LEFT: Kristi Noem (AP Photo/Ronda Churchill, File) RIGHT: Corey Lewandowski (Francis Chung/POLITICO via AP Images)
The Wall Street Journaldropped a bombshell exposé aboutSecretary of Homeland SecurityKristi Noemand her ally, Trump world mainstayCorey Lewandowski, on Thursday evening that is poised to rock Washington, D.C.
Here are the five wildest revelations from theJournal‘s bruising and comprehensivestory.
TRUMP IS CONCERNED BY THEIR RELATIONSHIP
According to theJournal, PresidentDonald Trumpand 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.”
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 theJournal, 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.”
Noem and Lewandowski reportedly reamed out Acting ICE DirectorTodd LyonsafterAlex Prettiwas 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.”
Source: Drudge Report
