A new report by Ben Terris of New York magazine scrutinizes the shadow role that Corey Lewandowski, a hot-headed MAGA operative and longtime associate of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, enjoys at DHS. Lewandowski’s reach is so extensive, and so disruptive, that it’s even ticked off the president.
Lewandowski and Noem are widely believed to be engaged in an extramarital affair with one another. They deny this, but such rumors were reportedly enough to help dash Lewandowski’s attempt to be named Noem’s chief of staff earlier this year.
But now he de facto serves in that role anyway, Terris writes. DHS officials describe him as Noem’s “handler” or “bulldog” (uh oh!), as well as a “shadow secretary.”
Lewandowski works at the department as a “special government employee,” a designation for temporary personnel who work unpaid for no more than 130 days a year—though he’s reportedly gone to great lengths to avoid counting days toward this limit. The designation comes with a key benefit for Lewandowski: He can work for Noem while still conducting business with undisclosed outside clients.
At DHS, Lewandowski is said to be “a micromanager who will approve and deny travel requests made by ICE employees.” He has also fired and reassigned dozens of staffers, who are afraid to say anything back lest he “rip their heads off,” according to one person close to the Trump administration.
Terris recounts several instances of Lewandowski’s influence at DHS.
When a DHS employee responded to orders from Lewandowski over the phone by saying he reported to Noem, “all of a sudden, you hear the secretary say, ‘It’s coming from me,’” a source told Terris. “She was on the call, in the background, not saying anything.”
Matt Strickland, a former government contractor for DHS, said “Lewandowski is running DHS. Kristi Noem is just the face of it.” Strickland said Lewandowski must greenlight every major decision in the department’s Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office.
Noem’s disastrous rule that all DHS expenditures exceeding $100,000 must get her approval also extends to Lewandowski. “Everything has to go through Corey,” a lobbyist who’s worked with DHS told Terris. “It’s all based on ‘You’re my buddy, or you’re not my buddy. You hired my friend, or you didn’t hire my friend.’ That place just runs that way.”
“It’s the Corey show over there,” said a former administration official.
Lewandowski and Noem, according to an administration official Terris cites, “sort of avoid being at the White House” so as not to be “overexposed.” Last month, reports about delays resulting from the $100,000 rule compromised this effort: Such reports “caught the attention of the White House, which is now monitoring Lewandowski’s hours and, according to the administration official, complaining about how difficult Noem can be to reach.”
This month, Terris reports, Noem and Lewandowski were summoned to the Oval Office by the president regarding “concerns about their management style.” An administration official said Trump was particularly “mad” about Lewandowski’s inability to “get along with anybody.”
They held onto their jobs despite that meeting, and so Lewandowski’s grip on DHS persists for the time being—for at least however many days he claims are left in his 130-day yearly limit.
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