of kompromat, the use of compromising material to exert influence. Counterintelligence officials have repeatedly warned that foreign adversaries actively look for vulnerabilities among political and business elites, including undisclosed financial ties, opaque relationships, or personal histories that can be exploited or distorted. The FBI has specifically cautioned that foreign intelligence services target individuals with access to power by identifying “potential vulnerabilities” that could be used for coercion or influence.

That is why vetting exists. And it is why the current environment surrounding Donald Trump’s national security orbit raises concerns that go beyond politics and into structural risk.

Consider Kristi Noem, who is not only married to someone with a penchant for cross-dressing but who is also quite obviously having an extramarital affair with a staffer. When the Daily Mail broke the story of her husband Bryon posing with oversized plastic breasts with fake protruding nipples in an online fetish community, Noem pretended to be “devastated,” adding that, “The family was blindsided by this, and they ask for privacy and prayers at the time.”

https://saltypolitics.substack.com/p/its-not-just-noem-trumps-national