Investigators have found evidence that Corey Lewandowski may have been involved in improperly awarding government contracts while serving as a senior aide at the Department of Homeland Security, according to people familiar with the matter.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and White House officials have been briefed on the inquiry, as investigators weigh a potential criminal referral to the Justice Department, the people said.
The investigation is ongoing, and a referral isn’t imminent, some of the people said.
Lewandowski was a top aide to former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem until March, when President Trump ousted Noem amid the agency’s drama and infighting. Lewandowski served in the role in an unpaid capacity and took on a much more expansive portfolio than that status typically allows, The Wall Street Journal previously reported, including directing personnel and making contracting decisions.
The investigators are examining many of the contracts the department signed during Noem’s tenure, and department officials were surprised by how involved Lewandowski was in the process, some people said. He personally signed specific contracts, according to people who reviewed those documents or had knowledge of the approvals, despite not technically serving as a full-time U.S. government official.
Mullin recently informed White House officials about the investigation and some of the findings, one of the people said. Mullin and his team have cooperated with the investigation.
In a statement, a representative for Lewandowski said he denied issuing contracts while at the department and that he hadn’t been contacted by anyone regarding the ongoing investigation.
A White House spokeswoman referred a request for comment to DHS. A DHS spokeswoman declined to comment.
The investigation is being led by the DHS inspector general, Joseph Cuffari, who regularly clashed with Noem during her tenure at the agency.
A spokesman for the inspector general’s office said the office had a longstanding policy of neither confirming nor denying specific investigations, but pointed to a previously announced set of audits underway into DHS contracting.
Lewandowski, who served as Trump’s first campaign manager in 2016, has had a close relationship with the president over the years, who valued his loyalty. White House officials were frequently frustrated with Lewandowski’s actions during his time at DHS, the Journal previously reported.
Lewandowski had worked at DHS as a “special government employee,” a designation under federal ethics law that allowed private-sector employees to take temporary advisory roles in government without relinquishing their outside salaries and investments.
He was widely viewed in the department as Noem’s chief of staff, with some going so far as to refer to him as the “shadow secretary” for the outsized role he played there.
Early in her tenure, Noem made the unusual decision to place all department spending over $100,000 under her purview, giving her and Lewandowski a say in many of the department’s spending decisions. Mullin has scrapped that rule since taking over the department.
Shortly after Noem and Lewandowski left DHS, investigators searched the office of a contractor that worked with one of DHS’s subagencies, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as they started probing a network of aides to Noem and Lewandowski, the Journal previously reported.
They seized records and a computer from Kara Voorhies’s office as part of a probe into her role in the FEMA contracting process.
Cuffari has also been auditing the $38 billion warehouse-to-detention program championed by Noem, as well as related contracts. Under Noem, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement bought 11 vacant warehouses in the span of a couple of months, arguing the government needed to buy its own detention centers rather than leasing them from private prison companies or local governments.
According to a report by CoStar, a real estate analytics company, ICE paid between 11% and 13% above the price of comparable properties.
DHS officials have since decided to sell seven of the warehouses.
