Kristi Noem’s mother broke the news Friday that the former Department of Homeland Security secretary has begun divorce proceedings against her husband Bryon after 34 years of marriage — and after it was publicly revealed in March that the insurance agent and father of three allegedly liked to cross-dress as a woman with excessively large breasts while engaging in online affairs with fetish sex workers and dominatrixes from the “bimbofication scene.”

“I feel bad, sick that they’re getting a divorce, but what else can you do?” Noem’s mother, Corinne Arnold, said in an interview with the Daily Mail published Friday. “It has been difficult, but we knew this was coming, that they were going to get divorced.”

Arnold spoke to the Daily Mail during an interview at her home, abutting the South Dakota ranch where her 54-year-old daughter, also the state’s former governor, once lived with Bryon, her high school sweetheart and father of her three adult children. But Bryon packed up and moved out of the ranch after the Daily Mail broke the news about his “secret life,” in which he communicated online with female porn performers before and during his wife’s controversial leadership of the DHS.

During one of these communications, the 56-year-old Bryon Noem shared a now-infamous selfie of himself dressed up in the style of the “bimbofication” scene, which favors a Barbie-doll beauty aesthetic. He squeezed his tall frame into skintight pink shorts and a flesh-colored crop-top, into which he had stuffed two balloons that were supposed to resemble gigantic breasts, as the Daily Mail reported.

In another exchange with another online performer, with whom the Daily Mail said he had an on-off, nine-year relationship, Bryon Noem discussed his desire to leave his wife and change his gender through surgery and hormone therapy.

“I want to be a Crystal so bad,” Bryon Noem wrote in a Jan. 11 message to the dominatrix, according to the Daily Mail. “I want to be a woman so bad.”

That same month, Kristi Noem was overseeing aggressive immigration operations in Minneapolis, where two civilians, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were shot to death in fatal encounters with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.

During her 14 months as DHS secretary, Noem was dubbed “ICE Barbie” because she seemed as drawn as her husband to a certain, ultra-feminine beauty aesthetic, which cultural observers at The New York Times, Mother Jones and other outlets said has become favored by women in President Donald Trump’s MAGA circles. For Kristi Noem, that meant wearing cascading hair, heavy make-up and puffed-up lips, including while she donned uniforms and bullet-proof vests while making a show of joining ICE operations.

In March, Trump fired Kristi Noem from her top job at the DHS. At that time, she also faced intense scrutiny over her alleged affair with senior aide Corey Lewandowski, the Daily Mail reported. Soon after, the Daily Mail broke the news about her husband’s online activities with fetish sex workers. The Daily Beast also interviewed one of Bryon Noem’s alleged online contacts, who said he liked to role-play in a “sissy sub” way. The online worker also said he revealed that wearing gigantic fake breasts relaxed him when he felt under stress.

National Security experts consulted by the Daily Mail in March said that Bryon Noem’s “brazen behavior” with online porn performers could have left his wife — in her highly sensitive job at DHS — vulnerable to blackmail. It’s not known if Bryon’s online activities played a role in his wife’s firing. But she retained a position in the Trump administration. She was reassigned to lead the Shield of the Americas, a small and recently created agency within the State Department, the Daily Mail said.

In her initial response to the controversy about her husband, Kristi Noem said she had been “blindsided” and “devastated” by the revelations, while asking for privacy and prayers. She also took some time off and flew back home to South Dakota to spend time with family, the Daily Mail revealed.

At a birthday party for one of her grandchildren, Kristi Noem spoke to her mother about her marriage, the Daily Mail reported.

“This was a big party where the whole family was there, Kristi and Bryon, all my kids, all my grandkids,” Arnold said. Bryon Noem was holding and hugging the children, “like the old Bryon,” Arnold said.

“He was very nice,” Arnold told the Daily Mail. “I hugged him, told him I loved him and he said the same.”

Arnold said her daughter was a bit less open. “Finally, I said: ‘What’s the deal? Are you going to get together again?'” Arnold said she asked. “And she said: ‘No. No. We’re going to get a divorce.'”

“It’s sad,” Arnold continued. ‘You have to remember that Bryon’s been in our family for many years.”

Kristi and Bryon Noem met in high school, married in 1992, and are parents to two daughters, 32 and 29, and a son, 24, the Daily Mail reported.

“The sad part is that he’s a grandpa,” Arnold continued. “And the little kiddies love him. We all love him, like you would your family.”

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