The Trump administration is accusing a Democratic senator of lobbying the Biden administration to remove her husband from a Transportation Security Administration surveillance program after the government determined that he had flown with someone known internally as a suspected terrorist.
The Department of Homeland Security revealed Wednesday morning that Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) contacted the TSA about her husband, William “Billy” Shaheen, being subjected to enhanced screening. The department alleges that the senator personally lobbied former TSA Administrator David Pekoske to give her husband a blanket exemption from its Silent Partner and Quiet Skies program, which is used to surveil and more carefully track certain airline passengers.
“It is clear that this program was used as a political rolodex of the Biden Administration — weaponized against its political foes and to benefit their well-heeled friends,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement. “This program should have been about the equal application of security, instead it was corrupted to be about political targeting. The Trump Administration will restore the integrity, privacy, and equal application of the law for all Americans, including aviation screening.”
A spokesperson for Shaheen’s office confirmed in an email Wednesday that the senator had contacted the TSA over the searches but denied the DHS’s allegation that she lobbied to have him removed from the list, saying she did not know that her husband had been placed on one.
“Senator Shaheen sought to understand the nature and cause of these searches,” the Shaheen spokesperson said in a statement. “Any suggestion that the Senator’s husband was supposedly included on a Quiet Skies list is news to her and had never been raised before yesterday. Nor was she aware of any action taken following her call to remove him from such a list.”
Shaheen first contacted the TSA in July 2023 after her husband was flagged for the enhanced screening before two flights. The first time was for traveling with a suspected or known terrorist, according to the DHS.
The exemption was given two days after the Democratic senator contacted the TSA in October 2023 for a second time after Billy Shaheen was flagged for traveling with a known or suspected terrorist, the DHS maintained.
The Shaheen spokesperson said the senator contacted TSA because her husband was “subjected to several extensive, invasive and degrading searches at airport checkpoints.”
He was stopped for additional searches five times, according to the senator’s office.
Billy Shaheen is a Lebanese-American attorney who was described as prominent and active in the Arab American community. He previously worked as a former federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Hampshire.
Other people who were followed by U.S. Marshals and monitored by the federal government while flying included foreign royal families, political elites, professional athletes, journalists, and the Trump administration’s director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard — all without knowing they were on a surveillance list.
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Rand Paul (R-KY) exposed in May that the TSA tracked Gabbard during the 2024 election for unspecified reasons that Republicans have said boiled down to politics.
A number of Senate and House Republicans have called attention to the Quiet Skies program run by the TSA and how people of all nationalities are swept up in it without cause.
In the Shaheens’ case, Billy Shaheen was flagged by TSA on July 20, 2023, for traveling with a known or suspected terrorist, whose name was not included in the DHS announcement.
Not long after that flight, the senator’s office contacted the TSA about her husband receiving enhanced screening on two flights.
Billy Shaheen was flagged a second time as a co-traveler of a suspected terrorist on Oct. 18, 2023. The senator contacted TSA again and met with Pekoske, according to the DHS.
Later that month, Billy Shaheen was placed on the TSA’s Secure Flight Exclusion List, which ensures certain passengers are not surveilled. He remained on the list for 18 months, until April.
The DHS did not disclose the nature of Billy Shaheen’s travel or why he was traveling with someone listed on the FBI’s terrorist watch list. Shaheen’s office disclosed that the co-traveler is an Arab American attorney, and the individual’s being listed on the known or suspected terrorism list was not known.
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The DHS’s publishing of the allegations comes just over a week after Shaheen’s daughter, Stefany, announced her candidacy to represent New Hampshire in the House.
Noem is closely advised by President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who considered a Senate run in New Hampshire in 2020.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with a response from Shaheen’s office.
