President Donald Trump asked aides in recent days whether longtime adviser Corey Lewandowski profited personally from a $220 million federal advertising campaign featuring then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, according to three people familiar with his conversations.
The inquiry preceded Trump's decision to remove Noem as head of DHS and reassign her to a role as special envoy to the newly formed "Shield of the Americas."
Trump told NBC News he "wasn't thrilled" with the ad campaign and "didn't know anything about it."
Lewandowski denied making any money from the contracts. Asked how much he earned, he told NBC News: "zero, not one penny."
The numbers here deserve a slow read. Safe America Media signed a $143 million no-bid contract with DHS. People Who Think inked a $77 million no-bid deal with the agency.
Together, that is $220 million in taxpayer money flowing through contracts that bypassed competitive bidding, all to produce advertisements featuring the Homeland Security Secretary.
Safe America Media subcontracted part of its work to the Strategy Group, which is run by Ben Yoho, the husband of former DHS spokeswoman Tricia McGlaughlin. The web of connections between the contractors and DHS personnel is the kind of arrangement that raises questions regardless of who occupies the White House.
Noem testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee that Trump had signed off on her expensive ad campaign. Trump's response, that he didn't know anything about it, tells you everything about the disconnect. Someone was not telling the truth, or at minimum, someone was operating with far more latitude than they were given.
Lewandowski has served as a "special government employee" at DHS for more than a year, operating as a de facto chief of staff to Noem.
That title, "special government employee," is Washington's way of embedding political operatives inside agencies without the scrutiny that comes with a Senate-confirmed role or standard hiring process.
DHS officials and lobbyists have attributed outsized influence to Lewandowski in the awarding of contracts. Behind the scenes, Trump has reportedly grown suspicious of how the advertising money moved and who benefited from it.
Lewandowski pushed back on the suggestion that Trump harbors concerns about him directly:
"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 he spoke with the president on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of last week, the three days before Noem was fired, and that Trump never brought up the ads or contracts. Lewandowski added that whether he leaves DHS with Noem on March 31 is his own decision, and he has not made up his mind.
Democratic Sens. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Peter Welch of Vermont have launched an investigation into the three businesses that won DHS contracts. In letters to the companies, the senators requested documentation including:
The senators cited news reports, including a November ProPublica story detailing ties between the ad contracts and a firm with connections to Noem, as the basis for their concerns.
Democrats will frame this as an indictment of the administration. That framing misses the point. Trump is the one who asked the questions.
Trump is the one who removed Noem. The accountability here is flowing from the top, not from congressional grandstanding months after the fact. Blumenthal and Welch are chasing a story the president already acted on.
That said, conservatives should not look away from the substance. A quarter-billion dollars in no-bid contracts routed through politically connected firms is precisely the kind of swamp behavior that the Trump movement promised to drain.
The question was never whether political appointees would try to exploit proximity to power. They always do. The question is what happens when they get caught.
Noem's removal did not happen in a vacuum. Trump had already switched up the team overseeing DHS' Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis in February, after federal agents shot and killed two American citizens.
A pair of contentious hearings on Capitol Hill last week added to the mounting frustration. A senior White House official confirmed the pattern simply: "He's mentioned the ads several times."
Another senior White House official was more blunt about Lewandowski's position in the arrangement: "Corey made out on that one."
Lewandowski also carries baggage from a dust-up with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and Trump previously pushed him to the sidelines of his 2024 campaign. The relationship between the two men is long and complicated, but longevity is not the same thing as a blank check.
The critical question going forward is not whether Democrats can score political points. They will try regardless of the facts. The critical question is whether $220 million in taxpayer money was spent wisely, whether contracts were awarded on merit, and whether anyone inside DHS used their position for personal enrichment.
Trump asked the right questions. Now the answers need to follow. The swamp does not drain itself, and it does not care which party's logo is on the door.
