After firing Kristi Noem as Homeland Security chief, President Donald Trump is now reportedly turning his attention to her top adviser Corey Lewandowski.
The president wants to know whether Lewandowski — a longtime Trump ally and political operative now working closely with Noem as a “special government employee” — personally profited from a multi-million dollar ad campaign that prominently featured the DHS secretary, according to NBC News, citing people familiar with the conversations.
Trump has grown suspicious about Lewandowski’s role in the contract process at Homeland Security altogether, the outlet reported, after the subject repeatedly came up during last week’s congressional oversight hearings that fueled the president’s decision to remove Noem from office.
Trump previously said he “wasn’t thrilled” by Noem’s testimony, in which she claimed that the president had signed off on a $222 million ad campaign. “I didn’t know anything about that,” Trump told Reuters moments before he announced Noem’s removal.
In an interview with NBC, Lewandowski denied benefiting from DHS contracts, saying he made “zero, not one penny.”
Last year, DHS hired a little-known firm to help produce a campaign that prominently featured Noem herself, including one ad filmed during the government shutdown with the secretary on horseback in front of Mount Rushmore.
Safe America Media signed a no-bid contract worth $143 million to produce the campaign. That firm then subcontracted with the Strategy Group, whose CEO Ben Yoho is married to Noem’s now-former assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin.
McLaughlin left DHS last month.
The same day the Safe America contract was inked, People Who Think was awarded a separate $77 million no-bid contract to work on the same advertising campaign. That Louisiana-based firm is run by a political operative who previously worked with Lewandowski.
During her testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Republican Senator John Kennedy said it was hard for him to believe that those kinds of deals would have been approved by Trump or the White House Office of Management and Budget.
“It troubles me,” he said. “A fifth to a quarter of a billion dollars in taxpayer money, when we're scratching for every penny, and we’re fighting over recision packages … I just can’t agree with it.”
Noem said the ads were “effective.”
“They were effective in your name recognition,” Kennedy shot back.
In that same hearing, Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal asked whether Lewandowski has a role in approving those contracts.
“His role is as a special government employee, and special government employees work for the White House and the administration,” Noem replied. “There are thousands of them.”
“So, he does have a role,” he replied.
“No,” Noem said.
Blumenthal then sent a letter to Noem, citing internal DHS records that show Lewandowski personally approved several contracts — including multi-million dollar deals.
Senators Blumenthal and Peter Welch have also sought answers from the firms DHS cut deals with.
Noem implemented a department-wide policy that required her personal sign off on all contracts above $100,000. Officials working under her sign or initial a checklist before those documents reach Noem, including Lewandowski, whose signature routinely appears at the last name before the secretary’s, according to documents obtained by ProPublica.
Federal procurement records also show that DHS approved a $250,000 public affairs contract to American Made Media Company, a political consulting firm with ties to Lewandowski.
That request was published September 26. But bids were due the next day — an unusually tight deadline for a government contract, and one that required a winning bidder to demonstrate “an established track record of promoting Trump administration policies in the media.”
In a statement following the congressional hearings, the Strategy Group said it received only a small fraction of the millions DHS spent on the contracts.
“Safe America paid us $226,137.17 total for [five] film shoots, 45 produced video advertisements and [six] produced radio advertisements,” according to the firm.
Lewandowski told NBC that he talked to Trump three days last week, before Noem was fired, including on the days she testified to members of Congress.
Contracts and DHS spending never came up in conversation, according to Lewandowski.
“Since I’ve known the guy for 11 years, I think it’s fair to say if he had a concern about something I was doing, he would raise it,” he said.
Lewandowski, among Noem’s closest advisers at DHS, is technically working as an unpaid government employee under Trump.
He has remained within the president’s orbit for more than a decade, including as a chief aide during Trump’s 2016 campaign, during which he was infamously arrested for grabbing the arm of a female reporter at a press conference. Those charges were later dropped.
Noem and Lewandowski, both of whom are married, have also worked closely together through her term as governor of South Dakota and during the Trump administration, drawing allegations that they are romantically involved.
In her congressional testimony, Noem called rumors “tabloid garbage.”
The Independent has requested comment from DHS.
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