From Day 1, he was Donald Trump’s pit bull.
Corey Lewandowski was a hard-charging political operative who worked for a group backed by the Koch brothers when Mr. Trump put him in charge of a nascent White House campaign with only a handful of staff members in 2015. Untested at the presidential level, he led with a simple mantra: “Let Trump be Trump.”
With an attack-and-never-apologize style that mirrored his boss’s, Mr. Lewandowski could almost always count on Mr. Trump’s eventual support over the next decade, as he ping-ponged from government to lobbying and back again with several scandals in his wake.
Now back as a top adviser to Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, he finds himself at the center of the uproar over the immigration crackdown in Minnesota, where two American citizens have been killed by federal agents in the past month.
Mr. Lewandowski and Ms. Noem met with Mr. Trump on Monday for nearly two hours as the administration faced intense pressure, including from Republicans, to ease up federal immigration agents’ aggressive tactics in Minnesota.
Mr. Trump did not suggest that either Ms. Noem’s or Mr. Lewandowski’s jobs were at risk, according to people briefed on the meeting, but speculation has swirled about their future amid signs of Republican unease with Ms. Noem’s combative, camera-heavy approach to immigration enforcement. Democrats and a few Republicans have called for investigations into the Minnesota operation that could potentially draw in Mr. Lewandowski.
He looms as a significant figure inside the Department of Homeland Security, where he has been serving as a “special government employee” despite questions about whether he has exceeded the limit of 130 days a year for such workers.
Ms. Noem’s decision to empower Mr. Lewandowski has frustrated some in the agency and at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is part of the homeland security department. One D.H.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said that Mr. Lewandowski was known as someone willing to fire anyone perceived as getting in his way. At times, this official said, he has mused about which officials were stalling certain priorities and whether they should be fired.
A U.S. official said that directions at ICE were coming from Mr. Lewandowski and that nothing got done at the agency without his blessing. At times, this person said, Mr. Lewandowski yelled at ICE leaders as the pressure to meet Mr. Trump’s mass deportation goals increased last year.
Mr. Lewandowski has also been present at pivotal moments for Ms. Noem and the department, including speeches and controversial episodes. He was at the news conference in Los Angeles last year when Senator Alex Padilla, a Democrat from California, was forcibly removed and handcuffed after he tried to talk to Ms. Noem.
Mr. Lewandowski did not respond to a text message seeking comment. A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment about Mr. Lewandowski, but she pointed to what she called “ICE’s remarkable results.”
That Mr. Lewandowski would again find himself in the center of things was no surprise to Republicans who have watched his cat-with-nine-lives political career.
“Corey has shown that he is the ultimate loyalist,” said Stephanie Grisham, who worked on Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign and served as White House press secretary during his first term but became an outspoken critic after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. “I’ve never seen him back away or even slightly criticize the president in any way, and that’s pretty much all you have to do.”
Early in Mr. Trump’s first bid, Mr. Lewandowski attracted criticism that he was not up to the task to make the New York businessman’s bare-bones campaign compete with well-funded opponents like former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. After a narrow loss to Mr. Cruz in Iowa, Mr. Lewandowski faced mounting doubts about the campaign’s strategy in New Hampshire — his home state — but Mr. Trump, of course, ended up sweeping to victory there and then won South Carolina and Nevada.
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Mr. Lewandowski further endeared himself to his boss by regularly berating reporters, leaving menacing late-night voice mail messages and threatening to put them in the “doghouse” for critical coverage.
But his antipathy toward the news media took a darker turn in March 2016, when he grabbed a reporter for Breitbart News, Michelle Fields, who posted a picture of bruising on her arm. He was charged with battery but the charges were later dropped.
The episode would be an early preview of how both Mr. Trump and Mr. Lewandowski tended to respond to controversy. At first, they denied the accusations and suggested Ms. Fields was lying, with Mr. Lewandowski calling her “delusional.”
Even after video emerged of Mr. Lewandowski grabbing Ms. Fields, the two men continued to dispute what happened. “If you look at her, in my book and according to a lot of people, she’s grabbing at me, and he’s acting as an intermediary and trying to block her from doing that,” Mr. Trump said at the time.
Asked whether he might fire Mr. Lewandowski over the incident, Mr. Trump was blunt.
“I don’t discard people,” he said.
Ms. Grisham, the former Trump press secretary, said that Mr. Lewandowski “knew to kind of disappear from sight for a while.” She said, “That’s all you really have to do is get out of his line of sight for a while and wait for somebody else to mess up,” adding, “and then you can kind of get back in there.”
In June 2016, however, Mr. Trump did fire Mr. Lewandowski as campaign manager, with Republicans worried about their presumptive nominee’s weak operation against what seemed like a formidable opponent in Hillary Clinton.
But Mr. Lewandowski did not go far, quickly earning a CNN contract and becoming one of Mr. Trump’s chief defenders on cable news. He was paid $20,000 by the Trump campaign in August, two months after he was fired, for “strategy consulting,” according to campaign finance records. In the final weeks of the campaign, he was seen on Mr. Trump’s plane and at his rallies.
After Mr. Trump’s victory, Mr. Lewandowski opened a lobbying shop in Washington, where he served as an informal adviser to the president and wrote a book about his time with him titled “Let Trump Be Trump.”
He also courted new controversies. In December 2017, a pop singer, Joy Villa, accused him of slapping her twice on the buttocks at a party in Washington.
Still, though, he maintained access to the president. The same month, Mr. Lewandowski was in the Oval Office, lashing out at some of Mr. Trump’s top advisers and criticizing the Republican National Committee, all in defense of the president.
Then, in 2021, a Republican donor accused Mr. Lewandowski of making unwanted sexual advances and touching her inappropriately at a dinner in Las Vegas, saying he had grown aggressive and thrown a drink at her when she made clear she was rebuffing him. He was soon removed from his role overseeing a super PAC backing Mr. Trump.
Trump aides insisted at the time that this episode was different, and that Mr. Trump would distance himself from Mr. Lewandowski.
But during the 2024 campaign, Mr. Lewandowski was back in the fold, hired as an adviser to the Trump campaign with vague responsibilities. Aides suggested that Mr. Trump found comfort in Mr. Lewandowski’s presence — no matter his history, his volatility or his penchant for controversy — because he was an original believer that Mr. Trump could become president.
“I just like him,” Mr. Trump told Olivia Nuzzi of New York magazine in 2024. “Corey’s a character.”
Tyler Pager contributed reporting.
Nick Corasaniti is a Times reporter covering national politics, with a focus on voting and elections.
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