Corey Lewandowski, President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign manager who ruffled feathers when he returned in a senior 2024 campaign role, has been designated a special government employee at the Department of Homeland Security.
A DHS spokesperson told Politico on Tuesday that Lewandowski’s volunteer role at DHS will entail helping “President Trump Make America Great Again” and then refused to say what that might mean.
Lewandowski did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
The former campaign chief is known in Republican circles for his “Let Trump be Trump” approach, which relies on encouraging the president to lean into his penchant for unscripted populist riffing that has often frustrated other aides.
He’ll now give his MAGA-fied counsel to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who has emerged as one of the Trump administration’s highest profile Cabinet secretaries in recent weeks, with her department leading crackdowns on undocumented migrants and at the border.
Noem recently labeled immigrants “dirtbags,” echoing her boss Trump, who has branded them “animals” and falsely accused Haitian migrants of eating domesticated pets.
Lewandowski’s history is also tied to his new boss Noem, a longtime ally.
He previously lent his counsel to then-South Dakota governor during the transition period and was involved in hiring for key positions at DHS, NBC News reported last month.
In 2021, conservative website American Greatness claimed Noem carried out an extramarital affair with Lewandowski, which she derided as a “disgusting lie.”
Two years later, two conservative tabloid papers, the New York Post and the Daily Mail, followed with their own reporting claiming the alleged affair had become a “years long” tie-up.
A spokesperson for Noem said both stories were “false.”
Lewandowski’s continued presence in Trumpworld has not been welcomed by all.
After Trump brought Lewandowski on board as a campaign adviser last year, he reportedly clashed with co-campaign managers Susie Wiles—now Trump’s White House chief of staff—and Chris LaCivita.
The two had been credited with professionalizing Trump’s operation, a departure from his freewheeling and chaotic early campaigns.
Trump, The Atlantic reported, invited Lewandowski back into the fold because he missed the “fun” he had when spurred on by his one-time MAGA Rasputin and was worried he was being over-managed by Wiles and LaCivita.
The magazine also reported that Lewandowski suggested to some campaign staff that he was the highest ranking member of the team.
On the night Trump was elected in November, Lewandowski extended an olive branch by walking over to LaCivita to shake his hand, Politico reported.
LaCivita’s apparent response, with a finger aimed at Lewandowski’s chest, was: “F--- you, f--- you and f--- you. You have f---ed with the wrong person. I’m going to f---ing destroy you.”
On hearing the news of Lewandowski’s DHS role, former Trump adviser Roger Stone blasted him in a social media post as a “drunk talentless advance man” and alluded to allegations he assaulted and stalked a Republican donor’s wife in 2021.
(Charges against Lewandowski were dismissed after he reached an agreement with prosecutors to participate in community service, pay a fine, and apologize for “any discomfort he may have caused.”)
Lewandowski was also accused of grabbing a female reporter from Breitbart News in 2016 as she was trying to ask a question—charges in that case were dropped.
