Lewandowski sought one-on-one with Palantir CEO before contract was cut to $1 billion
Corey Lewandowski approached senior Qatari officials with a proposal while serving at the Department of Homeland Security last year: “Hire me on the side.” The longtime Trump aide, described by people familiar with his pitch as effectively the shadow secretary at the department, said he could help the Gulf state with issues that fell under the department’s purview, such as visas. He made a similar offer to representatives of the United Arab Emirates, according to people familiar with the outreach. Some of the foreigners were taken aback and confused about why they would need Lewandowski’s help when they already had traditional relationships with top administration officials, the people said. Qatar and the U.A.E. declined the proposals.
Lewandowski held the status of a “special government employee,” or SGE, a designation that allowed him to carry out private business, and he was in a close personal relationship with the DHS secretary at the time, Kristi Noem. The pair have reportedly been romantically linked for years; both have denied having such a relationship. Only a sliver of SGEs must publicly disclose clients or potential conflicts of interest, but government officials are generally prohibited from using their roles for private gain. His role gave him de facto decision-making authority over large amounts of recently appropriated billions of dollars, the president’s border and immigration enforcement agenda and the collection of tariffs, which have been vastly expanded under President Trump. The alleged moneymaking efforts appeared to be offers by Lewandowski to sell government services for personal gain, the Journal reported.
A wide-ranging probe by the department’s internal watchdog is scrutinizing potential improprieties in the contracting process, including any evidence of personal enrichment by top officials. The inspector general has found evidence that Lewandowski may have been involved in improperly awarding government contracts, the Journal reported in July. Investigators are weighing a potential criminal referral to the Justice Department, and Democrats in the House of Representatives are preparing for a related probe if the party wins a majority in November’s midterm elections.
Both Noem and Lewandowski left DHS after Trump ousted the secretary in March and replaced her with Markwayne Mullin. According to the Journal, the ouster followed two high-profile killings of U.S. citizens by federal agents during Noem’s tenure and a pair of congressional hearings that the paper reported displayed bipartisan frustration with her leadership. Mullin and White House officials have been briefed on the inspector general’s inquiry, the Journal previously reported.
A representative for Lewandowski denied that he had “sought contracts with foreign governments” and said he played no role in contract review or approval at the department and hadn’t been contacted about any investigation into contracting at DHS. The representative said Lewandowski “adamantly denies ever demanding any payment or compensation from any potential, former, or current government contractor or seeking or soliciting or entering contracts with foreign governments while volunteering his time with DHS,” and that “Lewandowski denies any wrongdoing.” The representative didn’t respond to other detailed questions from the Journal. A spokesperson for Noem didn’t respond to requests for comment on her tenure at DHS, and DHS representatives didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment.
Soon after taking office, Noem consolidated under the secretary’s control decision-making that had been delegated to sub-agencies, putting essentially all department spending over $100,000 under her purview with the stated goal of reducing fraud and waste. Officials said the move created a massive bottleneck, and it was widely seen within the administration as giving Lewandowski — as Noem’s right hand — the power to closely monitor and ultimately decide which companies could receive government contracts. One of the biggest drivers of spending under Noem was Trump’s deportation agenda; Congress gave the department an extra $75 billion to spend during Trump’s term on new deportation officers, technology and detention facilities.
The Journal detailed how that authority played out with Palantir, the data-analysis company. Palantir executives worked with DHS officials for weeks in fall 2025 to negotiate a sprawling $2.7 billion blanket purchase agreement that included an immigration and Secret Service portfolio. DHS officials wanted the contract signed before Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year, but it then sat for weeks on Noem’s desk without a signature, according to people familiar with the matter. In November, Palantir received scheduling requests from Lewandowski, who wanted a meeting with CEO Alex Karp; over the course of several weeks, DHS officials repeatedly asked for a one-on-one meeting between the two, the people said. Palantir executives set up the meeting but canceled it — Karp and others felt uncomfortable and concerned about the circumstances given the large contract on the table, the people said. The meeting never happened, and the $2.7 billion agreement wasn’t signed. Lewandowski told associates at the department that he was going to consolidate Palantir’s work across the agency so the company would receive less money. In early 2026, at a larger meeting with Lewandowski, Noem and Palantir officials including Karp, Palantir was told the agreement would be revised to $1 billion instead of $2.7 billion. That deal was signed in February. A Palantir spokesperson said the company was given no explanation for the reduction. “Palantir is proud to support the United States government in a wide variety of missions, and to do so, it is essential for our company to uphold the highest standards of ethical conduct,” the company said in a statement.
Lewandowski also played a role in contracts with GEO Group, the largest provider of private prisons in the U.S., according to people familiar with the matter. When the company declined to hire Lewandowski as a lobbyist in Trump’s first term in 2017, Lewandowski threatened that GEO would never receive another government contract so long as Trump was president, according to people familiar with the threat. At DHS this term, Lewandowski for months blocked the firm from getting government contracts, according to DHS officials, and later boasted that he was forcing GEO to accept less business than it had previously received. Officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Lewandowski openly and frequently advocated for detention options that could cut GEO’s involvement, including asking states such as Florida and Louisiana to operate their own makeshift facilities rather than use GEO’s, arguing it would save money.
GEO has added new immigration detention contracts under Trump but has lost significant market share, moving from handling 37% of the market under Biden to 25% under Trump, according to a Journal analysis of federal contracts. The overall market for detention services has more than doubled so far under Trump, to around $4 billion, and GEO has booked almost $1 billion in detention contracts in the roughly 500 days of the Trump administration, compared with more than $600 million in such deals in the previous 500 days under Biden. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee are investigating allegations of Lewandowski “shaking down contractors for kickbacks,” Rep. Robert Garcia, the ranking member, wrote in a letter to GEO chairman and founder George Zoley, referencing a report by NBC News. GEO and Zoley didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Lewandowski also placed allies across the department, sometimes ensuring they were paid larger than typical salaries, the Journal reported. Kara Voorhies was paid as much as $19,000 a week for serving in an unusually senior role as a contractor at the FEMA disaster relief agency; DHS investigators searched her office in March and are examining her role in FEMA’s decisions, according to people familiar with the matter. Voorhies didn’t respond to requests for comment. Another ally, Josh Whitehouse, a former Republican lawmaker from Lewandowski’s home state of New Hampshire, joined the department as an SGE and was often added by Lewandowski to meetings between DHS officials and corporate executives, people present in the meetings said. A lawyer for Whitehouse said Whitehouse attended meetings that were relevant to his job or that he was asked to attend, that he “answered to Mr. Lewandowski” and Noem, and that he denied being involved in any self-dealing or corruption while at DHS. The lawyer described the allegations as false and “gossip from ‘officials’ who have no clue what they are talking about and have an axe to grind.”
In September 2025, one of the pair’s allies told FEMA officials to award a terrorism prevention grant to a nonprofit affiliated with Chris Stanley, who worked in the first Trump administration at the U.S. Census Bureau, according to documents reviewed by the Journal. The grant didn’t go through the standard competitive awarding process. Stanley’s nonprofit, Common Sense Policy Institute, which also operates under the name Functional Government Initiative, received a $2.3 million terrorism prevention grant, publicly disclosed federal records show. The institute lists “a secure border free of cartel control” as one of its principles on its website but largely operates as a conservative watchdog group whose published work focuses on critiques of Biden administration officials and programs. It reported raising $200,000 in its 2024 tax filings, the latest available, and paid Stanley a quarter of those funds. Roderick Law, a spokesman for the group, said it submitted a “detailed and competitive application” for the grant, which it is using for a project titled “The Secure Border Initiative: Exposing Cartel Efforts to Undermine Immigration Law.”
Noem and Lewandowski also took on an additional portfolio: the Middle East. They traveled repeatedly to the region, first in May 2025, when they visited Bahrain and Israel. In December, as protesters clashed with ICE agents during operations in Minneapolis, the pair flew on their 737 MAX jet, which the Journal described as a luxury aircraft, to Jordan, where they met with King Abdullah II, and to Abu Dhabi and Qatar, where they met with top U.A.E. officials and Qatar’s leader, Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, at a palace near Doha. The meetings were about security cooperation, including at sporting events, according to news releases from those governments. DHS itself didn’t publicize the details and purpose of the trip, unlike most of the secretary’s meetings and travel, which are typically highlighted with news releases and photos. White House officials privately complained that the pair were jetting around the globe just as top Trump aide Stephen Miller was ordering ICE to dramatically scale up its deportation efforts. Lewandowski now operates as a consultant; one client is Bahrain, which signed a contract with him after he left office, a Bahraini official said.
Late in the planning for the May 2025 trip, Lewandowski added Whitehouse to the passenger manifest. Whitehouse didn’t attend significant official engagements in Bahrain and Israel but insisted on a side trip to Bucharest, where he wanted Coast Guard and other officials to consider purchasing two icebreakers from Damen Shipyards, a Dutch firm with operations in Romania, according to people familiar with the trip. Coast Guard officials examined the offerings and determined the purchase wouldn’t make sense because it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars extra to make the vessels work for U.S. use, and they were concerned that Damen had recently been accused by Dutch prosecutors of circumventing European Union sanctions against Russia and of bribing public officials in different countries for years, the people said. Whitehouse continued to push, insisting that Trump needed the icebreakers and that officials who blocked the purchase would be sabotaging the president. A lawyer for Whitehouse said Whitehouse was asked to be part of the trip and advocated for the purchase because he disagreed with the assessment. A Coast Guard spokesperson said it visited the Damen operations to conduct market research and that it followed applicable laws and acquisition regulations. Whitehouse also asked, sometimes through intermediaries, for specific tariff exemptions for South American countries, people familiar with the requests said; a lawyer for Whitehouse denied he made such a request or had any business relationship related to South America. Lewandowski separately called the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Joe Edlow, demanding that he expedite visas for certain people, requests that appeared to officials to be contradictory to the administration’s immigration crackdown and tightened visa requirements, the people said.
Noem continues to serve in the Trump administration as a special envoy to the Shield of the Americas, a multinational security alliance created by Trump and launched in March that has taken few actions. Her brief includes reaching out to Latin American countries to cooperate on security issues. She is also advising a Canadian mining company as a paid consultant, an arrangement viewed within the administration as a potential conflict of interest, according to senior administration officials. Officials said Noem displayed a mug in her DHS office using the catchphrase, “May the bridges I burn light the way.”
After leaving DHS, Noem continued to use a government-owned waterfront house on a military base in Washington — provided to the leader of the Coast Guard — for weeks after being pushed out of the job, and her request for accommodations on a military base in Virginia instead was denied, according to a senior administration official. Her spokesperson said Noem moved out of the residence she was leasing as soon as the lease expired in April. Trump has told aides that he doesn’t want Noem in the administration long term, and Lewandowski, who sought another job in the administration, was rebuffed, officials said. Lewandowski has told people close to him he expects the president would pardon him in the event of a criminal case; a lawyer for Lewandowski has said Lewandowski didn’t speak about or suggest that he would seek or need a presidential pardon.