Long-time Donald Trump ally Corey Lewandowski has returned to the White House, working at the Department of Homeland Security under his one-time lover Kristi Noem.
In 2023, DailyMail.com reported that married South Dakota governor Noem, 51 – who stresses adherence to ‘family values’ – and Trump advisor Lewandowski, who is also married, began carrying on an affair in 2019 or earlier.
Noem has previously denied the relationship to DailyMail.com. Lewandowski has refused to comment. Both remain married to their respective partners.
A reunion was rumored between Trump and Lewandowski during the campaign last year but now it appears the former campaign manager has found a convenient role.
Lewandowski is a ‘special government employee’ at the Noem-run DHS but his exact role is unclear, according to Politico.
‘Like Elon Musk and so many other patriots, Mr. Lewandowski volunteers his time as a special government employee (SGE) to help President Trump Make America Great Again,’ a DHS spokesperson said in a statement.
Lewandowski directed reporters to the department.
In Alex Isenstadt’s book Revenge: The Inside Story of Trump’s Return to Power, the Politico journalist wrote that Noem’s trysts with Lewandowski may have kept her from being Trump’s running mate.
He wrote that Noem, 53, was still engaged in an affair with former Trump 2016 campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, 51, as Trump hunted for his second-term vice president.
‘Within Trumpworld, people had long gossiped that Noem had been having a prolonged extramarital affair with Corey Lewandowski,’ Isenstadt wrote. ‘They were together all the time, and Lewandowski followed the governor around like a puppy dog.’
In an excerpt of Revenge obtained by DailyMail.com, Isenstadt reported that Trump advisers had also seen Lewandowski slap Noem on the butt.
Trump was also ‘aware of the scuttlebutt,’ he wrote. ‘Trump referred to Noem as Lewandowski’s “girlfriend,” and when the subject came up, he would raise an eyebrow mischievously.’
‘Lewandowski, Trump said, knew how to bat out of his league,’ Isenstadt wrote.
A spokesperson for Noem reiterated to the DailyMail.com at the time that the ‘allegation of an affair is completely false’ and said Isenstadt’s book belonged on the ‘fiction’ shelves.
The glamorous Noem – who served four terms as her state’s only member of the US House of Representatives – won the governorship in 2018 promising to uphold the wholesome family values that she said South Dakotans have ‘long embraced’.
Defending ‘traditional marriage’, which she defined as ‘a special, God-given union between one man and one woman’, was particularly important to her.
It was the foundation for her beliefs, policy priorities and the ideals she lives by, said Noem, who has a son and two daughters with her husband Bryon who she married in 1992.
She has long been linked with Lewandowski, who was pushing hard for Trump to add her to his ticket.
Lewandowski, who married 9/11 widow Alison Hardy in 2005 and has four children, has never commented on the relationship.
He allegedly had an affair with campaign press secretary Hope Hicks, and in the run-up to the 2016 election he was arrested for manhandling Breitbart News reporter Michelle Fields at a press conference in Florida. Charges were later dropped.
After Trump’s election, Lewandowski gained a reputation for being a loose cannon.
‘Corey was always running his mouth off, and after a few drinks you could see the pin starting to fall out of the grenade,’ a defense contractor who knew him said.
Following a party at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, singer Joy Villa filed a police report against Lewandowski for sexual assault, saying he ‘smacked my ass really hard’, and that it was ‘almost violent in nature’. He was never charged.
Villa told the Washington Post in 2024 that she was guided by her faith to forgive Lewandowski.
By 2019 he was a key advisor to Noem and the pair went on a deep-sea fishing trip hosted by the late conservative billionaire and GOP mega-donor Foster Friess, who along with his wife, Lynn, ranked among Noem’s top political and financial supporters.
In October 2019, when her state was blanketed by an early snowstorm, the governor, accompanied by Lewandowski, embarked on at least a week of travel that included stops at three political events.
In the months leading up to the 2020 election, Noem and Lewandowski became virtually inseparable companions on the Trump campaign trail.
By then, their relationship was an open secret at the White House and among high-level GOP lobbyists and political consultants, according to Isenstadt’s book.
Lewandowski was largely out of the headlines – aside from the talk linking him to Noem – during the Biden era but he returned with a vengeance when Trump ran to take back the White House.
Trump announced a surprise move in August to bring on Lewandowski, who he fired a month before the convention in 2016, while adding several former Trump campaign veterans to his existing staff.
An official said Lewandowski would be ‘advising senior leadership as we march to victory.’
Lewandowski instigated the ‘Let Trump be Trump’ mantra of the era and titled his book after it.
Also coming on board are Taylor Budowich, who ran the super PAC MAGA, Inc., plus Alex Pfeiffer and Alex Bruesewitz from the PAC. Tim Murtaugh, who served as Trump’s communications chief in 2020, is also coming on board.
One campaign officials called it ‘just an addition to the campaign’ and said Trump’s statement made clear it was not a shakeup of the current staff.
After the election, Lewandowski did a stint as a political commentator and remained a sounding board for Trump. He was on hand for Trump’s debate in Atlanta with President Joe Biden, flying there with Trump on the candidate’s plane.
Aides didn’t provide further explanation of his new ‘envoy’ role.