The 5 Wildest Revelations From Bombshell Kristi Noem-Corey Lewandowski Exposé

LEFT: Kristi Noem (AP Photo/Ronda Churchill, File) RIGHT: Corey Lewandowski (Francis Chung/POLITICO via AP Images)

The Wall Street Journal dropped a bombshell exposé about Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and her ally, Trump world mainstay Corey Lewandowski, on Thursday evening that is poised to rock Washington, D.C.

Here are the five wildest revelations from the Journal‘s bruising and comprehensive story.

TRUMP IS CONCERNED BY THEIR RELATIONSHIP

According to the Journal, President Donald Trump and his advisors are “uncomfortable” with Noem and Lewandowski’s “close relationship.”

“Lewandowski had initially wanted to formally serve as Noem’s chief of staff, but Trump rejected the idea due to reports of a romantic relationship between the two—which he has continued to bring up, officials say,” it reported. “After tabloid photos of Lewandowski showed him going back and forth between his apartment and Noem’s across the street last year, the secretary moved into a government-owned waterfront house on a military base in Washington that is provided to the leader of the U.S. Coast Guard. The Coast Guard falls under Noem’s purview at DHS during peacetime. Lewandowski also spends time at the house. The DHS spokeswoman said Noem moved to the house for increased security and pays rent. Lewandowski and Noem, who are both married, have publicly denied the reports of the affair, but people said they do little to hide their relationship inside the department.”

LEWANDOWSKI’S ODD ARRANGEMENT

After being denied a job as Noem’s chief of staff, Lewandowski “settled on a role as a special government employee, a designation under federal ethics law that allows private-sector employees to take advisory roles in government without relinquishing their outside salaries and investments, but caps government service at 130 days in a year, and generally is used for experts working on a specific project.”

Per the Journal, the White House Counsel’s office “opened an inquiry into Lewandowski’s potential abuse” of his position last year, and officials say his involvement in awarding government contracts while still being employed in the private sector — he’s allegedly “urged officials to move away from continuing long-term contracts with companies toward new ones” — “has raised alarm bells inside the White House and DHS.”

THE BUCK STOPS… WHERE?

Noem and Lewandowski reportedly reamed out Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons after Alex Pretti was shot and killed in Minneapolis last month — despite the fact that Lyons was a skeptic of the aggressive enforcement tactics being employed in the city.

“For months, Noem and Lewandowski had demanded that ICE capture its arrests on video for social media—the more dramatic, the better. But more than a week after Pretti’s shooting, Noem and Lewandowski berated Todd Lyons, the acting ICE director, for videos that emerged in Minnesota showing federal officers continuing to tangle with protesters, according to people familiar with the conversation,” revealed the Journal. “The president hated the continued stream of videos, they told Lyons, whom they pinned the blame on. They demanded that he draw up a new plan for ICE to carry out targeted enforcement, an approach Lyons had been advocating all along, according to ICE officials, but that the pair had previously eschewed.”

HEY JEALOUSY

Noem’s rivalry with border czar Tom Homan — who replaced her as the figure in charge of the Minneapolis immigration — has been widely reported on. But the Journal shed new light on Noem’s fixation with him.

“Noem routinely berated staff if she saw Homan on TV and kept track of both their appearances to make sure she was on TV more than him, according to people familiar with the matter. On at least one occasion, she asked aides to ensure she drew a bigger crowd at a conference than Homan, who was speaking on a different day, one of the people said,” it revealed. “White House officials have grown angry that Noem and Lewandowski have declined to take guidance on events, messaging and management of the agency. Several senior administration officials described DHS as the biggest headache thus far of the second term.”

GUNS AND BLANKETS

Noem and Lewandowski have reportedly “fired or demoted roughly 80% of the career ICE field leadership that was in place when they started,” but two specific stories retold by the Journal stand out.

In one instance, Noem “had to switch planes after a maintenance issue was discovered, but her blanket wasn’t moved to the second plane.” She is alleged to have tried to fire the Coast Guard pilot responsible for flying her, who was told to take a commercial flight home. The pilot was reinstated, though, after Noem and her team realized that they didn’t have another pilot to fly them home.

And then there was the long, winding, and vengeful road Lewandowski took to getting a gun:

In an incident last year that rankled some senior staff at the agency, Lewandowski made it known to top ICE officials that he wanted to be issued a law-enforcement badge and a federally issued gun, according to people familiar with his push. Officials are typically only issued a badge and a gun after undergoing law-enforcement training.

The administration was preparing to bring on Tom Feeley, a former top ICE official in New York, as its new director when Lewandowski asked Feeley if he would be willing to issue him and several other political officials badges and guns. Feeley declined, and he was subsequently passed over for the top job at ICE.

Lewandowski next turned to ICE’s legal office for help writing him a legal justification to be issued the badge and gun. A top ICE lawyer, Ken Padilla, also declined to sign off, and days later he was placed on administrative leave. He was later demoted and moved to FEMA, the people said. Padilla declined to comment.

Lewandowski eventually persuaded other lawyers to sign off. The ICE director’s autopen was used to sign the paperwork, the people said.

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