The Justice Department is reviewing accusations that Corey Lewandowski, who was a top aide to former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem, might have illegally profited from his unusual role in the department, according to four people familiar with the matter.
The inquiry follows a referral from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, which has been examining allegations of contracting malfeasance within the agency for months and recently handed its findings to federal prosecutors, the people said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss details of those reviews, which had not been made public.
The Justice Department’s investigation marks an unusual instance during President Donald Trump’s second term of the agency scrutinizing someone with close ties to him. More often, the Justice Department has prioritized investigating his perceived political foes while working to unwind cases started under previous administrations targeting some of his allies.
A representative for Lewandowski, who left his role at the department shortly after Trump fired Noem in March, strongly denied any claims of malfeasance.
“Mr. Lewandowski has not been contacted by the Justice Department regarding any investigation, and he denies any wrongdoing when he was proudly serving his country in a voluntary capacity,” said Adam Trigg, an attorney for Lewandowski.
The Justice Department declined to comment.
Asked by reporters Thursday about the Justice Department’s scrutiny of Lewandowski, Trump said he didn’t know much about it. But, Trump added, he expected people who work for him to be “honest.”
“I will never do anything to stop a prosecution if someone is dishonest,” he said.
News of the Justice Department inquiry was first reported by the Wall Street Journal and CNN.
A longtime Republican operative who was Trump’s campaign manager during the 2016 presidential race, Lewandowski took on an outsize role at DHS during the first year of the president’s second term.
Though he was originally hired by Noem to serve as a special government employee — a specialized role intended to serve for a limited period of time — in practice he became one of Noem’s most trusted advisers, who, with a close circle of aides, amassed broad influence over DHS’s contracting, operations and personnel decisions.
Noem demanded last year that DHS headquarters approve all contracts worth more than $100,000, giving her expansive control over department spending and creating major delays in disbursing funds for hurricane relief and other emergencies.
After Noem was fired this year, Secretary Markwayne Mullin scrapped that rule and said it was more appropriate for management to review contracts worth $25 million or more.
Among the awards that came under scrutiny during Noem’s tenure were a $1 billion contract given to a pro-Trump donor, a $200 million contract to buy two private jets for herand other officials to use, and a $200 million contract for ads featuring Noem.
Lewandowski, Noem and other top officials also toured a new high-tech immigrant tracking system last year with Palantir’s technology chief. The Washington Post and others reported that Lewandowski had organized the tour and lobbied for Palantir with Noem.
A month later, DHS unveiled a $30 million Palantir contract, which was not offered to other companies, to build an operating system that would track migrants self-deporting from the United States.
The DHS inspector general has also been examining the role played by a woman Lewandowski installed at the agency in April 2025. Lewandowski asked Kara Voorhies to come to DHS and help him as a special government employee.
In court filings from a lawsuit involving fired FEMA employees, Voorhies said that she didn’t know in detail what her role would be but that Lewandowski was interested in her financial management background.
Voorhies, who had been working at an investment firm before her government role, said in recent depositions that she had “no experience in the government,” and at the time “didn’t even know what DHS was so I was a little apprehensive.”
Still, Voorhies was quickly inserted into sensitive and often high-level meetings and soon became a shadow administrator at FEMA. The Post has reported that she was given broad authority over spending, taking the lead on grants even over the agency’s own grants manager, and had access to proprietary information, including details about large contracts and planned projects.
Voorhies, who left the agency last spring, was Lewandowski’s eyes and ears, one senior FEMA official previously said, and “we were told to give her access to whatever she wanted.”
In January, the DHS inspector general began an audit of DHS grants and contracts awarded “by any means other than full and open competition” during the fiscal year 2025. But in a letter to Senate and House appropriators, Joseph Cuffari, the inspector general, wrote that DHS had “systematically obstructed” his office’s work and that the obstruction was “particularly egregious in a specific pending criminal investigation.”
Cuffari did not offer specific details about which investigation he was referring to, but he wrote that another federal law enforcement agency had asked his office to join a criminal inquiry. When his office requested access to a DHS database, Cuffari said, the department imposed conditions that could compromise the investigation.
A spokesperson for Cuffari declined to comment on the Justice Department’s inquiry Thursday, citing its policy of not discussing ongoing investigations.
In addition, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) has said that the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations is investigating potential wrongdoing by Lewandowski and Noem in connection with DHS contracts.
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