Bryon Noem, the husband of former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, carried on a secret online relationship with a Colorado Springs dominatrix for more than nine years, a liaison that included payments, phone recordings, and messages in which he allegedly disparaged his wife and expressed a desire to transition into a woman, the Daily Mail reported after obtaining dozens of recordings and screenshots from the woman involved.

The woman, 30-year-old Shy Sotomayor, who performs under the stage name Raelynn Riley, shared the material directly with the outlet. The messages and recordings span from 2016, when Sotomayor says Bryon first contacted her through Twitter, through exchanges as recent as January of this year.

The revelations land on an already fractured public image. Kristi Noem spent 13 months leading the Department of Homeland Security before being ousted from the Trump Cabinet in March. Her husband's alleged conduct now raises questions not only about the Noem marriage but about whether a senior national-security official's household was exposed to potential blackmail during her entire tenure at DHS.

A relationship built on aliases and paid sessions

The Daily Mail reported that Bryon Noem, now 56, used the alias "Jason Jackson" and paid for conversations through an email registered under the pseudonym "Chrystalballz666." Sotomayor told the outlet they communicated primarily on Streammate, an adult webcam platform, as well as Skype and by phone. She said he paid $15 per minute for chats and posing, and that she earned tens of thousands of dollars from the relationship over the years.

Sotomayor said she first connected with Bryon in 2016, when she was 21. Their sessions were sporadic for roughly five years. Then, around 2020, the year after Kristi Noem became governor of South Dakota, he cut off contact without explanation.

He resurfaced in October 2025. Sotomayor described his return bluntly.

"He just popped back into my life like a little groundhog."

Once they reconnected, Sotomayor said, his desired frequency of sessions increased sharply. Conversations in November alone cost him roughly $7,600, she told the Daily Mail. He also proposed a trip to New York City to meet in person, though Sotomayor said the $20,000 fee she required was never paid.

The prior reporting on Bryon Noem's alleged webcam payments now takes on added weight in light of the broader timeline Sotomayor has described.

Messages that disparaged Kristi Noem by name

The exchanges quoted by the Daily Mail include pointed references to Kristi Noem. In one November text, Sotomayor wrote to Bryon: "There's no female compared to me. Especially your wife." His reply, per the outlet: "True!!!"

In another exchange, Sotomayor told Bryon: "So much better than your wife, aren't I?" He responded: "so much better." She pressed further, "F*** your family", and he replied: "Love that."

On New Year's Eve, the Daily Mail reported, Bryon wrote: "I can see us leaving our spouses for each other." The New York Post corroborated that message and noted that Sotomayor said he also expressed a desire for hormones, breast augmentation, and facial surgery as part of a full gender transition.

On January 11, he allegedly texted: "I want to be a Crystal so bad" and "I want to be a woman so bad." Sotomayor told the Daily Mail the choice of the name "Crystal", so close to "Kristi", caught her off guard.

"I was just jaw to the floor, thrown for a loop that he wanted to be called that, so close to her name, when he could have gone with Stephanie or something."

Another message attributed to Bryon read: "I need to be your trans bimbo s***." In a separate exchange, he wrote: "F***ing true. Do you want me to be a woman?" followed by "I think I do."

Sotomayor said she found the contradiction between his private messages and his family's public posture difficult to ignore. She told the Daily Mail she "felt he was very hypocritical for standing ten toes on American family values while he was in my messages about wanting to be a trans bimbo b***h."

The moment she discovered his identity

For years, Sotomayor said, she knew him only as "Jason Jackson." She told the outlet he once claimed to be the CEO of a company in Chicago, and she took him at his word. But late last year, she said, she discovered his real identity.

On January 10, she confronted him: "Did you think that I wouldn't find out who you were?" She followed up: "Do you care that I know?" His response, per the Daily Mail: "I don't love the fact that you know who I am, but it is what it is."

Sotomayor said she told him she thought the revelation "makes it more fun." She also told him: "I'm here for you." The exchange continued. She pushed harder against his marriage: "And f*** your wife. Don't you think, after everything she's done, she deserves this?"

Bryon's reply, as quoted by the outlet: "Deserves what?" She answered: "You actually worshipping a woman who deserves it, instead of staying loyal to her." He wrote back: "I don't know what to say to that. She's a good person. You are amazing though."

The back-and-forth captures a man apparently unable to break cleanly in either direction. On January 31, he resumed chatting and wrote: "I do like my wife and I know you don't." He added: "Can talk to you tonight, but I will regret it tomorrow. Because I'm still with her."

When reporters recently approached Bryon Noem about the surfacing of fetish messages, his only public response was to say it was "not the day" for questions.

A brief disappearance, then a return

On January 16, Bryon told Sotomayor things were falling apart at home. He wrote: "Really bad at home. Really bad. I've got to go and figure me out. It's bad. Sorry and thank you." He followed up: "I've got to stop everything and focus on me. Thank you. I'll be deleting all my stuff."

The Daily Mail noted that January 16 fell midway between the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis by federal officers, events that occurred during Kristi Noem's leadership of DHS and drew sharp public criticism. Noem accused Pretti of "domestic terrorism." The timing suggests the household was under extraordinary public pressure when Bryon briefly tried to step back from the relationship.

He did not stay away long. By January 31, the exchanges resumed. Sotomayor said she began cutting back on their paid sessions by late March.

The internal turmoil that preceded Kristi Noem's departure from DHS was already well documented. These revelations add a private dimension that no one in Washington had publicly accounted for.

The national security question

Marc Polymeropoulos, a 26-year CIA veteran, told the Daily Mail the situation carried real intelligence risks. His assessment was direct:

"If a media organization can find this out, you can assume with a high degree of confidence that a hostile intelligence service knows this as well."

He continued: "Damaging information like this can be a tantalizing lead for a hostile intelligence service." And he laid out the classic recruitment scenario: "They approach the person and say, if you work with us we won't expose this, and if you don't, we will. That's espionage 101."

Kristi Noem, during her time at DHS, handled highly sensitive matters of national security. Her husband's alleged vulnerability to exposure, known to at least one private citizen for months, and potentially to foreign intelligence services, raises a question no one in government has yet answered publicly: was the Noem household ever flagged as a counterintelligence risk?

The Daily Mail also noted that last week, it had published photos of Bryon Noem wearing fake breasts and tight clothing. Sotomayor described him as someone who "needed to just talk and talk, and it felt more personal than I was comfortable with." She said he "really liked a confident woman" and that many of her clients were men "bored of their wives."

Kristi Noem's family has since spoken publicly about the crisis. Relatives pointed to faith, not politics, as the force keeping the marriage together, a framing that suggests the family is aware the political ground has already given way beneath them.

What remains unanswered

Several questions hang over this story. The recordings and messages have not been independently verified beyond what the Daily Mail described, a phone number and email attribution linking "Jason Jackson" to Bryon Noem. It is unclear whether the full recordings have been published or only excerpted. Bryon Noem has not offered a detailed public response. And no government agency has commented on whether counterintelligence officials were ever made aware of the situation.

S1 also references longstanding rumors about Kristi Noem and former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, described in the article as her aide. The rumors are unverified, but they form part of the backdrop against which Sotomayor's exchanges with Bryon played out, including her message: "Like being honest, idk how you can be with her. Why sink with the ship?"

The conservative movement has always asked its leaders to live by the values they preach. That standard doesn't bend because the failure is personal rather than political. When a cabinet secretary's own household is this compromised, and no one in government apparently noticed or acted, the system meant to protect national security failed, too.