corey lewandowski bak

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Trump admin launches 'unusual' investigation into one of their own

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note TYPOS AND GUESSES?

i think this is typo

an 1 23 maya GUK

Former President Donald Trump made a “secret” $1 million donation to the election audit conducted in Arizona following his false claims that the election was stolen from him, the Guardian reports.

The audit was requested by Arizona GOP senators, and doubted by many of their colleagues due to the “wild conspiracy theories” it mirrored. An assertion “that bamboo fibers found in ballot sheets proved they had been printed in Asia” even caused some local GOP members to deem the probe a “grift disguised as an audit.”

But nevertheless, the audit persisted.

Although eventually proven baseless and unsuccessful, The Guardian reports that “one of the largest benefactors” behind this attempt to counter the 2020 election results remained a secret for nearly two years.

But watchdog group “Documented” was able to track funding for the failed assessment and eventually landed on Trump’s super PAC, Save America.

First, the group discovered that Cyber Ninjas, the Florida company that conducted the audit, was provided $5.7 million by far-right groups, and then given an additional $1 million from former Trump advisor and attorney Cleta Mitchell.

Still, questions around the origin of the $1 million remained unanswered.

TheNew York Timesreports that in September of 2021, “unnamed ‘officials,’” as well as Arizona GOP senators who requested the election audit, adamantly denied Trump’s contribution.

However, with its research on many corporate, tax and campaign finance filings, as well as emails and text messages between Trump allies that were obtained by nonpartisan accountability group American Oversight, "Documented" managed to counter those claims.

The Guardian broke down the process of how the watchdog group traced the donation back to Trump.

Like many incidents surrounding Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020, tracing back Trump’s contribution to the audit starts with the Jan. 6 committee.

The committee’s final report mentioned that Trump super PAC, Save America, donated $1 million to the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI) — led by former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows — but did not disclose the origin or the reason for the money.

Further research revealed that Trump’s contribution possibly began around June 2021, as accountability group American Oversighttracked text messages between retired Army officer and “arch election denier” Phil Waldron and Doug Logan, CEO of Cyber Ninjas, the Florida-based company that conducted the audit.

Waldron texted Logan, “Kurt is going to talk to 45 today, about $.”

According to the Guardian, “Kurt” likely referred toKurt Olden, an “election denying lawyer.” He continued, “Mike L talking to Corey L,” referring to CEO of MyPillow and devoted Trump supporter Mike Lindelland Trump campaign manager Corey Lewondowski.

A couple of weeks later, Waldron asked Logan if he had received a $1 million payment from Lewondowski. He texted, “Supposedly Kurt talked to Trump and they got 1 mil for you,” but he noted he “couldn’t verify who sent and received.”

According to The Guardian, the Federal Election Commission reported that less than two weeks later, on July 26, 2021, Save America transferred the $1 million to CPI. Two days later, a new group, American Voting Rights Foundation (AVRF) “registered as a corporation in Delaware.”

CPI donated $1 million to AVRF — the group’s first and only donation — in 2021, and although the date of donation is unknown, the clear relationship between the groups, the “timing and amounts” of the transfers, as well as the revealed text messages between Trump allies all leads to one culprit: Trump.

Furthermore, on the day AVRF registered as a corporation, Trump attorney Mitchell emailed Cyber Ninjas CEo Loganand put him in touch with the audit spokesperson, Randy Pullen as well as AVRF treasurer Tom Datwyler.

The Arizona Republic recently confirmed that Trump was notified of the process the whole time

GOP vice-chair of Maricopa County board of supervisors Bill Gates told The Guardian he is “disappointed, but not surprised” by the revelation.

“At the very least, it is highly hypocritical for the Arizona state senate to have allowed the audit to be funded in this fashion,” Gates said.

Ultimately, even after the great lengths Trump and his cohort of election deniers went to assist in the audit, the goal to overturn Arizona's election was never met. The Guardian reports that in 2020, President Joe Biden won Maricopa County, the most populated in Arizona and where the audit took place, by 45,109 votes.

Regarding the morality of the audit, Gates added that Arizona law states, “electoral candidates are not allowed to fund vote recounts which have to be financed with taxpayer dollars.” And although the audit was “technically not a recount,” it’s clear the intent was the same.

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AN 3 26

At least four companies are complaining that a longtime Homeland Security aide to Secretary Kristi Noem tried to shake them down if he agreed to give them government contracts.

NBC News reported Thursdaythat even President Donald Trump got involved at one point when one of his big donors was approached with the requirement that he pass "de facto chief of staff" Corey Lewandowski some money under the table.

One of the most contested Department of Homeland Security contracts is the $220 million spent on advertising to promote ICE, Border Patrol, and Noem herself. "Trump has also recently asked aides whether Lewandowski profited personally from the advertising campaign," NBC News also reported. At one point, Trump allegedly told advisers, “Corey made out on that one.”

The case of Lewandowski was raised by members of Trump's inner circle, who feared Lewandowski was raking in the dough on the backs of American taxpayers.

"GEO Group and several other companies in government contracting have complained to officials in Trump’s inner circle that Lewandowski, as a special government employee, has directly or indirectly stood to personally profit from the DHS contracting process, according to four senior White House officials," the report said, citing a former White House official.

Another top White House official told NBC News that there had been a “dozen” complaints about Lewandowski from at least four companies. All of them cite Lewandowski's involvement in the contracting process and all of them have allegations against the former aide.

Salus Worldwide Solutions inserted itself in a potential government contract negotiation. The company is owned by a big donor to the America First Institute, which Mark Meadows started after Trump's first term.

A marketing firm up for two possible DHS contracts said it was asked specifically to pay Lewandowski indirectly, one person involved in the matter said.

"The marketing firm official recounted the experience to an official in the Trump administration about two months later. That Trump administration official later confirmed the discussion with NBC News," the report said.

Salus asked the marketing firm whether they wanted a $20 million contract to create materials for an agency under the DHS umbrella.

"Getting in as a government subcontractor, which could lead to future deals, seemed to the marketing firm owner like a potentially lucrative opportunity, the person said. Salus representatives laid out most of the details on a September conference call with the marketing firm," NBC reported, citing a person familiar with the discussions.

There was one hitch: the marketing firm had to hire a subcontractor to "manage the relationship" with the government. The owner of the company had no idea what they were talking about. He had a lack of experience in federal contracting, so he was genuinely asking to understand.

“We are guaranteed this contract, but we need to make sure we are properly thanking the person who gave it to us,” the Salus representative told the owner, according to the report. That person: Corey Lewandowski. The marketing firm could hire any of his many consulting firms.

In a later call, the representative explained to the marketing firm owner that the contract would be worth $40 million to $50 million. They would get their $20 million, while the representative managing the relationship with the government would get its $20 million, the source told NBC.

"In both cases, the Salus representative made it clear to the marketing firm owner that hiring a Lewandowski-linked consultant was a condition of winning the contract, according to the person familiar with the discussions," the report says.

Salus lawyers and Lewandowski denied any conversation like that ever happened.

In both cases, “had a prospective subcontractor made us aware of such an alleged communication, Salus would have taken every step to identify whomever had misrepresented themselves as an agent of the company and turned that individual over to law enforcement,” the lawyer said. “Salus did not authorize anyone to hire or promise to hire any consultant in connection with any Salus subcontract, let alone as a condition of issuing such a subcontract.”

Yet the marketing firm turned down the deal, fearful "it might run afoul of the law."

Lewandowski's spokesperson called the allegations “patently false. Mr. Lewandowski had no conversations with anyone regarding a marketing contract.”

The spokesperson added, “Any insinuation that someone was speaking on behalf of Mr. Lewandowski was completely unauthorized and if undertaken, it was done so without his knowledge.”

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MOJO

Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security handed a massive aviation contract, potentially worth nearly $1 billion, to a relatively new company with no federal contracting experience, following an opaque and seemingly hurried process.

The deal has sparked criticism from a rival contractor in a scathing lawsuit, and records obtained by Mother Jones reveal the extensive involvement of a senior DHS official who formerly worked with the winning company’s CEO. The lawsuit alleges the contract was “unlawful, rushed, and noncompetitive.” As the Trump administration pours billions of dollars into DHS for its crackdown on undocumented immigrants, the contract adds to a growing number of deals that have prompted questions about the integrity of DHS contracting.

The three-year deal to fly migrants back to their home countries went to Salus Worldwide Solutions, a company founded by a former State Department official named William Walters. Until early September, the DHS division overseeing the contract was run by Christopher Pratt, a former State Department colleague of Walters. The White House had nominated Pratt for a high-level position to serve as the State Department’s main liaison with the Pentagon, but pulled his nomination on September 29.

Internal DHS records seen by Mother Jones show that Pratt was involved in the contract award to Salus. In April, before the contract was awarded, Pratt scheduled DHS offsite meetings at Salus’s office, and he personally congratulated Walters after his company won the contract.

Neither Pratt nor Walters responded to questions about the contract and their relationship.

If the plan takes off, this program could prove extremely lucrative for Salus, a firm that appears to have only a handful of employees and was launched in 2023 by Walters, a former Army medical officer.

The contract, worth up to $915 million, is for air operations to support the administration’s effort to persuade millions of undocumented immigrants to “self-deport,” a key plank in the Trump administration’s immigration policy. The White House calls the program “Project Homecoming.” Under it, immigrants who use a Customs and Border Protection app to self-deport are being offered a $1,000 “exit bonus” and free travel. This program is at least partially funded by money that Congress earmarked to provide foreign aid to help refugees, but which the Trump administration has repurposed for “self-deportations,” as Reuters previously reported.

Screenshots from the CBP Home self deportation app

It is hard to know how many people have so far accepted the offer. But if the plan takes off, this program could prove extremely lucrative for Salus, a firm that appears to have only a handful of employees and was launched in 2023 by Walters, a former Army medical officer. A federal contracting website describes Salus as a “Women Owned Business.” The company did not respond to questions about the basis for that claim, but on October 2, days after Mother Jones asked about it, Salus’ federal contractor registration was updated to remove that description.

Walters previously led a State Department unit called the Bureau of Medical Services, which helped to evacuate department personnel in emergencies. Several former Bureau of Medical Services staffers have followed him to Salus Worldwide.

Formed during the Obama administration, this State Department outfit gained attention helping the department deal with the pandemic in 2020. Walters was lionized in a Vanity Fairprofile for his unit’s “daring and often dangerous operations to rescue Americans from peril abroad.” And then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeoreportedly okayed the unit’s upgrade from a directorate to a bureau in 2020. But that move was blocked in 2021 by his Biden administration successor Antony Blinken. Walters resigned from the State Department shortly thereafter.

During the 2024 campaign, Walters criticized Vice President Kamala Harris and bashed the Biden administration for failing to help Afghans who had aided American forces immigrate to the United States.

A person familiar with the process said DHS originally planned on awarding the deal to the company without competition but eventually opened it up to bidding for two business days, which a competitor’s lawsuit called “an impossibly short” period.

In an October 2024 Washington Times op-ed with the headline “Biden-Harris admin abandons our allies in Afghanistan,” he argued Biden had “left behind” over 130,000 Afghans who supported US efforts there, while making it easy for “people from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti” to enter the US. Walters then asked if the Biden administration was “prioritizing the creation of a new voting bloc,” by making it easy for “likely Democratic voters” to immigrate—a suggestion reminiscent of aspects of the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory popular on the far right.

In April, DHS said it would not renew temporary protections for around 12,000 Afghans who were able to immigrate to the US under Biden, setting them up for potential deportation to Afghanistan, where many could face reprisals from the Taliban. Walters does not appear to have publicly commented on that decision.

The Salus contract has an unusual history. A person familiar with the process said the department originally planned on awarding the deal to the company without competition, but DHS eventually opened it up to bidding for two business days, which a competitor’s lawsuit called “an impossibly short” period.

The Salus contract award is in support of DHS’s Office of Strategy, Policy, and Plans. The office is closer on the DHS organization chart to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem than to ICE itself, which normally runs deportation flights.

CSI Aviation, a longtime federal contractor that missed out on the large contract, charged that DHS had “foreclosed fair competition by secretly inviting only hand-picked vendors” in a process that excluded CSI.

Pratt oversaw that office until September. It is now run by Robert Law, who previously held a top immigration-focused job at the America First Policy Institute, a pro-Trump think tank launched in 2021 by top officials from his first administration. In November, a few weeks after Trump’s election victory, the organization gave Walters an “AFPI Patriot Award” at a held at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club. AFPI did not respond to an inquiry about that award. VID]

In a legal protest filed in August in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, CSI Aviation, a longtime federal contractor that missed out on the large contract, charged that DHS had “foreclosed fair competition by secretly inviting only hand-picked vendors” in a process that excluded CSI.

CSI already had an ICE deportation flight contract worth up to $586 million, and one of its subcontractors provided planes that the agency used back in March to transport people to a notoriously brutal El Salvadoran prison, whom the Trump administration unpersuasively claimed were all members of the Venezuelan-based Tren de Aragua gang, despite a court order blocking the flights.

But CSI maintains it was shut out of the bidding for the self-deportation deal. DHS gave a predetermined list of contractors just two days to submit proposals, the complaint alleges, justifying the tight timeline by claiming it had an “unusual and compelling” need to remove migrants due to anexecutive order issued by President Trump. But Trump’s order had been issued nearly five months earlier, CSI noted. “For five months, the Agency withheld notice from the public and kept the procurement behind closed doors—contradicting its own claim of ‘urgency,’” CSI alleged. “DHS ensured only a select few were aware of and able to compete for the contract, and affirmatively barred others—including CSI—from participating.”

The department’s request for proposals from potential contractors showed clear signs of haste, according to CSI. It was full of typos and other errors, “including listing the value of the procurement at $95 million instead of $915 million,” the company’s filing said.

Questions about the Salus award come amid a broader criticism of the department’s contracting process under DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.

CSI also said that DHS “inexplicably removed” an online contracting notice in May after CSI asked about submitting a proposal, and that DHS never responded to the company.

CSI and an attorney representing the company did not respond to requests for comment.

As the lawsuit over its contract continues, Salus appears to be gearing up. The company is currently hiring for more than 20 positions, including aviation security jobs.

Questions about the Salus award come amid a broader criticism of the department’s contracting process under Noem. In June, she issued a new policy requiring that she personally approve any spending worth more than $100,000, which has created large backlogs of unapproved contracts, according to multiple reports.

Noem and her adviser Corey Lewandowski, who is working as a special government employee, have also reportedly involved themselves in DHS contracts awarded as part of the self-deportation program. In February, the department, on an expedited basis, doled out contracts to two GOP-connected firms to craft ads encouraging undocumented immigrants to self-deport, part of a $200million TV ad blitz featuring Noem. One of those firms is owned by a Louisiana-based political consultant who has previously worked with Lewandowski.

After Noem and Lewandowski visited a Palantir facility in March, “Lewandowski told officials at the Department of Homeland Security to give the firm additional work,” the Wall Street Journal reported. DHS expanded Palantir’s contract to assist the administration in tracking self-deportations. (Lewandowski denied he played a role.)

Noem in [VID] August that “hundreds of thousands of people have left on their own” outside of the DHS program encouraging them to leave. Government data released through Freedom of Information Act requests suggests the number was around 4,200 in July.

A DHS spokesperson told Mother Jones that “tens of thousands of illegal aliens have utilized the CBP Home app,” and said the effort is part of a successful policy. “The results speak for themselves: 2 million illegal immigrants have left the United States population since January 20,” the spokesperson said via email.

The department declined to address questions about the Salus contract.

“DHS will not comment on pre-decisional procurement matters, nor will the Department speculate on contractor motivations or individual political views,” the spokesperson said. “All DHS acquisitions are subject to applicable federal procurement laws and oversight, which ensure transparency, competition, and the prudent use of taxpayer funds.”

*This story was reported with theProject on Government Oversight.

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cosplay ice ride along noem 4 25 with a badge boyfriend cory lew Said he was cos

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selfie in el salv gulag cecot

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AN 10 25

Corey Lewandowski, a senior adviser at the Department of Homeland Security and longtime ally of President Donald Trump, is considering a run for governor of New Hampshire, Politico reported Thursday.

The report comes as the White House weighs backing a primary challenge against current Gov. Kelly Ayotte (R).

“Governor is the only job in politics I would ever consider giving up what I am currently doing for,” Lewandowski told Politico.

According to the report, he did not indicate whether the potential run had been discussed with the White House.

The possible candidacy comes amid growing tensions between the Trump administration and Ayotte over redistricting.

IFrame Content

The White House is reportedly frustrated with Ayotte’s resistance to redrawing congressional maps that would strengthen Republican control of the U.S. House ahead of the midterms.

The report noted that Lewandowski’s role at DHS has drawn internal scrutiny. Initially appointed as a special governmental employee, a position limited to 130 days of unpaid work per year, questions have emerged about how his time is being counted.

Despite the temporary designation, he has wielded significant influence, with current and former administration officials saying he has veto power over DHS contracts and grants exceeding $100,000.

He is listed on the agency's website as a chief adviser to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and is regularly seen traveling with her.

Speculation about Lewandowski’s future at DHS intensified this week amid reports he might be leaving the department.

Lewandowski addressed the rumors in a post on the social platform X Wednesday night, writing, “I thought it only fitting today to share the words of the famous Mark Twain … ‘The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.’ Lots of Fake News out there… don’t believe the MSM.”

He previously floated a 2020 Senate bid against Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, which failed to gain traction within the state’s GOP establishment.

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considering a 2020 run?

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republican-aligned lobbyist Barry Bennett — an adviser to former President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign — has admitted to violating a law pertaining to agents of foreign governments in a newly unveiled agreement with the Department of Justice.

According to Politico legal correspondent Kyle Cheney, Bennett and his associate Doug Watts entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the DOJ on Tuesday, agreeing to pay hefty fines and cease activity governed by the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) for 18 months in exchange for avoiding a trial. Bennett will pay $100,000 for making false statements to federal authorities concerning his lobbying activities on behalf of foreign interests, and Watts — who worked on Ben Carson's 2016 presidential campaign — agreed to pay $25,000.

While the charging documents didn't state which country Bennett and Watts were assisting, the context of court documents suggests the violations relate to the lobbyists' work on behalf of the Qatari government in relation to the humanitarian crisis in Yemen.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Bennett's firm, Avenue Strategies LLC — which he co-founded with former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski — was under investigation by the DOJ in 2021 for his work on behalf of Qatar. That work involved setting up an advocacy group dubbed Yemen Crisis Watch, which was aimed at shaming Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for their destabilization of Yemen that led to widespread hunger and poverty in the war-torn nation.

The Qatari embassy reportedly paid Bennett $250,000 for the campaign, and Bennett's failure to report the group as a project paid for by a foreign government was what first alerted federal investigators. The Hill additionally reported that Qatar paid Avenue Strategies Global in excess of $3 million for building inroads between the Middle Eastern nation and the Trump administration between 2017 and 2018. His firm brought in roughly $1 million in 2020, but his work tapered off after Trump lost his reelection bid that year.

Politico reported that in addition to his work with Yemen, Bennett's firm also worked with Ukrainian politician Yulia Tymoshenko, Veneuzuelan-owned oil company Citgo and the government of Zimbabwe. A Maryland judge froze his assets in 2021 after he was sued by Ying Ma — another Republican lobbyist — for refusing to pay finders' fees for new clients she helped bring in.

"Bennett has attempted to defend his illicit activities to federal authorities by, among other things, falsely accusing Ying Ma, a patriotic American citizen, of being an intelligence asset of the Chinese Communist government," read a 2021 filing Ma submitted. She added that his refusal to pay her was part of a "pattern of sleaziness and illegal behavior."

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an 1 23

On Thursday night, January 5, the new Congress of 2023 still lacked a House speaker. Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, in no less than 11 roll-call votes, had been rejected by a group of far-right MAGA House members (many of them part of the House Freedom Caucus) who have been dubbed the“Never Kevin” Republicans. Nonetheless, McCarthy vowed that he would keep trying to win them over.

The majority of House Republicans have been voting to make McCarthy House speaker, but around 19 or 20 Never Kevin Republicans voted against McCarthy repeatedly. And some of them, according to Axios reporter Lachlan Markay, have been using their theatrics for fundraising pitches.

“The three-day deadlock has brought the House to a standstill and prevented newly elected members from being sworn in,” Markay explains in an article published by Axios the night of January 5. “For some members, though, the fight itself has a financial upside.”

Markay cites Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona and Rep. Bob Good of Virginia as examples of Never Kevin Republicans who have been using their “no” votes to ask for donations.

In a fundraising e-mail, Gaetz wrote, “Patriot, maybe the right person for the job of Speaker of the House isn’t someone who has sold shares of himselffor more than a decade to get it. I HAVE NO REGRETS ABOUT CASTING MY VOTE ON THE HOUSE FLOOR AGAINST KEVIN McCARTHY FOR SPEAKER!…. If you want to Drain the Swamp, you CANNOT put the biggest alligator in charge of the exercise! But that’s exactly what we would get with a McCarthy speakership.”

Gaetz described McCarthy as “Kiev Kevin,” underscoring his opposition to helping the government of Ukraine at a time when Ukrainian forces are continuing to fight against invaders sent by Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin.

Biggs asked Republican donors to “turbocharge our emergency efforts to break the Establishment” and told them that “every dollar helps secure the Speaker position.” Good, in his fundraising pitch, accused McCarthy of spending “millions of dollars trying to defeat conservatives in Republican primaries.”

Markay reports, “Ultra MAGA PAC, a group run by ex-(Donald) Trump aide Corey Lewandowski, sent a fundraising e-mail Thursday that called for McCarthy, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and RNC chair Ronna McDaniel to be replaced. McCarthy ‘stopped the Red Wave single-handedly by weighing in on primaries against good MAGA candidates,’ the email claimed.”

Meanwhile, Democrats have been using the House speaker debacle to do some fundraising of their own. One of their fundraising e-mails was sent by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) under Rep. Hakeem Jeffries’ name. Jeffries is Democrats’ presumptive House minority leader, and House Democrats repeatedly voted to give him that position in the roll-call votes of January 3-5. Jeffries was endorsed by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who resigned as Democratic leader in the House but will remain in Congress in 2023.

That DCCC fundraising e-mail read, “Republicans have fallen into complete chaos. Will you help me prove that grassroots Democrats can get more support than Republicans in these first hours of the new Republican House?"

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trump coup?! substack

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2021/08/trumps-political-operation-paid-more-than-4-3-million-to-jan-6-organizers-questions-remain-about-full-involvement/

open secrets

former President Donald Trump’s political operation reported paying more than $4.3 million to people and firms that organized the Jan. 6 rally since the start of the 2020 election. However, questions remain about the full extent of the Trump campaign’s involvement in the “Save America” rally on the day of the Capitol attack as a House select committee’s sweeping requests attempt to shine some light on that day’s events.

On Friday, the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol sent letters requesting information from 15 social media companies. On Aug. 25, the select committee sent requests to federal agencies for records related to the riot.

The letters ask agencies from the National Archives and Records Administration to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice to expedite the gathering of the records, asking for information within two-weeks.

The House subpoena names Caroline Wren, a veteran GOP fundraiser who received at least $170,000 from the Trump political operation as the campaign’s national finance consultant with the joint fundraising committee. Wren was listed as a “VIP Advisor” on the permit granted by the National Park Service for the Jan. 6 rally.

Megan Powers, one of two operations managers listed on the rally permit, is not listed in the House request but was paid around $300,000 as the Trump campaign’s director of operations. And Make America Great Again PAC paid around $20,000 more to Powers for “recount administrative consulting” in 2021.

None of the other former Trump campaign officials listed on the permit for the rally on Jan. 6 are listed in the initial requests.

The House select committee did request records related to Women for Trump initiative co-chair Gina Loudon, who spoke at the rally. The committee also requested records related to Amy Kremer, who notably co-founded Women for America First, the 501(c)(4) nonprofit “dark money” group that submitted the rally’s permit records to the National Park Service.

The select committee also requested letters related to Dustin Stockton, a co-organizer of the rally. Stockton was also a spokesperson for WeBuildtheWall when former White House strategist Steve Bannon and three others affiliated with the dark money group were charged with fraud related to the online fundraising effort. Stockton was not charged and records related to Bannon were requested by the House select committee.

Stockton and Kremer told ProPublica that they felt they needed to “urgently warn the White House of the possible danger” posed by the rally. They initially took their concerns to Katrina Pierson, a former Trump campaign spokesperson who reportedly served as a liaison between the White House and rally organizers, but after “feeling that they weren’t gaining enough traction” Stockton claims she and Kremer agreed to call White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. However, Kremer denies that she spoke with Meadows or any other White House official about Jan. 6 concerns.

Records requested by the House select committee could shine light on claims about those encounters as well as other outstanding questions about the extent of the Trump campaign’s involvement.

But since Trump’s campaign and joint fundraising committee funneled millions of dollars through layers of opaque firms and shell companies where the ultimate payee is hidden, the public may never know the full extent of the Trump campaign’s payments to organizers involved in the protests.

Trump’s 2020 campaign and joint fundraising committee, the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, spent more than $771 million through American Made Media Consultants LLC during the 2020 election cycle. OpenSecrets data shows Trump’s joint fundraising committee routed another $685,000 through the secretive limited-liability company in 2021 with around $222,000 of that going to text messaging on Jan. 6.

The Federal Election Commission generally does not require campaigns to detail payments vendors make to subcontractors as long as the subcontractor does not work under the direction or control of the campaign and the campaign does not have undue influence over the vendor.

But the role campaign aides and members of Trump’s inner circle played in creating the limited-liability company as a “clearinghouse” to pay vendors, concealing details of millions of dollars in the campaign’s transactions, raises the question of whether it was truly separate from the campaign.

The full roster of people working for Trump’s campaign remains hidden from the public and details of those payments, such as the nature of services provided and the amount of money changing hands, are shrouded in mystery.

The nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center filed an FEC complaint alleging that Trump’s 2020 political operation may have violated federal election law by concealing details of the campaign’s financial dealings.

Recent campaign finance records reviewed by OpenSecrets show Trump’s political operation continued to pay Event Strategies Inc., a firm named in a permit for the rally where two of the rally organizers worked. The firm received payments from Trump aligned super PAC Make America Great Again Action as recently as Aug. 13, FEC records filed Aug. 26 show.

Trump’s political operation paid Event Strategies more than $2.5 million since the start of the 2020 election with around $800,000 of that coming from Trump’s Save America leadership PAC and Make America Great Again Action super PAC in 2021.

Event Strategies is not the only vendor with Trump ties the Make America Great Again Action super PAC reported paying in its new FEC disclosure filed Aug. 26.

On July 15, the Make America Great Again Action super PAC paid $128,125 to Forward Strategies, a firm run by professional fundraiser Meredith O’Rourke, who was reportedly subpoenaed in federal prosecutors’ probe of longtime Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. The super PAC also paid Red Elephant Strategy, a consulting firm run by Brian Walsh. He was president of America First Policies, the dark money arm of America First Action,Trump’s one-time super PAC of choice and a roughly $1.8 million donor to Make America Great Again Action.

Red Eagle Media Group, a firm that funneled money from Trump’s campaign to shell companies tied to ad buyers at the center of an alleged illegal coordination scheme with the National Rifle Association and America First Action during the 2020 election cycle, received payments from the super PAC as well.

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trump political groups have over $100M in the bank

Led by Save America PAC, the former president's new political outfit, the three groups brought in $82 million in the first half the year.

Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

In this July 11, 2021, photo Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, Texas. | LM Otero, File/AP Photo

By ALEX ISENSTADT and MERIDITH MCGRAW

Updated:08/01/2021

Former President Donald Trump’s political committees brought in $82 million during the first half of 2021 and have $102 million in the bank, according to federal filings made public Saturday evening.

The figures, shared first with POLITICO, underscore the profound reach of Trump’s fundraising power. While the former president is out of office and has been deplatformed on social media sites, he maintains a massive online donor network that he could lean on should he wage a 2024 comeback bid.

The scenario is virtually unprecedented: Never in history has a former president banked nine figures’ worth of donations to power a political operation. Over the first six months of the year, Trump’s political groups whipped up supporters with baseless claims of election fraud to pull in cash on a scale similar to the GOP’s official political arms, the Republican National Committee and the party’s House and Senate campaign committees.

The former president’s fundraising was spread across three committees: Save America, a leadership PAC he launched shortly after losing the 2020 election; Make America Great Again PAC, his old campaign account which was converted into a PAC this year; and a joint fundraising outfit that sends its funds to the other two groups. Campaign finance disclosures filed late Saturday evening showed that Save America took in the bulk of the funds — more than $62 million — and finished June with just over $90 million in its account.

Leadership PACs like Save America have a $5,000 donation limit per donor, per year, but there are few restrictions on how those groups can spend their money. Trump has spent little from the fund so far this year, but he can use it to pay for travel, events, advisers, ad campaigns, and supporting candidates and other political activities.

There is one notable restriction: The leadership PAC funds cannot be used to finance a presidential campaign.

Earlier this year, Trump also gave his blessing to a newly formed super PAC, Make America Great Again Action, which is allowed to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money. The organization, which ishelmed by former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, has already invested heavily to bolster Trump-endorsed candidates in a pair of special elections. The super PAC raised just over $5 million from its founding in early March through the end of June, according to a disclosure filed Saturday evening.

Trump briefly slowed his fundraising efforts following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot but resumed it this spring. Much of what Trump has raised is expected to be used ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, in which the former president is expected to play an active role, according to a person familiar with the matter.

“On behalf of the millions of men and women who share my outrage and want me to continue to fight for the truth, I am grateful for your support,” Trump said in a statement.

Trump has been forceful in urging his supporters to route their cash through Save America, even at the expense of the Republican Party’s campaign organizations. During an appearance before the Conservative Political Action Conference earlier this year, Trump said that that the “only” way to give to Trump-aligned candidates was through Save America. In the weeks after, Trump attorneys sent cease-and-desist letters to the party’s committees requesting that they stop using his name in fundraising appeals, which the party ignored.

Trump’s political operation has been sending out a daily battery of fundraising text messages to supporters, many of them reiterating his unfounded claims that the election was stolen. Trump has spent months lavishing praise on election audits taking place in states like Arizona, though a person familiar with Trump’s campaign finances said that none of his groups have donated money to fund those efforts out of a desire not to taint their independence.

FILED UNDER: PACS, GOP, ELECTIONS, DONALD TRUMP, DONALD TRUMP 2020,...

biz insider

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-super-pac-rebrands-make-america-great-again-again-2021-10

Trump Super PAC rebrands: 'Make America Great Again, Again!'

Taiyler Simone Mitchell

Oct 4, 2021

no lnx docs?

Trump's Super PAC is now called "Make America Great Again, Again!"

The political group will provide support to Trump supporters seeking office.

Former President Trump has endorsed 37 candidates for 2022 elections, according to Newsweek.

The "ONLY Trump approved Super PAC" has rebranded from "Make America Great Again Action" to "Make America Great Again, Again!" the political action committee announced Monday.

"MAGA, Again! will support Trump-endorsed candidates across the country who have proven to be fighters of the MAGA movement and President Trump's many accomplishments," a Monday press release said.

According to Newsweek, Former President Trump has endorsed 37 candidates for House, Senate, and governor, and other elected positions for the 2022 elections. However, Trump has not announced 2024 plans to run for president yet.

"We look forward to building on the success of MAGA Action with our new committee, Make America Great Again, Again!" Pam Bondi, chairman of the political group and former Florida Attorney General, said in the statement. "We are thrilled to continue to support America First candidates in the midterms and beyond."

Bondi acquired the role of chairman after Corey Lewandowski moved on "to other endeavors," following the revelation of a sexual misconduct allegation from a Trump donor last Wednesday, according to a tweet by Trump's Communication Director Taylor Budowich.

"Trump folks had no way to legally replace Lewandowski, one of two board members of the first super PAC, unless he stepped down, so they're now forming a new group," New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman said on Twitter by way of explaining the name change.

The Office of Donald J. Trump did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

https://www.alternet.org/2022/05/analysis-explains-how-trump-s-dark-money-fiasco-is-so-out-of-control-he-can-t-even-make-sense-of-it/

A federal inquiry is shedding light on the mysterious financial connection between more than a dozen political committees and dark money organizations aligned with former President Donald Trump.

According to The Daily Beast, the issues with the organizations also appear to be connected to former Trump White House aide Corey Lewandowski. In fact, the news outlet reports that: "Anyone who’s taken even the quickest of peeks at Trump’s personal financial disclosures would recognize the pattern."

Speaking to The Beast, Brendan Fischer, deputy executive director of the government accountability organization, Documented, weighed in with details about the extent of the questionable nature of these Trump-aligned organizations.

Per The Beast, a list of more than 12 political committees and dark money groups has been released. In fact, all of the organizations contain similar names and wording.

Make America Great Again PAC (converted from the old Trump campaign)
Make America Great Again Action (super PAC)
Make America Great Again, Again! (super PAC)
Trump Make America Great Again (small-dollar joint fundraising committee)
Make America Great Again Policies Inc (a 501(c)(4) nonprofit)
America First Policy Institute (a 501(c)(3) nonprofit)
America First Works (formerly America First Policies; a 501(c)(4) nonprofit)
America FirstLegal Foundation(a 501(c)(3) nonprofit)
America First Action (super PAC)
Save America (leadership PAC)
Save America JFC (joint fundraising committee)
Trump Victory (high-dollar joint fundraising committee)

“Typically, former presidents focus on their presidential library, or start a charitable foundation, but Trump is staying in the political game and raising a staggering amount of cash,” Fischer said.

“It is worth emphasizing: All of this is totally unprecedented for a former president,” Fischer told The Daily Beast. “Even if Trump kept it simple, and just had one hard money PAC, asingle super PAC, and a pair of 501(c)(3)/501(c)(4) nonprofits, there would be no parallel with any former president in American history.”

The handling of each organization also includes distinctive activity patterns which The Beast has pointed out.

"His first such disclosure revealed positions with more than 500 entities, nearly 400 of which used his name or initials. And Trump has 'organized' the mess in a stultifying Russian-nesting-doll structure—companies within companies within companies. Frequently, one company will be held under multiple Trump companies at the same time, each with stakes in still other Trump companies."

It has also been noted that the structure of each entity has given the Trump Organization a substantial advantage for "financial flexibility while making it difficult to follow the billions of dollars that Trump, his family, and his accountants move across the organization."

Brett Kappel, a campaign finance specialist who also focuses on nonprofit law for Harmon Curran, offered his assessment of the situation.

“The central lesson of Watergate is ‘Follow the money,’” Kappel told the news outlet. “And this byzantine structure of different types of legal entities—which are subject to different fundraising restrictions and file different reports with different agencies according to different filing schedules—appears to be designed to make that task as difficult as possible.”

After news broke that Corey Lewandowski was accused by a major donor of stalking, sexual harassment, and sexual assault, Trump world moved to fire the longtime advisor to the former president, but they ran into a problem. Lewandowski, who headed the official Trump Super PAC, was one of just two board members, and was not about to vote to fire himself.

As The Daily Beast reports, Lewandowski tried to get himself a massive severance package, saying he would go quietly if he was paid off – to the tune of several hundred thousand dollars. The Beast reveals after Lewandowski's "ignominious dismissal during Trump's first run—also prompted by accusations of assaulting a woman, Lewandowski netted a massive $20,000 a month package that gave him nearly half a million dollars to walk away.

Not this time.

Trump reportedly "scoffed" at the idea of paying off Lewandowski. Even though the super PAC had about $200 million in its coffers, the "twice-impeached ex-president didn't want to see Lewandowski slinking away with any of that money—which Trump views as his money, despite the patina of distance that is legally required between candidates and super PACs."

Lewandowski's request was refused, and Trump's advisors simply created a new Super PAC, this one headed by former Florida Attorney General **Pam Bondi**.

"Instead of grappling with the notoriously belligerent operative, however, his MAGA Action colleagues simply abandoned him. Within days of Lewandowski's firing they'd spun up a new super PAC, with a strikingly familiar name: Make America Great Again, Again! A pointed press statement on Monday declared the new group 'the ONLY Trump-approved super PAC,' making no mention of the wayward former leader by name."

Trashelle Odom, the woman who accused Lewandowski, had "claimed in a statement to Politico that Lewandowski had made a series of unwanted advances over the course of the evening, grabbing her buttocks and one of her legs, boasting about his genitalia, speaking to her lewdly, and flashing his room key. The Odoms reportedly asked the super PAC to refund their $100,000 if the group did not sever its ties with Lewandowski."

Lewandowski, according to The Beast, has made a lot of enemies in Trump World, including Sam Nunberg,a former Trump advisor who at times has been a frequent guest on several MSNBC shows.

"I remember the day I was fired from Trump's 2016 campaign, and I got calls from reporters saying they'd just spoken to Corey Lewandowski," Nunberg told The Beaast. "This, even after I was told that my termination was going to be done quietly. This is someone who is a power-hungry, talentless, amoral psychopath who hit the jackpot with Donald J. Trump… He's a piece of trash."

ref no lnx

https://www.thedailybeast.com/even-donald-trump-cant-make-sense-of-his-own-dark-money-maze

[Pay Dirt is a weekly foray into the pigpen of political funding. Subscribe here to get it in your inbox every Thursday.

An inquiry from the feds has thrown new light on the murky relationships between a dozen Trump-aligned groups. And the problem traces back, as do so many other problems in Trumpworld, to a familiar name: former top aide Corey Lewandowski.

When Lewandowski got himself fired from a pro-Trump super PAC last fall—after allegedly sexually assaulting a big donor—the group brought in a clean-up crew. When Lewandowski refused to step down, they opened up a new super PAC without him.

That super PAC—the preposterously titled “Make America Great Again, Again!”—was the 12th in a sprawling labyrinth of political groups and nonprofitsthat comprise the Trump fundraising network. And in terms of the incestuous confusion, it may have been the one that finally tipped the scales; federal election officials now want to know why some of the super PAC’s payments aren’t being properly reported.

[Trump’s Dark-Money Machine Gets a Makeover—and New Owners

BILL OF GOODS

Roger Sollenberger]

Brendan Fischer, deputy executive director of good government group Documented, said the extent of Trump’s network is unparalleled.

“It is worth emphasizing: All of this is totally unprecedented for a former president,” Fischer told The Daily Beast. “Even if Trump kept it simple, and just had one hard money PAC, a single super PAC, and a pair of 501(c)(3)/501(c)(4) nonprofits, there would be no parallel with any former president in American history.”

Anyone who’s taken even the quickest of peeks at Trump’s personal financial disclosures would recognize the pattern.

His first such disclosure revealed positions with more than 500 entities, nearly 400 of which used his name or initials. And Trump has “organized” the mess in a stultifying Russian-nesting-doll structure—companies within companies within companies. Frequently, one company will be held under multiple Trump companies at the same time, each with stakes in still other Trump companies.

This isn’t an accident. The structure gave the Trump Organization an enormous amount of financial flexibility, while making it difficult to follow the billions of dollars that Trump, his family, and his accountants move across the organization.

When Trump hauled his private life into politics, he brought this practice with him, too.

The full Trump-aligned apparatus counts a dozen separate political committees and dark money organizations. Almost all of them share one of three names.

Here they are:

Make America Great Again PAC (converted from the old Trump campaign)

Make America Great Again Action (super PAC)

Make America Great Again, Again! (super PAC)

Trump Make America Great Again (small-dollar joint fundraising committee)

Make America Great Again Policies Inc (a 501(c)(4) nonprofit)

America First Policy Institute (a 501(c)(3) nonprofit)

America First Works (formerly America First Policies; a 501(c)(4) nonprofit)

America First Legal Foundation (a 501(c)(3) nonprofit)

America First Action (super PAC)

Save America (leadership PAC)

Save America JFC (joint fundraising committee)

Trump Victory (high-dollar joint fundraising committee)

“Typically, former presidents focus on their presidential library, or start a charitable foundation, but Trump is staying in the political game and raising a staggering amount of cash,” Fischer said.

It is staggering.

Want a closer look inside the pockets of the government’s most powerful players? Subscribe to the Pay Dirt newsletter here for exclusive reporting every Thursday.

For instance, the Trump-endorsed America First Action super PAC pulled in nearly $200 million between 2017 and 2020. Its sister nonprofit, America First Works—formerly America First Policies—posted $51.3 million in revenue for 2020, doling out nearly $40 million in grants.

[Dark-Money Group Paid Former Trump AG to Ask for Pardons

BEG YOUR PARDON

Roger Sollenberger]

The TMAGA PAC raised $884 million for 2020, with Trump Victory tossing in another $336.3 million. Those guns mostly fell quiet last year, while Trump’s three new PACs built up a $124.4 million stash, with another $12.5 million in the MAGAA! super PAC.

And we won’t know how much those other dark money nonprofits raised in 2021, or what they did with it, until after the midterms.

As Trump and the Republican Party gear up for 2024, these groups are in various stages of repair. However, that also appears to have created some internal problems. In fact, according to a filing on Wednesday, even the Trump campaign admits it isn’t always able to follow its own money.

Fischer chalked up the mess to a few factors, including Trump’s will-he-or-won’t-he candidate status, his relationship with the Republican National Committee, and disarray among his associates.

But Brett Kappel, a specialist in campaign finance and nonprofit law at Harmon Curran, perceived something more designed.

“The central lesson of Watergate is ‘Follow the money,’” Kappel told The Daily Beast. “And this byzantine structure of different types of legal entities—which are subject to different fundraising restrictions and file different reports with different agencies according to different filing schedules—appears to be designed to make that task as difficult as possible.”

To illustrate, these organizations can be divided into two groups: PACs and joint fundraising committees, and “dark money” nonprofits.

The PACS and joint fundraising committees are Trump’s political organizations. They disclose their finances to the Federal Election Commission. But they don’t all follow the same filing schedule, and, depending on what kind of committee they actually are, they can raise and transfer different amounts of money from different types of people and organizations.

[The GOP Dark Money Group Giving Big to White Supremacists

UNWORTHY CAUSES

Roger Sollenberger]

Of these groups, Save America leadership PAC is currently Trump’s main squeeze. Most of the money he raises goes there.The Save America JFC is a joint committee that splits donations between Save America and MAGA PAC, which used to be the Trump campaign. Weirdly, MAGA PAC doesn’t get much out of this joint arrangement—more than 90 percent of every contribution goes to the Save America PAC.

And the super PACs are, as mentioned above, something of a mess.

As for the “dark money” nonprofits, unlike the PACs, these groups file with the IRS. They don’t have to disclose their donors at all (hence “dark money”). They also only file once a year, and because those deadlines are so late, it can take nearly two years for a transaction to become visible to the public.

The IRS restricts their activities, too. Some groups have leeway to be political (the 501(c)(4) groups). Some must focus on social welfare (the 501(c)(3) groups). The Trump network has a healthy helping of both.

Sometimes, however, these PACs and nonprofits can overlap, even sharing employees and office space, like America First Action and America First Policies did during the Trump administration.[shuffle?]

And while they appear to be giving that another go, as the FEC found, it hasn’t been so clean this time.

Enter Lewandowski.

After Trump left the White House, the industriously sycophantic Lewandowski wormed his way back into his graces, winning the right to run the Make America Great Again Action super PAC. At the same time, he quietly created a Florida nonprofit, Make America Great Again Policies Inc.

But MAGA Policies didn’t appear to do anything—at all. There has been no reporting on any actual activity since it was created. Zero. It is a black box.

Then Lewandowski reportedly sexually assaulted a Trump donor and got himself booted from orbit. More experienced hands took over the new MAGAA! super PAC, led by former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi, and that also got complicated.

[Trump PAC Lavishing $37K a Month on Trump Tower Rent: WaPo

DONATIONS WELL SPENT

According to a new corporate filing in Florida, Bondi—who also happens to lead the massive America First Policy Institute nonprofit—also took over Lewandowski’s mysterious MAGA Policies nonprofit, adding former Trump administration officials Ric Grenelland Matt Whitaker, as well as Donald Trump Jr. paramour Kimberly Guilfoyle. All of those people are also on the new super PAC’s payroll.

But here’s the rub: The super PAC hasn’t been paying them directly. The nonprofit has, as part of a “cost share agreement.”

On Tuesday, the FEC sent the super PAC a letter saying that’s not cutting it. The group needs to explain exactly what they mean by “cost share agreement,” the letter said, because what they provided is not adequate.

Kappel said the FEC may be trying to figure out whether the two groups are “financially and operationally independent.” If the super PAC was found to be “connected” to the MAGA Policies nonprofit, he said, that meansit can only raise money from people tied to the nonprofit—and not from the general public. That would be a death blow, and the group would be forced to reorganize itself yet again.

Fischer said he wouldn’t be surprised to see more groups strategically shut down, like Trump Victory began doing last year.

“It might be more straightforward for Trump to shut down MAGA PAC,” he said, though he pointed out that MAGA PAC appears to own the campaign’s valuable supporter data, which might make it more cost-effective to retain for joint fundraising efforts.

But, Fischer pointed out, even though the constellation of Trump-aligned groups is basically unnavigable, it always could have been worse.

“Recall that Brad Parscale also started the ‘American Greatness’ super PAC in 2021, which never really got off the ground,” he said.

IDaho const co car raCING

https://heavy.com/news/trashelle-odom/

nope not metoo but $ apparently?

https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/corey-lewandowski/

Lewandowski out at 'Trump world' after allegations he 'stalked' and 'inappropriately touched' donor

David Badash The New Civil Rights Movement

September 30, 2021

c**orey Lewandowski** once again is gone from "Trump World," this time after a donor to the disgraced former president's MAGA Action PAC accused him of stalking, repeated inappropriate touching, and making "vile and [disgusting]?...

soft coup ? stop biden breifings?

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/528810-lewandowski-bossie-added-to-pentagon-advisory-board-after-latest-purge

top Trump allies Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie are among nine new members of a Pentagon advisory board installed after the administration fired the previous members.

The purge at the Defense Business Board, which provides Pentagon leaders with outside advice on business management issues, was first reported Friday by Politico.

It is the latest shake-up at the Department of Defense (DOD) following President Trump’s loss to President-elect Joe Biden in November’s election.

"I’m proud to welcome each of these new members to the Defense Business Board and I look forward to their contributions to help guide the Department’s business efforts in the coming years,” acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, whose installation kicked off the Pentagon shake-up, said in a statement Friday. “These individuals have a proven record of achievement within their respective fields and have demonstrated leadership that will serve our Department, and our nation well.”

Lewandowski served as the president's campaign manager for part of his 2016 White House bid and joined the 2020 campaign as a senior adviser.

Bossie was a deputy campaign manager in 2016 and in November was tapped to lead Trump’s legal efforts challenging the results of the 2020 election. He is also the president and chairman of conservative advocacy group Citizens United. He and Lewandowski have co-written books together.

The Biden administration can replace them when he takes office, but their appointment marks Trump's latest effort to inject politics into the Pentagon in the waning days of his presidency.

The other new members of the board are Henry Dreifus, Robert McMahon, Cory Mills, Bill Bruner, Christopher Shank, Joseph Schmidt, Keary Miller, Alan Weh and Earl Matthews.

They are replacing Chairman Michael Bayer, Vice Chair Atul Vashisitha, Arnold Punaro, John O'Connor, David Venlet, Paul Dolan, Scott Dorn, David Walker and David Van Slyke.

“I want to thank each of these members for volunteering their time and talents in service to the Department of Defense and in turn, our country,” Miller said in his statement....

mma1120

No pushback when Trump adviser suggests that counting votes after election night is stealing the election

Trump adviser Jason Miller appeared on ABC's This Week. Talking with George Stephanopoulos, Miller claimed that Donald Trump will be ahead on election night but that Democrats will try to "steal" the election by counting ballots after that. The fact is that ballots are usually counted for many days and that mail-in ballots in many cases will be delayed in the count due to Republican-led state legislatures. Stephanopoulos, however, did not push back on the claim at all.

Over on Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace did not push back either when guest Corey Lewandowski said that Trump would be winning by such margins on election night that "there will be no need to continue to count" in the ensuing days.

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/at-american-priority-conference-speakers-sowed-distrust-peddled-conspiracy-theories-and-called-for-civil-war

Joshua Feuerstein took the main stage at the American Priorities Festival and Conference at the Trump Doral National Miami resort to deliver a message: the Civil War was here.

Feuerstein, a former evangelical pastor, used his sermon voice to recall the original Civil War, which he called the “turning point of America,” the battle of Gettysburg, which he deemed the “turning point of the war,” and the men who fought in Pickett’s Charge, which he labeled “the turning point of Gettysburg.” He paced the stage in his navy blue suit, passing by the large red “AMP” letters on the screen behind him, and painted a picture of heroic men and hand-to-hand combat during Pickett’s Charge. “Those men did not think it anything special,” he said.

“I need you to know that 2020 is a civil war that will change the face of America forever,” Feurestein said, his voice rising, as the crowd began to applaud. “And it’s God, ladies and gentlemen, it’s God that calls the qualified, that qualifies those that are called, that are willing to step up in the moment that matters, that has greatness thrust upon them. And tonight, together here in this place to say that we are willing to fight, we may think ourselves insignificant, but that we will stand together in 2020, and we will win the war that will change the face of America.”

Feurestein’s declaration of war wasn’t the only one at the conference. Earlier in the evening, evangelicalPastor Mark Burns had called for war; “We’ve come to declare war!” he said, and attendees in the back of the ballroom replied with “War! War!”

Over three days, speakers at the pro-Trump conference sowed seeds of distrust in nearly every American institution imaginable and cited conspiracy theories to bolster their case for the use of such civil war rhetoric, as they perpetuated sentiments of victimization and loathing. The conference could have been dismissed as a meeting of the fringe, but big-ticket speakers like Don Trump Jr. and Sarah Huckabee Sanders lent legitimacy to the conference,as did more respectable Republican groups like the Leadership Institute, which held a series of trainings in side rooms. By the time Don Trump Jr. took the stage on Friday evening, he simply invoked themes hammered into the audience throughout the day using subtler language, and it worked the crowd into a frenzy.

In this Trumpian, upside-down world, it’s hard to understand where one has landed until you take one conspiracy at face value: the “deep state.” The so-called deep state is supposedly comprised of supporters of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in high-rank positions in different government agencies who aim to sabotage Trump at every opportunity and eventually overthrow him. Originating on the fringe, the conspiracy theory has now entered the mainstream GOP and has become a staple of right-wing media messaging. At the American Priority Conference, the speakers legitimized the deep state, and layered more conspiracy theories on top.

Perhaps most telling was the “Unmasking the Russian Hoax” panel with Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch, a right-wing “investigative” organization, conservative activist Ned Ryun, George Papadopolous, who went to federal prison for making false statements to FBI agents about the timing of his contact with Russian intermediaries in 2016, and Corey Lewandowski, former Trump campaign manager and author ofTrump’s Enemies: How the Deep State Is Undermining the Presidency. Tracy Beanz, abooster of the QAnon conspiracy theory, moderated the panel.

In Fitton’s world, bad actors had been planning a coup before Trump was even elected.

“Anytime you heard the word impeachment, you can substitute the word coup, because that’s what’s going on here,” Fitton said. “It began during the campaign, when they weaponized intelligence agency against Trump, people like George [Papadopoulos], and who knows who else, to protect Hillary Clinton, to protect Barack Obama, and as Mr. Strzok said, to have an insurance policy if Mr. Trump won.”

The “insurance policy” Fitton references isa conspiracy theorybirthed on 4chan message boards that Democrats had a ready-to-go scheme to impeach Trump if he won.Amplified by right-wing media, the conspiracy theory has reached the White House and influenced the president’s policy making.

“They [Congress] weren’t getting the traction they needed, so the intelligence agencies, it looks like, that were targeting him to begin with, came up with another smear operation,” Fitton continued. “They had a leak they wanted to get out on this Ukrainian conversation, but they recognized doing it would be illegal, so they gussied it up in a whistleblower complaint and illegally communicated classified information, it looks like, with Adam Schiff and lied about it. And now it’s led to the coup operation of President Trump.“

Papadopoulos floated the deep state theory as well. “Some of the same spies that went after Michael Flynn in 2015 were after me in 2016,” he said. As for the whistleblower report, Papadopoulos noted that it came out when WIlliam Barr was, he said, trying to investigate the previous administration. “This was a preemptive strike by the deep state,” Papadopoulos said, suggesting that it was an effort by deep state actors to protect themselves.

Lewandowski focused on the FBI.“I look at the fact that they spied on American citizens who were participating in the political process, because they didn’t like our politics,” Lewandowski said. “What we know see over the course of the last three and a half years is that Jim Comey, and Andy McCabe, and the lovers, Dr. Page, which Trump talked about last night, James Baker who is the general counsel at the FBI, they use their badges and guns to go after American citizens because they don’t like our politics.”

The bad actors need to punished, the panelists agreed. “People have to go to jail,” Ryun said, to which an audience member yelled: “Barack Obama!”

According to the panelists, the media was among the bad actors, conspiring with Democrats. “The media intentionally wanted to brainwash all of you. They wanted to create chaos and division, and attempt a silent coup,” Papadopoulos said.

Later that evening, Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA warmed up the stage for Don Trump Jr.He zoomed in on the Jussie Smollett story, an actor who apparentlystaged a hate crime against himself, claiming it was indicative of the Democratic situation and “Democratic privilege,” where Democrats, like Smollett, are never prosecuted for wrongdoings. Kirk used the Smollett story to sow doubt—if Smollett fabricated a hate crime, what else could they lie to you about?—and bolster another debunked conspiracy theory that Adam Schiff changed the whistleblower laws just before the whistleblower filed his complaint.

“Guess what happens when we don’t hold them accountable? What happens is Congressman Adam Schiff then flies his staffer up to Ukraine, changes the whistleblower laws, uses a friend that he has in the CIA, and then do it all over again, just with a different country,” Kirk said.

Kirk then moved on to other supposed deep state actors. “If [Trump] would’ve won and did the typical Republican thing … maybe the deep state actors would’ve just stayed at bay. But the fact that they’re relentlessly going after him should give you renewal and confidence that this president actually doing what he said he was going to do,” Kirk said.

When Don Trump Jr. walked out onto the stage Friday night following Kirk, he wasted no time in getting to the Smollett story and attacking Schiff and the media.“Adam Schiff is the Jussie Smollett of Congress on steroids,” he said as his girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, stared at him adoringly from her chair on stage. “And he gets away with it because people in the media protect him.”

“On paper, 2020 should be over, but it’s not, because we’re not in a fair fight,” Trump Jr. said, claiming that “the mainstream media has made a conscious decision to be the marketing team of the opposing party.”

While Trump Jr. didn’t go as far as to call for civil war or double down on the deep state, he didn’t need to. His presence lent legitimacy the conspiracy theories floated all day. It’s this very type of environment that civil war rhetoric on the right has grown. In early October, it appeared to reach Trump himself, who went as far as toquote Fox News contributor Pastor Robert Jeffress on Twitter saying, “If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal.”

In an upside-down world, where a deep state is conniving to imprison administration officials just doing their jobs, continues to get away with spying and crimes, and stages a coup against a democratically elected president, calling for a civil war doesn’t seem like that big of a leap.

rnc paid his lawyer to testify?

Corey Lewandowski was brought before the House Judiciary committee to answer questions related to potential obstruction of justice by Trump that was highlighted in the Mueller report. Lewandowski turned the appearance into a circus by avoiding questions and trolling committee members. Towards the end of the session, Lewandowski was pressed about a past appearance on MSNBC where he lied, and in response claimed that he feels “no obligation to be honest with the media.”

A Fox "straight news" show hosted him immediately after the hearing, and did not ask him about essentially admitting to being a liar. (This is not a surprise, given that the concept of "straight news" at Fox is a lie.)

The next day, CNN's New Day hosted Lewandowski for fifteen minutes -- even though he admitted to Congress the day before that he lies in settings just like this. At Matt Gertz notes, Lewandowski misled CNN's host on whether he was bound by the Trump White House’s executive privilege and he also lied about the contents of the Mueller report. Meanwhile, Lewandowski used the interview to portray himself as a hero and promote his website that he's using to set up a potential run for the Senate in New Hampshire.

hmmn (2 other WH not show up letter cites non-existent "Const immunity" cory tries to invoke exec immunity client priv'l tho he is not gov't (thus had to appear)

Corey Lewandowski unravels as Democratic lawyer grills him over his lies and actions in the Mueller report

// qanon?

on Fox Business, Corey Lewandowski claims "in March or April of next year, James Comey, Andy McCabe, Strzok and Paige will be on trial for the crimes they committed"

mma

NOVEMBER 15, 2018 2:05 PM

Corey Lewandowski and Alex Marlow Demand to be Taken Seriously on This ‘Deep State’ Stuff

corey Lewandowski, a former campaign manager for President Donald Trump turned media talking head, and Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow can’t understand why people write off their ramblings about the “deep state.”Lewandowski joined Marlow on yesterday’s edition of Breitbart News Daily on SirusXM to promote a new book he’s written about his theory that a secret shadow government is trying to undermine the Trump administration. Trump supporters have blamed the “deep state” for every thinkable hurdle the Trump administration faces in the eyes of the American public.

Marlow noted to Lewandowski that the term “deep state” was “a phrase that was not very popular” before Trump took office, despite it being “so right-on.” Lewandowski complimented Marlow and Breitbart, who, Lewandowski said, constantly “remind people that the deep state is very real.”

Lewandowski went on to accuse non-political government workers who were hired during the Obama administration and continue to work in the government of “doing everything they can possibly do to subvert the president’s agenda” because “they don’t want to see him be successful.” He goes on to chide Gary Cohn, who allegedly removed a letter from Trump’s desk, for exploiting the president’s apparent lack of object permanence to prevent him from pulling out of a trade agreement.

“The deep state is very real,” Lewandowski said.

“It is very real and to me, Corey, it’s so logical that it would be the case,” Marlow said. “It’s fully logical that there would be a deep state and of course government and bureaucratic employees are going to more likely be Democrat globalists and they’re going to hate a guy like Donald Trump.”

Marlow asked, “Why would folks like you and I be dismissed for talking this way?”

We wonder.

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/how-dare-you-corey-lewandowski-mocks-girl-down-syndrome-who-was-caged-border

Lewandowski tried to make light of the administration's policy of separating immigrant families on Fox News Tuesday, and he ended up mocking a young girl with Down syndrome who had been torn away from her mother.

"I read today about a 10-year-old girl with Down syndrome who was taken from her mother and put in a cage," Zac Petkanas, a Democratic strategist, said on during Fox News discussion of the policy.

"Womp, womp," Lewandoski responded.

hired by CNN!

trump corey lewan was koch AFP connected by BOSSIE CU! axis of evil, together at last

bonus Abramoff via Ney

https://www.alternet.org/grifter-chief-has-administration-full-thieves-fixers-and-money-grubbers

not just Trump’s cabinet secretaries who are living high on governmental largess. Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski set up a “consulting firm” calledLewandowski Strategic Services last year and quickly signed a contract for $20,000 a month working for Community Choice Financial, a payday lender based in Ohio. Lewandowsky quickly called for the firing of Richard Cordray, head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which had issued strict guidelines regulating the payday lending industry. Cordray was forced out of the CFPB three months later.

Most recently, Lewandowski showed up in Belgrade, Serbia, with two former Trump campaign aides who run Turnberry Solutions, a lobbying firm headquartered in the Capitol Hill townhouse where Lewandowski resides. Lewandowski denies any connections to Turnberry Solutions, which is named after a golf course in Scotland owned by President Trump. He also denies that he is engaged in lobbying for foreign governments, despite reports that he attempted to set up a phone call between Trump and Serbian President Aleksander Vucic, according to sources in a Serbian opposition party cited by Mother Jones.

Lewandowski appears to have arranged a contract between the BGR Group, a lobbying firm chaired by veteran Republican political operative Ed Rogers, and Poland’s state-owned arms contractor,Polska Grupa Zbrojeniowa (PGZ), a conglomerate of 60 Polish defense companies. The contract is worth $70,000 a month, according to the Daily Beast. Two months after the lobbying contract was signed, BGR Group made a subcontracting agreement with Jason Osborne, one of the two lobbyists for Turnberry Solutions, headquartered in Corey Lewandowski’s townhouse.

And then there’sMatt Schlapp,Chairman of the American Conservative Union, and his wife, Mercedes Schlapp, the director of strategic communications at the White House. These two griftoids are also making out like bandits riding on Trump’s money train. Schlapp’s political consulting and communications firm, Cove Strategies, nearly doubled its income from $600,000 a year to over $1 million after Schlapp decided to back Trump in 2016 and invited him to the annual CPAC Convention, the annual gathering of wingnuts put on by the American Conservative Union in Washington.

Schlapp and his wife were pictured on the front page of the New York Times recently in their new $3 million home in Alexandria, Virginia. The Times reported that the happy couple also owns a 30-acre vacation retreat in the Blue Ridge Mountains they call Victory Farm.

You would think that the legal difficulties of Paul Manafort, Rick Gates and Michael Flynn would have gotten the attention of the grifters, fixers, and money grubbers inside and outside the Trump administration by now, but apparently not. It’s really a perfect system, isn’t it?

The favorite hang-out of lobbyists and fixers these days is the “lobby bar” at the Trump International Hotel in Washington. Conveniently, the President of the United States, who maintains ownership of the hotel while in office, pockets a percentage of every dime they spend there.

Former Congressman Steve Israel

After serving in Congress for 16 years, former U.S. Rep. Steve Israel, D-NY, shares why inaction on gun reform provoked him to leave Congress and take on a second career writing novels and teaching. His second and latest novel, “Big Guns: A Novel,” is a comedy about where guns, small Long Island towns and Washington politics meet. Israel, who left Congress right before the Trump administration moved in, says that he mourned dozens of mass shootings while in office, but unfortunately, nothing changed. "The number one question that I faced, and virtually all of my colleagues after every one of those shootings, was when will Congress do something,” Israel told Salon. “I wanted to explain why in this book,” Israel continued, “through satire, snark and honesty.” Israel also opened up about another frustration, constant fundraising and “dialing for dollars.” "If you are in a competitive district in an expensive media market, you've got to raise about $30,000 a week. That's about 30 hours a week on the phone,” he shared. Watch the full conversation above to hear more from Israel on why the Parkland shooting could change the dynamics of the entire midterm elections and why he thinks moderate Republicans are bound to lose.

trump wh strat mtg:

White House meeting about strategy for the mid-term elections erupted in a noisy argument when former manager to President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign Corey Lewandowski bawled out presidential advisers and accused the White House of being too “insular,” said a late-breaking story in the *New York Times* on Thursday.

Maggie Haberman spoke to unnamed officials who were at the Wednesday meeting, which was reportedly attended by Lewandowski, Pres. Trump, White House chief of staff John Kelly, senior advisor Kellyanne Conway, communications director Hope Hicks and White House political director Bill Stepien.

Lewandowski railed against the Republican National Committee and Mr. Stepien’s operation, while one attendee said, “Mr. Lewandowski lashed out at nearly every department but the political shop.”

“Mr. Lewandowski called the White House team too insular, and he said it had done little to tend to fellow Republicans or to conduct outreach with outside groups and supporters,” the Times said.

Trump — reportedly stinging from dual losses by candidates he endorsed in Virginia and Alabama — appeared to agree with Lewandowski’s dressing-down of the president’s circle of advisers, although Kelly was reportedly “put off” by the former campaign manager’s statements.

Lewandowski and Stepien squared off after the meeting outside the Oval Office, then “continu(ed) the exchange elsewhere on the White House grounds. They eventually reached a cordial place, three people briefed on the exchange said.”

Stepien reportedly called America First Policies on Thursday morning — the pro-Trump PAC that currently employs Lewandowski — and asked that their attorney appear at all future briefings with Lewandowski.

wikifluff

Schwartz Communications is a public relations agency based in Waltham, Massachusetts.

[hide]

History

Schwartz Communications was founded in 1990 by Steve and Paula Mae Schwartz.^[1] Previous to founding the firm, Steve served as a speechwriter for General Electric’s CEO Jack Welch. ^[2]

The company started out as a general public relations firm, for example running a marketing campaign for Gerber baby food, before specializing on technology and healthcare companies.^[1] The company established an office in San Francisco in 1996 ^[3] and on November 1, 2006, Schwartz opened their third office at Stockholm.^[4] In 2007, they established a location in London.^[5]

In March 2009, Steve Schwartz stepped down as President of the firm and named Bryan Scanlon as his replacement. Scanlon has been with the firm since 1997 and most recently ran the company’s San Francisco office. Schwartz continues to hold the title of CEO. Schwartz also announced in March 2009 that its chief financial officer, Ari Millstein, would assume the additional role of chief operating officer, once held by Paula Mae Schwartz, who now acts as the firm’s "chief people officer". Schwartz explained that the changes were made so the couple could focus on their film production company, "Chockstone Pictures".^[4]

In 2011 the firm was acquired by MSL Group, a large PR firm owned by Publicis Groupe. The firm's name was changed to Schwartz MSL. ^[6]

Clients

In addition to its Waltham headquarters, Schwartz has offices in San Francisco, London and Stockholm.^[4] The firm specializes in PR for the high-tech, medical device, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.^[7]

Schwartz served 78 clients in 1998.^[3] By 2006, this number was reported to have grown to over 170 clients.^[8]

Clients of Schwartz have included Staples,^[9] and Lycos.^[3]

Recognition

In 1997, it was described as the "fastest-growing high-tech PR agency" by Inside PR.^[3] In 2009, Schwartz was awarded 13 "bells" at the 40th annual Bell Ringer Awards.^[10]

It has been described as the largest public relations agency in Massachusetts.^[4]

Lewandowski, the former green-energy lobbyist, has launched a consulting and lobbying firm that is already selling itself to clients on the strength of Lewandowski's proximity to Trump — literally and figuratively.

Avenue Strategies is the new lobbying firm, launched by Lewandowski and fellow Trump campaign aide Barry Bennett. My colleague David Drucker reported the firm would "offer 'a little bit of everything' in terms of political consulting and government affairs services. Bennett said he expects to register as a lobbyist but doesn't know if Lewandowski will."

The firm also stressed Lewandowski's personal closeness to Trump — an obvious selling point for potential clients. The firm's announcment Wednesday touted that its offices will be "just a block from the White House."

Lewandowski was a subsidy lobbyist under Obama. As I wrote during the campaign:

Corey Lewandowski, Trump's combative campaign manager, was a subsidy and earmark lobbyist for years. From 2005 through early 2011, Lewandowski was a registered lobbyist at Schwartz Communications, a Massachusetts-based public-relations and lobbying firm. Lewandowski's clients included biotech firms, solar-panel makers and government contractors.

Lewandowksi successfully lobbied to get a half-million-dollar green-energy earmark, for Borrego Solar, Mother Jones reported earlier this year.

"Passport Systems secured more than $23.9 million in federal dollars between 2008 and 2011," Mother Jones wrote of another Lewandowski client. "In the six years Lewandowski represented Passport Systems, it paid his firm more than $350,000."

For equipment-maker Pavilion Technologies, Lewandowski was registered to lobby on "environment," according to a lobbying registration. Company documents filed with the federal government suggest Lewandowski lobbied the Environmental Protection Agency, the House, and the Senate on rules requiring emissions testing. Pavilion sold emissions-testing equipment.

Donald Trump ran for president promising to "drain the swamp" and stop letting lobbyists call the shots.

http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2016/03/donald-trump-corey-lewandowski-solar-company-lobbyist

Donald Trump's Campaign Manager Led a Double Life as a Solar Power Lobbyist

Corey Lewandowski privately sought earmarks for a solar company while publicly leading the fight against taxpayer-funded green-energy projects.

RUSS CHOMA MAR. 30, 2016 6:00 AM

Charlie Neibergall/AP

Before becoming the controversial campaign manager of Donald Trump's presidential bid, Corey Lewandowski oversaw the New Hampshire chapter of Americans for Prosperity, the advocacy group founded by the Koch brothers. The conservative activist, who was charged with battery on Tuesday, led an aggressive operation dedicated to slashing government spending—including earmarks and subsidies—and eviscerating government regulations, particularly the green-energy agenda of the Obama administration. Yet Lewandowski led something of a double life, because while he was battling the government for AFP, he was also working as a lobbyist and seeking federal funds for clients that included a solar power company.

In June 2008, when Americans for Prosperity set up a new chapter in New Hampshire and tapped Lewandowski as its head, the group declared that it intended to bolster conservative politics in New Hampshire and noted that it was "a leader in the fight against pork-barrel earmarks and economy-destroying policies being advanced in the name of global warming." Known as a hard-charging political brawler, Lewandowski had been drifting through the political world before joining AFP. He had been an administrative assistant to Ohio Republican Rep. Bob Ney (who was later jailed on corruption charges), served a brief stint as legislative director for a regional branch of the Republican National Committee, and worked on Sen. Bob Smith's failed Senate reelection bid in New Hampshire.

While running AFP's New Hampshire operation, Lewandowski had at least two other jobs. From 2006 to 2010, he served as a marine patrol officer trainee, working on a seasonal basis with the state law enforcement agency that patrols New Hampshire's lakes and seacoast. He also was a registered federal lobbyist employed by Schwartz Communications, a Massachusetts-based public relations firm.

As he played a prominent role at AFP stoking tea party anger over government spending and President Barack Obama's agenda, Lewandowski represented three clients for Schwartz Communications:Passport Systems, a company that manufactures radiation detectors for ports;Logical Images, a firm that makes health care software; and Borrego Solar, a California-based corporation with offices in Massachusetts that designs and installs solar power systems.

According to federal filings, Lewandowski lobbied on various appropriations bills, suggesting that he was striving to obtain government contracts and subsidies for his clients. In one case, he helped to land a lucrative earmark for the type of solar power project he publicly has criticized as government waste.

In 2009, AFP was sponsoring anti-Obamacare protests and opposing a cap-and-trade program designed to counter climate change. Meanwhile, Lewandowski, according to disclosure forms, was lobbying members of the House and Senate on behalf of Borrego Solar in connection with the 2010 Energy and Water Appropriations Act, a $33.5 billion spending bill that financed major energy and water infrastructure projects. In early 2009, as the bill was under consideration, Lewandowski escorted a group of Borrego executives to Capitol Hill for meetings with lawmakers, including Rep. Nikki Tsongas (D-Mass.). Tsongas—whose office confirmed the meeting with Lewandowski—later inserted a $500,000 earmark into the appropriations bill for a major solar electricity project in Lancaster, Massachusetts, that involved Borrego.

Orlando Pacheco, who at the time was town administrator for Lancaster, recalled that Lewandowski was an important part of the team that brought the project to fruition. "All I can say is all those involved have made an incredibly long-lasting impact on Lancaster," Pacheco said. "All those people involved, Mr. Lewandowski, Congresswoman Tsongas…that project is really the only one of its kind in Massachusetts, and we would not have been able to pull it off without their help, and I'm deeply appreciative."

Lewandowski's firm, Schwartz, later declared on its website that it had helped Borrego secure "federal government financing for a solar project during the depths of the financial crisis." But the company ultimately ended up backing out of the project, which continued without Borrego's participation. A Borrego Solar representative declined to comment.

Though he had succeeded as a pro-solar lobbyist looking for government assistance, at AFP he waged a campaign against government programs that supported green energy. In early 2011, Lewandowski penned an op-ed for the Concord Monitor in which he railed against a regional program that sought to address climate change by spawning investment in green-energy projects. And, with AFP's president, Tim Phillips, Lewandowski co-wrote another op-ed condemning green energy and the government policies, including subsidies and grants, that support the industry:

In reality, the subsidies keep taxes high on productive companies while politicians get to pursue their favorite pet projects, all while energy prices continue to rise…Obviously it's time for lawmakers to realize that if a new technology truly has worthwhile benefits for American consumers (lower cost, higher efficiency, environmental benefits, or otherwise) then that technology will demonstrate its value by competing for consumers' dollars in the open market—not by gobbling up special handouts from their pals in Washington.

And AFP targeted government grants to the green energy industry as part of its anti-Obama crusade, launching a fusillade of television ads accusing Obama of handing out irresponsible grants to California-based solar technology company Solyndra.

In addition to Borrego Solar, Lewandowski's other clients landed lucrative government funding while he represented them. Passport Systems secured more than $23.9 million in federal dollars between 2008 and 2011, according to a federal contracting database. In the six years Lewandowski represented Passport Systems, it paid his firm more than $350,000.

Lewandowski was paid $40,000 in 2009 for his lobbying work for Logical Images. In recent years, the company has sold more than $6.5 million worth of software to the federal government. (Art Papier, the company's CEO, says Logical Images hired Lewandowski's firm to do PR work and that he wasn't aware any lobbying was done on the company's behalf.)

Lewandowski did not respond to a request for comment.

Former Trump campaign officials haven’t exactly been bashful about cashing in on their ties to the president in the lobbying sphere. Take Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s former campaign manager. Shortly after the election, he cofounded a lobbying and consulting firm, Avenue Strategies, boasting to domestic and foreign clients of his administration ties.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/amid-scrutiny-corey-lewandowski-quits-his-new-lobbying-firm/2017/05/04/

By Tom Hamburger May 4

President Trump’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, is leaving Avenue Strategies, the lobbying and consulting firm he co-founded after the election.

His departure, first reported Thursday by Bloomberg News, occurred after news stories revealed that Lewandowski had not registered as a lobbyist, even though his firm appeared to be offering potential foreign and other clients access to top administration officials.

Lewandowski and his former partner, Barry Bennett, confirmed the split Thursday evening.

“Corey was a big name and a big target,” said Bennett, also a former Trump campaign adviser. “The firm has been growing yet everything the firm did was associated with Corey, even though we have a lot of clients who Corey has not even met.”

The departure is amicable, Bennett said, noting that it was a tough fit for Lewandowski who has said he did not wish to lobby or work for foreign clients. “It is hard to not lobby and own a chunk of a lobbying firm,” Bennett said.

Last week, Politico reported that an affiliate of Avenue — Washington East West Political Strategies — had been soliciting business in Eastern Europe by offering clients access to Trump, Vice President Pence and other top administration officials. Lewandowski told Bloomberg that he had not authorized or been informed about the creation of Washington East West.

Lewandowski confirmed to The Washington Post on Thursday that he was leaving the firm but did not elaborate. He told Bloomberg that Bennett and others within the firm have used his name without authorization. Nonetheless, the reform group Public Citizen filed a request with the Justice Department to investigate whether Lewandowski had violated lobbying laws.

“The most important thing is my reputation,” Lewandowski said, adding that he wants to make clear going forward that he won’t work for foreign clients or lobby.

This week, Politico reported that Avenue had secured a contract to lobby for Citgo, the oil company owned by the leftist government of Venezuela. Lewandowski said he had no involvement with that deal.

Other Trump advisers have formed consulting and lobbying firms after the election. Lewandowski, who served as campaign manager until June of last year, had been among the most high profile. His refusal to register became controversial among other lobbyists who circulated reports that Lewandowski was pitching potential clients by boasting of his ability to reach Trump personally.

Now another name on the Trump campaign’s payroll, Healy Baumgardner-Nardone, will be representing a foreign client, the government of Malaysia.

Lewandowski: I won't ‘become a swamp creature’

By Madeline Conway

12/22/16 10:11 AM EST

Corey Lewandowski, Donald Trump’s first campaign manager whose move to form an outside consulting firm has prompted accusations of hypocrisy, said Thursday that his “goal isn’t to go and become a swamp creature.”

Speaking on Fox News, Lewandowski was dismissive of coverage in news outlets that questioned whether his transition to political consulting is consistent with Trump’s campaign promise to “drain the swamp” to rid Washington of corrupt influences.

Presidential transition

Trump’s ex-campaign manager starts lobbying firm

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/corey-lewandowski-consulting-firm-232888

By Shane Goldmacher, Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey and Kenneth P. Vogel

“I love the mainstream media. They’ve been so good to me this election cycle,” Lewandowski said sarcastically. “Why would they want to get it right for the first time?”

“Look, it’s amazing,” he continued. “If I open a small business, I’m a bad guy. If I go inside the administration, I’m a bad guy. If I’m unemployed, I’m a statistic. You can’t win with the mainstream media sometimes.”

Lewandowski insisted that his work outside the White House will involve working with interest groups to coordinate support for Trump’s agenda. It would also include consulting — but he claimed not lobbying — for corporations “who want to get a fast answer from the government.”

“If I can be a resource to corporations who want to get a fast answer from the government and not a long maybe, I think that’s a value add that I can potentially provide, so look, that’s what the goal is here,” he said. “The goal isn’t to go and become a swamp creature or to become a lobbyist. I'm not going to be a lobbyist. It’s not going to happen.”

Presidential Transition

Lewandowski brokered Trump-Slim meeting

By Kenneth P. Vogel, Josh Dawsey and Isaac Arnsdorf

When asked directly, Lewandowski, who was previously registered as a lobbyist, also denied that the firm represents his “Plan B.”

POLITICO reported earlier this week, though, that Lewandowski had options to work for the president-elect in the White House, but not the senior job he wanted. He ran Trump's campaign through the Republican primaries but was fired in June after clashing with others on the team.

predicatbly:

Lewandowski, Donald Trump’s polarizing first campaign manager, is not joining the White House and is instead launching a political consulting firm along with former Trump adviser Barry Bennett.

The move from a close Trump ally to start a lobbying firm — one that will be based just one block from the White House — further calls into question Trump’s campaign pledge that he will “drain the swamp” in Washington.

Lewandowski, who was fired in June but stayed in touch with Trump throughout the election, including occasionally traveling on his campaign plane, met on Monday with Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to discuss possible posts inside the administration. POLITICO reported on Tuesday that Lewandowski would be presented with options but that the job he wanted — senior adviser to the president — was not among them.

“I will always be President-elect Trump’s biggest supporter,” Lewandowski said in a statement. “After considering multiple opportunities within the administration, I informed him and his team I think I can best help him outside the formal structure of the government. I very much look forward to doing that every day.”

The website of the new government affairs and political consulting firm, called Avenue Strategies, advertised Lewandowski’s and Bennett’s close ties to Trump and even their office's physical proximity to the White House, at 1717 Pennsylvania Avenue (the same building that currently houses Trump's transition team).

Bennett told POLITICO the firm will work for any cause but not for foreign governments.

"A lot of people have reached out to us, corporate clients, trade associations, individuals — we’re not going to limit ourselves,” he said. “I think we’ll be providing strategic counsel most, explaining the White House to people. There are a tremendous number of people in Washington who don't know how the president-elect works."

Lewandowski and Bennett are joining a rush of Trump associates making moves to cash in on their ties to the new administration. Bill Smith, Vice President-elect Mike Pence's former chief of staff in Congress and the governor's office, recently started lobbying at the federal level through his friend Terry Allen's firm,Fidelis Government Relations. David Schwartz, a New York lawyer whose Gotham Government Relations & Communications has worked with Trump in the past, also announced plans to open a Washington office.Rudy Giuliani is also staying in the private sector, where he has built a lucrative consulting business.

The gold rush appears to erode Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp," but even the president-elect apparently is backing away from that slogan, according to adviser Newt Gingrich. "I'm told he now just disclaims that,” Gingrich said in an interview with NPR. “He now says it was cute, but he doesn't want to use it anymore.”

Lewandowski himself has railed against lobbyists and consultants to colleagues on the Trump campaign, at one point advocating the idea of a “blacklist” of consultants who opposed Trump and who he hinted would be barred from lucrative political work under Trump.

In an interview, Lewandowski said his firm didn't conflict with Trump's message, suggesting that "drain the swamp" referred to bureaucracy, not people profiting on government contacts. (In fact, all five points of Trump's plan to "drain the swamp" involved lobbying, and none involved bureaucracy.)

"The message he has talked about is bureaucracy that has ran amok is a problem," he said. "I think most companies would prefer to have a fast 'no' than a long 'maybe.' We are going to help companies get a faster answer."

Bennett and Lewandowski both said on Wednesday that Trump and his team were informed ahead of time of their plans to launch a firm.

"They all knew what we were doing," Bennett said. "The president knew, and all of his top people knew. It is what it is."

He added that the firm will begin taking clients in the new year, and pledged that he and Lewandowski will not be “your standard lobbyists.”

“We are going to help Trump advance his issues. If you're adamantly opposed to his policies, you shouldn't hire us,” Bennett said.

While Bennett said he has never been registered before as a lobbyist, Lewandowski was previously a registered lobbyist between 2005 and 2011, with clients including Passport Systems and Borrego Solar.

Lewandowski did not commit to registering as a lobbyist.

"I've never said I'm going to be a registered lobbyist," he said. "What we're going to do is make sure individuals who want to support Trump's agenda will have the opportunity to do that."

Bennett served as Ben Carson’s campaign manager and later as an informal senior adviser to Trump, although they had parted ways by late summer. He and Lewandowski first met two decades ago.

"Corey knows everyone in that world,” Bennett said. “I'm more closely tied to the first part."

People professing ties to the new guard are threatening to turn the Washington power structure upside down and supplant longtime K Street titans. But it remains to be seen how much business they will poach from established firms considering how much the influence economy revolves around Congress.

Lewandowski's statement made it sound like the firm's purpose was to help advance Trump's agenda: "It is necessary to have strong, organized outside groups who can help ensure the president-elect's agenda is achieved. My goal is to make sure the priorities of the Trump administration become a reality."

But the firm's website makes clear it's in business for its clients: "Our firm provides client-tailored strategy and guidance carefully designed to help our clients navigate our government."

Lewandowski had openly jockeyed for a top job in Trump’s White House, at one point telling people that he wanted to be chief of staff. But a number of Trump’s close allies objected to the prospect of hiring Lewandowski for an influential job, citing his penchant for bitter infighting and allegations of aggressive behavior.

His firing in June followed clashes with Reince Priebus, now Trump’s chief of staff, and Kushner, who continues to play an influential role in the transition.

Opening the firm was his “fallback plan,” said an associate who worked with Lewandowski during the campaign. “He needs to make money,” the associate said.

The associate argued that Lewandowski’s earning potential would have been much greater had he worked in the Trump White House for even a short time before starting the firm, though Trump’s ethics plan would have barred Lewandowski from lobbying for five years.

"If anybody thought I was the type of person who was going to become a government bureaucrat, they don't know me or what I've done in the past 20 years," Lewandowski said.

He also said, "I told them that I was going to start a small business today after they gave me an offer of several jobs."

Lewandowski, who lives in Windham, New Hampshire, with his wife and their four young children, started looking for a place in Washington a couple weeks after Election Day, according to the associate. Bennett said Lewandowski will move to Washington.

During the campaign, Lewandowski shopped a book proposal, at one point getting a $1.2-million offer from HarperCollins to write a book about his time running the campaign. But after Lewandowski’s June firing, the publisher backed away from the deal amid concerns about Lewandowski’s nondisclosure agreement, as POLITICO revealed.

Lewandowski did sign a deal reportedly in the six-figures to serve as an on-air political analyst for CNN. The network was criticized for hiring Lewandowski while he continued to receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in severance payments from the Trump campaign through September.

Lewandowski resigned from the network after Election Day, ostensibly to join the Trump administration. His decision to start a firm and not pursue employment in the government could free him to become a paid television commentator again.

Lewandowski follows other so-called Trump originals who have been passed over for administration jobs despite their loyalty to the president-elect. Giuliani and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie have also been frozen out. The resolution of Lewandowski’s role helps clear the way for more senior West Wing staff announcements to be announced soon.

"If you look at a value proposition, that is what I bring," Lewandowski said. "It is defined in one word: Loyalty."

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/corey-lewandowski-consulting-firm-232888

Lewandowski: I won't 'become a swamp creature'

Politico-Dec 22, 2016

Corey Lewandowski, Donald Trump's first campaign manager whose move to form an outside consulting firm has prompted accusations of ...

Corey *Lewandowski* Says 'Drain The Swamp' Is No Longer A Priority ...

Huffington Post-Dec 22, 2016

Corey *Lewandowski* To Open Political Consulting Firm

Opinion-Daily Caller-Dec 21, 2016

Onetime Trump Campaign Manager *Lewandowski* to Launch ...

Blog-Wall Street Journal (blog)-Dec 21, 2016

hmmn

http://indianz.com/News/2015/018790.asp

Lewandowski, the campaign manager for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, is tied to the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal that costs tribes tens of millions of dollars.

Lewandowski served as chief of staff to former Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio). Although he wasn't implicated in any crimes, he eagerly defended theonly member of Congress who convicted as part of the scandal.

“I had the privilege of spending 20 hours a day with Bob seven days a week for over three years,” Lewandowski wrote in a letter to the judge who handled the case against Ney, The Daily Beast reported. “In that time, I learned more about life, people, politics, friendships [sic] and the importance of family than I ever could have imagined. Bob served as a mentor to me, as a surrogate father, and as a best fiiend [sic] all in one.

Lewandowski had legal trouble of his own when he worked for Ney. He was charged with a misdemeanor for bringing an unloaded gun into a Capitol Hill office building and filed a lawsuit when he didn't get his firearm back, The New York Times reported.

Ney admitted accepting campaign contributions, trips, event tickets and other items of value from Abramoff in exchange for helping Abramoff's tribal clients. He took money from the Tigua Tribe of Texas and promised to pass legislation to reopen the tribe's casino.

Get the Story:

For His Unconventional Campaign, Donald Trump Looks to an Unorthodox Manager(The New York Times 9/4)

Donald Trump’s Campaign Chief Backed a Crooked Congressman, Called Him ‘My Surrogate Father’(The Daily Beast 8/3)

Seminole Tribe heads into mediation for Class III gaming compact(8/26)

Donald Trump supported then opposed casino in Connecticut (08/21)

History: When Donald Trump belittled the Ramapough Nation (08/13)

American Gaming Association stakes claim in presidential race (08/12)

Column: Donald Trump's first big slur came at tribe's expense (08/10)

Donald Trump not shy with invoking race when it comes to tribes (07/31

...

Throughout 2014, the three fed Trump strategy memos and political intelligence.“I listened to thousands of hours of talk radio, and he was getting reports from me,” Nunberg recalled. What those reports said was that the GOP base was frothing over a handful of issues including immigration, Obamacare, and Common Core. While Jeb Bush talked about crossing the border as an “act of love,” Trump was thinking about how high to build his wall. “We either have borders or we don’t,” Trump told the faithful who flocked to the annual CPAC conference in 2014.

Meanwhile, Trump used his wealth as a strategic tool to gather his own intelligence. When Citizens United president David Bossie or GOP chairman Reince Priebus called Trump for contributions, Trump used the conversations as opportunities to talk about 2016. “Reince called Trump thinking they were talking about donations, but Trump was asking him hard questions,” recalled Nunberg.From his conversations with Priebus, Trump learned that the 2016 field was likely to be crowded. “We knew it was going to be like a parliamentary election,” Nunberg said.

Which is how Trump’s scorched-earth strategy coalesced. To break out of the pack, he made what appears to be a deliberate decision to be provocative, even outrageous. “If I were totally presidential, I’d be one of the many people who are already out of the race,” Trump told me. And so, Trump openly stoked racial tensions and appealed to the latent misogyny of a base that thinks of Hillary as the world’s most horrible ballbuster.

It was also thanks to some information he had gathered that Trump was able to do something that no other Republican has done before: take on Fox News. An odd bit of coincidence had given him a card to play against Fox founder Roger Ailes. In 2014, I published a biography of Ailes, which upset the famously paranoid executive. Several months before it landed in stores, Ailes fired his longtime PR adviser Brian Lewis, accusing him of being a source. During Lewis’s severance negotiations, Lewis hired Judd Burstein, a powerhouse litigator, and claimed he had “bombs” that would destroy Ailes and Fox News. That’s when Trump got involved.

“When Roger was having problems, he didn’t call 97 people, he called me,” Trump said.Burstein, it turned out, had worked for Trump briefly in the ’90s, and Ailes asked Trump to mediate.Trump ran the negotiations out of his office at Trump Tower. “Roger had lawyers, very expensive lawyers, and they couldn’t do anything. I solved the problem.” Fox paid Lewis millions to go away quietly, and Trump, I’m told, learned everything Lewis had planned to leak. If Ailes ever truly went to war against Trump, Trump would have the arsenal to launch a retaliatory strike.

In January 2015, Trump hired Corey Lewandowski as campaign manager at the recommendation of Citizen United’s Bossie. On paper, Lewandowski’s credentials didn’t shine, but what he lacked in pedigree he made up for in raw ambition and ruthlessness.Lewandowski grew up poor in the mill town of Lowell, Massachusetts. As an undergraduate at the local UMass branch, he ran unsuccessfully for state representative. After graduating in 1995, he moved to Washington, D.C., got a master’s in politics at American University, and worked as a House aide on Capitol Hill. In 2001,he got a job with the Republican National Committee. But Lewandowski’s time as a member of the GOP Establishment was short-lived.

In 2002, he managed the reelection campaign of New Hampshire Republican senator Bob Smith, who was loathed by George W. Bush’s White House for briefly leaving the party in 1999 to launch an independent run for president. Against Smith, the Bushes backed John Sununu Jr., the son of George H. W. Bush’s former chief of staff. “I told Corey that the Establishment is coming after me, even the president of the United States,” Smith said, recalling his interview with Lewandowski for the job. “I said, ‘If that bothers you in any way, if you don’t want to touch this with a ten-foot pole because of your political career, I understand.’ He just said, ‘No problem.’ ”

Smith lost, and Lewandowski, as Smith had warned, found himself cast into the political wilderness. He settled in New Hampshire, got married, and raised four children while bouncing around a series of jobs, at one point selling real estate and serving as a police officer. In 2008, he landed a position with Americans for Prosperity, the Koch-brothers-backed free-market group. Lewandowski rose through the ranks at AFP to become national director of voter registration but stalled after a voter-recruitment project he spearheaded failed to yield results in 2014. Politico also reported that Lewandowski once threatened to “blow up” a colleague’s car and even called a female co-worker a “cunt.” One former Koch executive told me he was going to be fired. (Lewandowski denies this.)

Luckily, Trump came calling. He hired Lewandowski thinking that the 42-year-old operative had two crucial assets: his Koch connections and an intimate knowledge of New Hampshire’s quirky political terrain. The first assumption was wrong, but on the second, Lewandowski proved his worth. And he gained Trump’s trust by demonstrating he possessed the quality Trump values most: loyalty. “This campaign, above all other things, is about loyalty,” Lewandowski said. In what’s been said to be a unique arrangement for a campaign manager, Lewandowski travels everywhere with Trump, a role normally reserved for the campaign’s “body man.”

Trump turned to an equally unlikely candidate to handle communications. One day in January 2015, Hope Hicks got a call from Trump’s office asking her to come in. At the time, she was working on the 25th floor with Ivanka. “Mr. Trump looked at me and said, ‘I’m thinking about running for president, and you’re going to be my press secretary,’ ” Hicks said. “I think it’s ‘the year of the outsider.’ It helps to have people with outsider perspective.” Her mother told her she should write a book about this experience someday. “She said it would be like Primary Colors, and I told her, ‘You don’t even know.’ ”

Six months later, Lewandowski and Hicks worked into the early hours of the morning prepping for Trump’s campaign announcement in the lobby of Trump Tower. “It had to be perfect,” Lewandowski said. “We had to build the stage, make sure the flags hung perfectly; the eagles faced out; the carpet was red, and he would wear a red tie.” And hire plants. The campaign paid actors $50 each to wear Trump T-shirts and wave placards.

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http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/inside-the-donald-trump-presidential-campaign.html

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/trump-koch-brothers-231863

no links

Charles Koch once likened the contest between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton to being asked to choose cancer or a heart attack.

Now, Koch’s allies are helping to launch Trump’s administration, giving Charles and his brother David potential inroads with a president whose campaign they refused to support.

The president-elect, in filling out his transition team and administration, has drawn heavily from the vast network of donors and advocacy groups built by the billionaire industrialist brothers, who have sought to reshape American politics in their libertarian image.

From White House Counsel Don McGahn and transition team advisers Tom Pyle, Darin Selnick and Alan Cobb to PresidentialInaugural Committee member Diane Hendricksand transition-team executive committee members Rebekah Mercer and Anthony Scaramucci, Trump has surrounded himself with people tied to the Kochs.

“In creating the Koch network, I don’t think that we ever envisioned that we would besupplying staffers to this semi-free market, semi-populist president,” said Frayda Levin, a donor to the network who chairs the board of its main voter mobilization group, Americans for Prosperity. “But we’re happy that he’s picking people who have that free market background, particularly because on many issues, he is a blank slate, so anybody with expertise is in an amazing position to shape his agenda.”

And many more Koch-linked operatives are expected to join Trump’s nascent administration in the coming weeks, according to Trump transition-team sources. Names being considered include Koch Industries lobbyist Brian Henneberry and former company spokesman Matt Lloyd, as well as Daniel Garza, who runs a Koch-backed nonprofit called the LIBRE Initiative that courts Latinos, not to mention a handful of veterans of the Koch network’s advocacy groups who worked on the Trump campaign — from top Pence adviser Marc Short and former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowskito ex-campaign aides Stuart Jolly, Eli Miller, Scott Hagerstrom, Charles Munoz and Matt Ciepielowski.

Perhaps more surprisingly, despite some predictions of imminent policy clashes, there’s already informal communication between the Trump team and the Koch network, and both camps are signaling a willingness to work together on issues of mutual interest. David Koch even attended Trump’s election night victory party.

How long the comity lasts between Trump and the powerful Koch brothers could go far in determining whether Trump is able to take full advantage of the complete Republican control of Washington ushered in by his stunning victory over his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.

Things weren’t so agreeable during the campaign, when the Koch operation blocked Trump from directly accessing its data or its candidate forums, while the brothers condemned the first-time candidate for his combative tone, his calls for a Muslim immigration ban and his opposition to the sorts of trade policies that facilitate the brothers’ vision of unfettered global capitalism. At one point, Charles Koch compared the choice between Trump and Clinton to choosing between “cancer or heart attack,” and the Koch network did not spend any money directly boosting Trump or attacking Clinton.

Trump in turn boasted that the Kochs could not influence him because he didn’t “want their money or anything else from them.” And he blasted his rivals for the GOP nomination as puppets of the Kochs. A possible truce after Trump clinched the nomination broke down quickly, with the two sides clashing over who rejected a proposed meeting.

The Koch network, which some believed was discouraging its operatives from working with Trump’s campaign, is now seen by insiders as welcoming the chance to have allies on the inside of Trump’s administration.

At the same time, though, the network already is signaling that it intends to oppose aspects of Trump’s agenda that run counter to the brothers’ brand of small government, low-regulation conservatism, possibly including the incoming president’s $1 trillion infrastructure spending plan and his pledge to renegotiate trade deals.

Trump’s press office didn’t respond to requests for comment.

James Davis, a spokesman for Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, the central group in the Koch network, said, “We’ll try to find areas to work together to advance a free and open society and reverse the counterproductive policies that have created a two-tiered society.” He added: “We wish the new administration well.”

Setting aside the personal and policy conflicts, Trump’s willingness to draw from the Kochs’ operation makes sense in several ways.

Charles and David Koch over the past decade mobilized some of the biggest donors on the right to finance what amounts to a privatized political party — a network of donors and advocacy groups that became a leading employer of conservative operatives and policy professionals independent of the official GOP during a period when Republicans were mostly out of power in Washington.

The 1,200-employee network, which claims it will have spent about $750 million in the run-up to the 2016 election, would have been a logical pool from which any incoming Republican administration might have drawn as it endeavored to fill thousands of jobs.

But there’s an added appeal for Trump.

During the campaign, Trump railed against a Washington GOP establishment — embodied by the family of his vanquished primary foe Jeb Bush — from which the Kochs for years had worked to demonstrate their independence. And, after he won, President-elect Trump announced a sweeping lobbying ban that could be more of a deterrent for many conservative policy professionals than for Koch network staffers, who can work for years within the brothers’ network of think tanks and advocacy groups without directly lobbying federal or state officials.

“If you’re not going to pull from the Chamber of Commerce, Bush wing of the party, you don’t have that many places to go, so it makes sense to look to Koch world,” said a GOP operative who advised Trump team’s during the campaign and the transition. “Trump is looking for new blood that wasn’t part of the traditional establishment, and his presidency is already totally rewriting the Republican hierarchy. There were all these people who were locked out who are now getting their chance.”

Some former Koch staffers told POLITICO that the allure of joining Trump’s team was compounded by what they saw as the network’s retreat from the 2016 presidential race and its increased emphasis on advocating libertarian-infused policies such as decreasing incarceration and government subsidies.

“It’s less a result of Trump recruiting from the network as it is a result of the network retreating from the political field, leaving people looking for places they could go to have an impact,” said a former network staffer who worked on the Trump campaign.

In fact, many of the Koch veterans who played major roles in the Trump campaign had left the Koch network weeks or even months before joining forces with Trump, including Short, Lewandowski, Ciepielowski, Cobb, Jolly, Miller and Munoz — none of whom responded to requests for comment for this story.

Most notably, Short resigned his role as president of Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce in late February to join Marco Rubio’s rival presidential campaign, motivated partly by the network’s decision to sit out the presidential race.

Short landed in Trump’s orbit when the Republican nominee tapped as his running mate Indiana Gov. Mike Pence.A longtime ally of the Koch network, Pence had previously employed both Short and Lloyd, who later went to work for Koch Industries, the privately owned multinational oil and industrial conglomerate that is the source of the brothers’ fortunes, which are estimated at $43 billion each. Short is now helping Pence run the transition effort and is expected to fill a senior role in the vice president’s office, as is Lloyd, who is working as a deputy chief of staff in Pence’s gubernatorial office in Indiana and could not be reached for comment.

Other ex-Koch operatives, including Lewandowski, left the network on less-than-great terms, and jumped at the chance to join up early with Trump as he launched a campaign that few establishment operatives or donors took seriously.

Lewandowskihad worked for years at Americans for Prosperity, where he drew complaints from co-workers and directed an underperforming voter registration initiative. Still, he brought with him from AFP undeniable organizing experience. Under his leadership, the Trump campaign brought on a number of former AFP operatives, including Ciepielowski, Cobb, Jolly, Miller and Munoz — all of whom are up for posts in Trump’s administration or at the Republican National Committee, according to sources in Trump’s operation.

Cobb is currently working for the transition team, which also is getting advice from Selnick and Pyle.

Selnick is a senior adviser and consultant to Concerned Veterans for America, a nonprofit group funded by the Koch network that has pushed to allow veterans to access private health care — a goal that Trump embraced on the campaign trail.

“The Trump transition team’s collaboration with experts like Darin is a positive sign that the president-elect is prioritizing real VA reform,” said Dan Caldwell, a Concerned Veterans spokesman, referring to the Department of Veterans Affairs. “We are optimistic that President-elect Trump will now turn these ideas into tangible reforms, and we will support him in that effort.”

Pyle, who is leading the Trump transition team’s Energy Department landing team, is the president of a fossil fuel advocacy group called the American Energy Institute, which has received significant Koch network funding. But the group gradually has been cut out of the network, which may have given it leeway to officially endorse Trump over the summer, even as the Koch network was sitting out the race. Pyle declined to comment.

Additionally, some of the deepest pockets helping Trump have either contributed significant sums to the Koch network or attended its twice-a-year donor gatherings. They include transition team executive committee members Mercer, a hedge fund heiress, and Scaramucci, a Wall Street impresario; as well as self-made roofing billionaire Hendricks, a member of Trump’s Presidential Inaugural Committee. Family members of Betsy DeVos, whom Trump nominated last week as his secretary of education, have also been contributors to the network.

McGahn, who last week was named White House counsel, represented Freedom Partners and its affiliated super PAC — work he continued for a time even after signing on with the Trump campaign. He didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Garza, whose LIBRE Initiative is in good standing in the Koch network, told POLITICO that he is engaged in “some initial talks” about a possible role with the Trump team. But he suggested that, even if he joined the team, it wouldn’t mean that the Trump administration would get a free pass from his group. “We’ll encourage and advocate for freedom-oriented, pro-growth policy proposals and call out bad policy prescriptions regardless of party or personality.”

The first potential battle between the Kochs and the Trump administration — the one repeatedly mentioned by operatives in and out of the network — is Trump’s centerpiece infrastructure plan, which constitutes the sort of Big Government domestic spending for which the Kochs have long attacked Democratic and Republican politicians alike.

“It will be interesting to see whether AFP actually holds the line on something,” said one top Republican operative. “There really could be a Trump-Koch spat in Year One.”

Others are interpreting the Koch-Trump détente as evidence that the true allegiance of many Koch staffers was always to the Republican Party, despite the network’s attempts to cast its efforts as independent from the official GOP.

“Starting in 2006 when Republicans lost control of Congress and even more so in 2008, when we lost the White House, a lot of people just needed a paycheck to keep up with their mortgage, and the Koch network kept them afloat,” said one former network official. “That’s not the way Charles Koch saw it, but the people who were accepting the checks saw it that way. And now, there’s an opportunity for them to get off the Koch dole and get back in power.”

Then there’s the question of whether Trump will even want to collaborate.

Several operatives around the Koch network said there’s concern that the Trump administration will have no incentive to work with the network.

baaack

Lewandowski is also in consideration for the role of deputy chief of staff for planning, as is Katie Walsh, the RNC’s chief of staff. As for White House counsel, the list includes both Alan Garten, the general counsel at the Trump Organization, and Donald McGahn, his campaign attorney, as options.

Trump policy adviser Stephen Miller — an immigration hawk and former communications aide to Alabama GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions — is under consideration for a variety roles, including deputy chief of staff for policy, director of speechwriting, director of the domestic policy council and director of communications. Miller often warmed up for Trump during rallies in the Republican primary and embodies Trump’s message of limited immigration, free trade skepticism and distaste for the donor class.

Miller isn’t the only former Sessions aide being considered for a Trump administration. Rick Dearborn, Sen. Sessions’ chief of staff, is listed as the sole option for leading the office of legislative affairs.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2016/11/10/exclusive-here-is-a-list-of-people-donald-trump-is-considering-for-senior-white-house-jobs/#ixzz4PuBMVkuZ}:

Pro-Trump super PAC shutting down amid questions about ties to Trump campaign

By Matea Gold October 22, 2015

Trump: 'I don't need anybody's money' Embed Share Play Video1:33

During his presidential announcement in June, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump told a hypothetical story about taxing goods manufactured outside the United States, saying he is "really rich" and wouldn't kowtow to donors. (AP)

This post has been updated.

A super PAC with ties to Donald Trump's presidential campaign is shutting down in an effort to put an end to building questions about the closeness of the two operations, the group's lead consultant said Thursday.

After The Washington Post reported this week on multiple connections between Trump and the Make America Great Again PAC, Mike Ciletti, the Colorado-based operative running the group, said he had decided to close up shop.

"It's an issue that I have relationships with Mr. Trump's staff," he said in a phone interview. "I will eliminate the questions and shut down the super PAC." Ciletti's decision was first reported by Politico.

The Post reported this week that Trump's campaign has paid two firms connected to Ciletti, a longtime associate of Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. Ciletti also solicited a major GOP donor using contact information he suggested came from Trump's personal assistant, The Post reported.

Ciletti said Thursday that he did not receive the donor contact information "from anyone employed by the Trump Organization or the Trump campaign," but refused to say how he obtained it. He also said that any work he did for Trump came before the real estate mogul officially entered the race in mid-June.

The Colorado GOP operative declined to say whether Lewandowski played a role in setting up the super PAC or whether Trump had authorized the super PAC to use his Rolodex to reach potential contributors.

"How it came into existence isn't really relevant at this point," he said. He started the group, he said, because "it was an opportunity to have an important role in the presidential race." But, Ciletti added, "its impact will never be realized."

He said neither Trump nor anyone from his campaign had asked him to shut down the operation.

Ciletti said the group had a half a dozen consultants and had already begun spending money on voter data and media. Now, he said, Make America Great Again will fulfill its remaining obligations to vendors and refund any leftover donations. He declined to say how much the super PAC had raised, which does not have to be reported until January.

"My intent with the super PAC was to keep the focus on the candidate, where it should be," he said.

Make America Great Again. It's Donald Trump's campaign slogan. It's on the caps his campaign sells to admirers, and it's also the name of an ostensibly independent superPAC.

Or it was until this week, when the superPAC said it was going out of business. It ran aground on stories in the Washington Post, revealing connections linking the superPAC with Trump's campaign and his office.

The Post reported that Colorado political consultant Mike Ciletti has business ties to Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski,and also runs the superPAC. The paper also reported that Ciletta seemed to be soliciting superPAC contributions from Trump business contacts. Federal law bars candidates and their campaigns from soliciting big, unregulated contributions for superPACs.

Ciletti is also a principal in a company called Wizbang Solutions. The Trump campaign paid Wizbang $41,300 in the third quarter for printing, design and direct mail. Ciletti didn't respond to NPR's request for comment.

Trump's campaign finance lawyer, former Federal Election Commission chairman Donald McGahn, wrote to MAGA and eight other pro-Trump superPACs on Wednesday, telling them to stop using Trump's name and image. McGahn said Trump appreciates small, unsolicited contributions, but didn't want donors misled into "supporting an unauthorized effort, one which is subject to no oversight."

MAGA got a $100,000 contribution this summer from the mother-in-law of Trump's daughter Ivanka.

Another link between Trump and MAGA is its very name. Donald Trump filed in 2012 to trademark the phrase Make America Great Again for use with a political action committee. He first used it this past May – an essential step in the application process – and the Patent and Trademark Office registered it in July.

McGahn and the campaign didn't respond to questions about the name and usage rights.

npr

CNN's Corey Lewandowski fiasco is probably the worst conflict-of-interest problem in the history of cable news. In addition to still being paid money by Trump, Lewandowski announced Thursday that he was joining the Trump campaign on the trail. The situation is so bad that Lewandowski is now being confronted on the air. Stephen Colbert even brought it up with Anderson Cooper.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-and-lewandowski-an-unlikely-pair-of-kindred-spirits/2016/03/30/d82a58ca-f511-11e5-8b23-538270a1ca31_story.html

Politics

Who is Corey Lewandowski?

His rise — and his

relationship with Donald

Trump.

By Karen

Tumulty March 30

PALM BEACH, Fla. — Corey Lewandowski had never even worked on a presidential campaign, much less run one, when he was

summoned to a meeting on the 26th floor of Trump Tower in December 2014.

Donald Trump hired him on the spot.

“We hit it off, and if you don’t hit it off with your campaign manager, you have a problem,” Trump recalled last week in an

interview on the sundrenched patio of his MaraLago estate here.

The GOP frontrunner and the man he tapped to run his campaign are an unlikely pair. One is a blustery celebrity billionaire

whose hairstyle is a marvel of engineering and styling products; the other, an intense political operative who grew up in a bluecollar

Massachusetts mill town and sports a nofuss buzz cut.

But they are very much alike in their approach to the rough sport of politics. Both hit hard, play close to the lines — and

occasionally step over them, disregarding the foul calls.

“Donald Trump is not for the faint of heart, and neither is Corey Lewandowski,” said former congressman Robert W. Ney (ROhio),

for whom Lewandowski worked in the 1990s.

Now, Trump and his political kindred spirit are standing shoulder to shoulder after police in Jupiter, Fla., charged

Lewandowski on Tuesday with battery for allegedly grabbing and bruising a journalist who had tried to ask the candidate a

question.

Both men insist that Lewandowski is innocent, but footage from a security camera at a Trumpowned golf resort where the

March 8 incident happened shows the campaign manager yanking the arm of Michelle Fields, then a reporter for the

conservative website Breitbart News.

It is the latest in a series of controversies involving Lewandowski, who is known for having a combustible temper and an

eagerness to wade into the fray.

Eleven days after the altercation with Fields, another video showed the campaign manager mixing it up with protesters at a

Trump rally in Tucson — and apparently pulling one by the collar.

Trump professed that he was not bothered by his campaign manager’s behavior. “I give him credit for having spirit,” he said on

ABC’s “This Week.” “He wanted them to take down those horrible, profanitylaced signs.”

Nonetheless, in a 2 / hour interview over lunch last week, Lewandowski acknowledged that his instincts — and his loyalty to

a boss he always refers to as “Mr. Trump” — sometimes override his judgment.

His eyes welled up as he described the chaos at the Tucson rally. Campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks handed him a MaraLago

napkin to use as a handkerchief.

“When I see something that Ithink isn’t right, Ithink I have some kind of, for right or wrong, an obligation to fix it,”

Lewandowski said.“Ithought [the protesters’ disruption] was wrong.”

He added: “My job is not to do that. And I need to stay focused on my job.”

Another thing Lewandowski does not view as part of his job: restraining the candidate and his impulses.

“Let Trump Be Trump,” Lewandowski wrote on a whiteboard at headquarters the day the campaign launched last June.

“Mr. Trump fights back. He doesn’t fight back with one retort. He continuously reminds people,” Lewandowski said.

He listed like trophies the tags that Trump has hung around the necks of his opponents: “Jeb Bush has been labeled ‘low

energy,’ and he will be so for the rest of his life, because Mr. Trump labeled him that way. He’s a master brander. Marco Rubio

is going to be ‘Little Marco’ forever. Ted Cruz is ‘Lyin’ Ted,’ because that’s what people understand.”

Lewandowski, a product of parochial schools, acknowledged that his faith in his boss’s instincts was tested when Pope Francis

took a jab at Trump in February, declaring that someone who would build a wall on the border “is not Christian.”

“I’m Catholic, and my initial reaction is, we might not want to fight the pope,” Lewandowski recalled. Trump felt otherwise,

called Francis’s comments “disgraceful” and went on to win the South Carolina primary by 10 points two days later.

Meanwhile, Lewandowski’s own statements and inconsistencies have at times created problems for the campaign.

Last fall, The Washington Post reported ties between the campaign and a proTrump super PAC, which seemed to contradict

Trump’s claim that he had not sanctioned an outside group.

Lewandowski told a Post reporter that he did not know the Colorado consultant running the super PAC. But when The Post

discovered that the campaign was paying two firms connected to the consultant, Lewandowski — who prides himself on

overseeing every invoice — admitted that he did know him and that they had worked together in a previous job.

Early on, Lewandowski had set his sights on holding office himself. While in college at the University of Massachusetts at

Lowell, he ran in 1994 for state representative and lost to an opponent, Democrat Thomas A. Golden Jr., who had grown up on

the same street.

“I knew him as a different person. He was very personable, and very affable, actually,” said Golden, who still holds the seat. “All

of the stuff that is going on is not the gentleman I knew.”

Lewandowski then headed to Washington and began working on Capitol Hill while finishing his master’s degree at American

University.

But the campaign bug had bitten him, and in 1997, he assembled a spreadsheet of every House Republican who had won a

congressional seat with less than 55 percent of the vote. Lewandowski said he wrote them all, making the pitch: “I want to

manage your next campaign, because you need my help.”

Ney, an embattled congressman from a Democraticleaning Ohio district, took him up on the offer. When Lewandowski

interviewed for the job, the congressman was struck by the young man’s fraying shirt cuffs. “This is kind of a workingclass guy”

who would relate to the coal miners in his district, Ney recalled thinking.

But Ney also said Lewandowski left him with a warning: “I may tend to piss people off.”

Ney won reelection handily and asked Lewandowski to run his congressional office.

Lewandowski was more an implementer than an idea man, Ney said. “He could provide strategy, don’t get me wrong, but he

was more of a guy who carried it out.”

In 1999, Lewandowski was arrested for carrying a handgun, three magazines, a holster and several rounds of ammunition into

the Longworth House Office Building. They were mixed up by accident, he said, with his dirty clothes in an overnight bag. He

sued, unsuccessfully, to get the weapon back, along with $50,000 in punitive damages.

Lewandowski had moved on from Ney’s office by the time the congressman was convicted of corruption in the scandal

surrounding lobbyist Jack Abramoff. But he loyally petitioned the judge for leniency in Ney’s sentencing.

“I had the privilege of spending 20 hours a day with Bob seven days a week for over three years. In that time, Ilearned more

about life, people, politics, friendships and the importance of family than I ever could have imagined,” Lewandowski wrote in

the letter dated Jan. 1, 2007. “Bob served as a mentor to me, as a surrogate father, and as a best friend all in one.”

His own career has taken a few detours. A stint at a public relations firm felt confining, so he applied to the New Hampshire

police academy, from which he graduated in 2006. For 3 / years, Lewandowski did seasonal work as a marine patrol officer.

But law enforcement, he said, was hard to manage against the demands of a family that now includes four children, ages 5 to 9.

His marriage is a love story with a tragic twist. Lewandowski met Alison Hardy when he was in ninth grade and she was in

eighth; they dated in high school and college, he said, before going their separate ways.

In 1998, she wed one of Lewandowski’s best friends, Brian Kinney. On Sept. 11, 2001, Kinney boarded United Airlines Flight

175 at Boston’s Logan International Airport to meet a client in California. Terrorists steered it into the South Tower of the

World Trade Center.

Drawn back together by grief, Lewandowski married Alison four years later. Every Memorial Day, he said, the couple and their

kids visit Kinney’s grave.

In New Hampshire, Lewandowski developed a reputation as an irritant to the Republican establishment.

“He was grudgingly respected by other Republican actors,” said Fergus Cullen, a former state GOP chairman. “He’s not

untalented, and he knows more than enough to be dangerous — especially if the purpose is to blow something up.”

Former senator Robert C. Smith of New Hampshire, for instance, had become an outcast in his own party, having bolted from

the GOP to make a thirdparty run for president in 2000 and then returned to it to run for reelection in 2002. When

Lewandowski interviewed for the job of managing what turned out to be a hopeless primary campaign, Smith told him, “If

you’re looking for a career in the Republican Party, this may not be the venue.”

Smith recalled that Lewandowski replied, “I wear that as a badge of honor.”

“Supporting Smith was sort of a blowupthebridgesandburntheboats decision, professionally,” said Cullen, the former

party chairman.

During the campaign, Lewandowski treated it as such, at one point making a nonetooveiled suggestion that Smith’s opponent,

thenRep. John E. Sununu, might have had divided loyalties when it came to fighting terrorism.

After Sununu went to a fundraiser attended by the president of the AmericanArab AntiDiscrimination Committee,

Lewandowski said of Sununu, who is of Lebanese descent, “If that is the type of person Congressman Sununu feels should be

contributing to his campaign, then Ithink that may call into question his views on terrorism.”

Campaign 2016

More controversy ensued when Lewandowski ran Americans for Prosperity’s regional operation and then its national voter

registration effort.

In 2014, the North Carolina Board of Elections opened an investigation into allegations that Lewandowski’s operation had sent

“misleading, incorrect and confusing voter registration mailers.” Americans for Prosperity acknowledged errors in the voter

registration material it sent to voters in North Carolina but said that they were a mistake and not an attempt to confuse voters.

But Lewandowski would soon be headed toward Trump Tower.

In April 2014, he was introduced to Trump, briefly and for the first time, at an AFP event in New Hampshire. In December, he

got a call from David Bossie, conservative activist and head of the group Citizens United, suggesting he meet with the real

estate mogul.

“Corey’s an incredibly strong person, and an incredibly strong personality,” Bossie said. “I did think that both of them were

going to suit each other perfectly.”

Lewandowski was spellbound from the outset. “He talks about all the things that he wants to do, and I’m listening, and he’s

telling me about what his vision is to change the country, and I’m instantly — just enamored, would be the word,” he said.

For the first few months, however, the biggest question was whether Trump would really do it.

“It was a 5050 chance. We were thinking about it. A 25 percent chance even. Because I give up a lot when I run. I gave up a life.

I gave up this,” Trump recalled last week in the interview, gesturing to the grandeur around him.

Almost as if on cue, Trump’s wife, Melania, walked by in a bathrobe and giant sunglasses, headed for the spa. Even at home,

Trump was wearing his red cap emblazoned with “Make America Great Again” — and carrying a stack of news clips about

himself.

“I don’t think anybody expected this, exactly,” Trump said. “It’s been an amazing period of time, and we’ve done really well, and

Corey’s done a terrific job. He’s a great professional.”

And then Trump added, wryly: “Now if I gave him a good candidate, he’d do even better, right?”

Alice Crites, Matea Gold, Jenna Johnson and Tom Hamburger contributed to this report.

Karen Tumulty is a national political correspondent for The Washington Post.

This is getting outrageous: first we learned that CNN aired five times more fossil fuel ads than they did climate reporting during the month it was reported that 2015 was the hottest year on record. Now we've learned that former Donald Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski is still being paid by the candidate while also being paid by CNN to report on-air about major issues like climate change, clean energy and the environment in the campaign.*

It's clear CNN has a major ethics problem, and one way they can get ahead of this is by refusing fossil fuel money and covering the climate crisis. I know we've asked before, but in light of this new information, will you sign on to our petition telling CNN to drop polluter money and #ReportOnClimate?

Drew and the clean up the airwaves crew at Environmental Action

* Matt Gertz, CNN’s Corey Lewandowski Is Still Being Paid By Donald Trump, Media Matters for America, July 13, 2016

PS - Anthony's original email is below in case you want more background on CNN's previous climate reporting failures.

Padraic,

Year after year, the realities of climate disruption are further revealed as our planet continues to break temperature records and climate impacts from wild fires to super storms become more frequent. Earlier this year, it was reported that 2015 was the hottest year on record and included the hottest and wettest month of December since record keeping began.1 The 2015 announcement confirmed the increasing trend of warmer temperatures, since it displaced 2014 as the hottest year on record, and just a few weeks later it was reported that 2016 had the warmest February in recorded history.2

But just while scientists were telling us that the world was burning up, CNN chose to give more air time to Big Oil than climate change. A study by Media Matters for America revealed that during the week we learned of 2015's record breaking temperature, CNN aired five times more oil industry adverting than climate coverage.3 This variety of corporate journalism fuels an iniquitous transmission of urgency and contributes to climate denial. Maybe that's why while over 70 percent of Americans believe climate change is real, only 27 percent of respondents in a recent poll understand that human activity is the main cause, and the need for vast changes in our energy and economic systems.4

That's why we're teaming up with an amazing coalition of organizations including our friends at Oil Change International, Climate Truth, Climate Hawks Vote, Honor the Earth, Daily Kos, Color of Change and others to deliver a simple message to CNN: #ReportOnClimate. Click here to help us send that message to the Cable "News" Network so that we can start getting climate change the coverage it requires.

Author Rob Nixon has referred to climate change as a form of "slow violence" stating, "The insidious workings of slow violence derive from the unequal attention given to spectacular and unspectacular time. In an age that venerates instant spectacle, slow violence is deficient in the recognizable special effects that fill movie theaters and boost ratings on TV." That's a good way to describe CNN's behavior and the fact that they are choosing Big Oil's crude cash over responsible journalism proves it.

We can't #ActOnClimate if our news sources don't #ReportOnClimate. And we certainly can't expect people to know that climate change impacts Latino, African American and Native American communities "First and Worst." Because if climate change is slow violence, it can also be characterized as slow racism or bigotry and the longer news outlets like CNN refuse to report this reality, the longer it will persist.

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2015/06/the-dark-money-man-behind-the-donald/

Real estate mogul Donald Trump has toyed around with running for president many times before, only to decide later on that he wouldn’t do so. Earlier this week, however, “The Donald” — a man who constantly flaunts his wealth and in recent years made a habit out of questioning the validity of President Barack Obama’s birth certificate — finally took the plunge and announced that he will indeed be running for president this time around.

While Trump is not an unfamiliar figure to many political, media and finance observers — the man behind Trump’s presidential operation has not garnered nearly as much coverage. That would be Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s campaign manager, who has been a senior political adviser at The Trump Organization since January, according to his LinkedIn page.

Prior to his stint with Trump, however, Lewandowski served as New Hampshire state director, followed by east coast regional director, and subsequently as national director of voter registration at the Koch brothers-backed Americans for Prosperity (AFP) — among the biggest of the dark money groups that do not disclose their donors.

For the 2008 election cycle (and the year in which Lewandowski arrived at AFP), the group spent $462,291 on electioneering communications in federal races. That number increased to over $1.3 million for the 2010 cycle. Lewandowski did have success during that cycle, as both New Hampshire Democrats Ann Mclane Kusterand Carol Shea-Porter lost their respective races (though Kuster was victorious in 2012, and Shea-Porter has experienced alternating victories and defeats since 2008).

AFP’s spending ballooned in the 2012 cycle to almost $37 million — almost all of it used for a vain effort to keep President Obama from being re-elected.

In the 2014 cycle, when Lewandowski became director of voter registration and AFP’s election spending totaled nearly $2.8 million, the group had numeroussuccesses — with election victories for all races in which the organization spent six figure amounts, including the defeats of Democratic Sens. Mary Landrieu (La.), Mark Pryor (Ark.) and Mark Begich (Alaska).

During many of Lewandowski’s years at AFP, he also served as director of public affairs at Schwartz Communications starting in 2004 (known as Schwartz MSL Group since being acquired by Publicis Groupe in 2011), a firm currently specializing in the technology, healthcare and energy sectors. A frequent client of Lewandowski’s was Passport Systems Inc. — a technology company specializing in nuclear resonance fluorescence technology.

Correction, 6/18: Due to an editing error, this post originally said AFP made independent expenditures in 2008. The money was actually used for electioneering communications.

Categories: Presidential Presidential Election

Tags: 2016 election, alex lazar, Americans for Prosperity, Ann Mclane Kuster, Barack Obama, Carol Shea-Porter, Charles Koch, corey lewandowski, David Koch, Donald Trump, linkedin, Mark Begich, Mark Pryor, Mary Landrieu, New Hampshire, passport systems inc, president 2016, publicis groupe, schwartz msl group, WH16

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corey_Lewandowski

wiki

Corey Lewandowski (born September 18, 1973)^[1] is an American political operative. He is a political commentator atCNN and the former campaign manager of businessman Donald Trump's 2016 campaign for President of the United States from January 2015 to June 2016.^{[2][3][4][5][6][7][8]}

Prior to joining Trump's campaign, Lewandowski worked for several campaigns and was a lobbyist. He worked forAmericans for Prosperity in a variety of roles, and led the group's national voter-registration effort for 11 months.^[5]Lewandowski also had previously run unsuccessfully for office himself twice, once in Massachusetts and once in New Hampshire.

Early life and education

The grandson of a union printer, Lewandowski grew up in the 1980s in Lowell, Massachusetts, playing pond hockey in the winters.^[2] He graduated from Lowell Catholic High School in 1991.^[9] In 1995 he graduated from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell with a B.A. in political science.^[10]

Political career

1994 State House campaign

In 1994, while an undergraduate student, Lewandowski ran for a seat in the Massachusetts House of Representatives as a write-in candidate in the Republican primary. He received 143 votes, falling short of the 150 votes needed to win the party's nomination for the ballot. In the November general election, the seat was won by Thomas A. Golden Jr., a Democrat.^[11] Golden received 7,157 votes, while Lewandowski received 7 votes.^[11][12]

Early work

After graduating from college, Lewandowski worked as an aide for Republican Massachusetts Congressman Peter G. Torkildsen^[13] from January 1996 to January 1997 while a graduate student at American University; he was awarded a master's degree in political science in 1997.^[2] As a student in 1997, Lewandowski interned for Massachusetts State Senator Steven C. Panagiotakos, a Democrat.^[9]

From December 1997 to February 2001, Lewandowski worked as an administrative assistant for Ohio Republican Bob Ney, a U.S. Congressman.^[14] In 2007, before Ney was sentenced on federal corruption charges arising from the Abramoff scandal, Lewandowski wrote a letter to the presiding judge, saying that Ney was a mentor and "surrogate father" to him and asking for leniency in sentencing.^[14][15]

In 1999, while working for Ney, Lewandowski brought a loaded handgun in a laundry bag into the Longworth House Office Building.^[16][17] He was arrested and charged with a misdemeanor for bringing a handgun and ammunition into a secure federal building.^[17] Lewandowski said it was all an accident, saying that he forgot the gun was in the bag when he put the laundry in it.^[17] The charges eventually were dismissed; Lewandowski then unsuccessfully fought for four years to get the gun back, filing lawsuits in multiple District of Columbia and federal courts.^[18]

After leaving Ney's office, Lewandowski worked most of 2001 for the Republican National Committee, as the Northeast legislative political director.^[2]

Smith campaign

Lewandowski was the campaign manager for the 2002 re-election campaign of U.S. Senator Robert C. Smith of New Hampshire.^[19] Smith was challenged in the Republican Party by John E. Sununu.^[20]

Speaking about Sununu, Lewandowski said, "The people of New Hampshire want someone in the U.S. Senate with clear, concise views onterrorism. They'll judge a congressman based on the people he associates with, his voting record and his campaign contributions."^[20] Lewandowski told a reporter he would be interested to know whether anyone associated with Hamas had attended a fundraising event for Sununu.^[21] (Lewandowski cited contributions made by Washington lawyer George Salem to Sununu; Salem, who chaired Arab Americans for Bush-Cheney during the 2000 Bush/Cheney campaign, was the attorney for the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, which had its assets frozen by the U.S. government in 2001 on suspicion of ties to Hamas.)^[20] Lewandowski's comments were interpreted as publicly suggesting that Sununu, who is of Lebanese descent, had divided loyalties in fighting terrorism.^[16]^

Former New Hampshire Governor Steve Merrill said, "The politics of ethnic slurs and bigotry have no place in any campaign."^[20] Former New Hampshire Senator Warren Rudman said, "Bob Smith is a better human being than that, and he ought to tell his people to watch themselves."^[20] President George W. Bush's spokesperson said, "The White House called Senator Smith's office. ... Remarks that paint Arab Americans with a broad brush aren't helpful. We need to reassure Arab Americans that this war is about al-Qaida, not Islam. Mr. Salem is a good friend of the president's and an honorable man."^[20]

Smith's press secretary said Lewandowski was "merely responding to media inquiries" about Salem's fund raising and that "Senator Smith has repeatedly said this campaign is about records—Congressman Sununu's record and Senator Smith's record. Someone's ethnic background has absolutely nothing to do with this election."^[20]

Sununu defeated Smith in the Republican primary, winning 53% of the vote to Smith's 45%.^[22][23] Smith was the first sitting U.S. senator in ten years to lose a primary campaign.^[24]

Schwartz MSL, Americans for Prosperity, and other work

From 2003 to 2004, Lewandowski was executive director of the New England Seafood Producers Association.^[25][26]

From 2004 to 2012, Lewandowski worked for Schwartz MSL, a strategic communication and engagement firm where, according to his LinkedIn profile, he served as director of public affairs from September 2004 until July 2012. Lewandowski was registered as a lobbyist for Schwartz MSL on behalf of Passport Systems in 2011, lobbying on homeland security issues.^[26] Schwartz represented Passport Systems for six years, and the firm paid Schwartz more than $350,000 over that period. Between 2008 and 2011, Passport Systems secured more than $23.9 million in federal funds. Lewandowski represented two other clients: health care software company Logical Images and solar-power company Borrego Solar.^[27]

Lewandowski graduated from the New Hampshire police academy in 2006^[16] and worked from 2006 to 2010 as a seasonal marine patrol officer trainee^[27] with the New Hampshire State Police.^[24][28]

In 2008, Lewandowski began working for Americans for Prosperity, a Koch brothers-backed advocacy group.^[26][27] Lewandowski's period working for Americans for Prosperity overlapped with his tenure as a marine patrol officer trainee and registered federal lobbyist.^[27] Lewandowski was Americans for Prosperity's New Hampshire director,^[27][29] and East Coast regional director before becoming the national director of voter registration,a position he held until January 2015.^[5][26] Lewandowski's term at Americans for Prosperity was described by Politico as "tumultuous" and marked by "fiery confrontations" with other AFP employees.^[24]^

While working for Americans for Prosperity, Lewandowski criticized the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a cap-and-trade system for state utilities, saying "it does nothing to reduce greenhouse gases because jobs and businesses just move to other states."^[29] At the same time, Lewandowski lobbied for Borrego Solar, helping to secure a $500,000 earmark in the 2010 Energy and Water Appropriations Act that benefited a solar electricity project in Lancaster, Massachusetts, that Borrego was involved in. Newsweek noted, "Though he had succeeded as a pro-solar lobbyist looking for government assistance, at AFP he waged a campaign against government programs that supported green energy."^[27]

In 2012, while still working for Americans for Prosperity, Lewandowski unsuccessfully ran for town treasurer of Windham, New Hampshire. NPR reported that during the campaign, Lewandowski "upended the town's politics, using public records laws to probe local government and launching robocalls targeted at voters to stoke outrage over a visit to the town by President Obama."^[15] Robert Skinner defeated Lewandowski, receiving 1,941 votes to Lewandowski's 714.^[30]

Trump 2016 presidential campaign

Lewandowski first met Trump in April 2014 at a political event in New Hampshire.^[3][16] In January 2015, six months before Trump announced his campaign, Lewandowski was invited to Trump Tower, where he accepted an offer from Trump to become campaign manager.^[9] His salary was $20,000 per month.^[31]

When Lewandowski was hired, Trump's political staff consisted of three people: his lawyer Michael D. Cohen, veteran operative Roger Stone, and aide Sam Nunberg.^[32] In April 2016, another veteran GOP operative, Paul Manafort, was hired; the following month Manafort was named “campaign chairman.”^[33] Nunberg was fired in early August 2015;^[34] he believes that it was Lewandowski and campaign press secretary Hope Hicks who asked Trump for his ouster.^[35] Stone left the campaign a week later.^[36]^

Lewandowski's motto as Trump's campaign manager was "Let Trump be Trump"; those words appeared on his office white board.^[37] Trump said of Lewandowski, "He leaves me alone, but he knows when to make his presence felt."^[23]

After a win in New Hampshire on February 9, 2016, Trump acknowledged Lewandowski's role in the win by praising his ground game.^[15]

^FIRED?

Alleged physical incidents

On March 10, 2016, Michelle Fields, a reporter for Breitbart News, wrote that, after she asked Donald Trump a question when she approached him after a March 8, 2016, press conference in Jupiter, Florida, she was forcefully grabbed by Lewandowski.^{[38][39][40][41]} On March 29, 2016, Lewandowski was charged with one count ofsimple battery by the Jupiter Police Department and surrendered himself to the authorities, after releasing a statement maintaining his innocence.^[42][43][44]

On April 14, Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg filed court documents saying that his office would not prosecute Lewandowski. Prosecutors determined that "there was probable cause to make an arrest" and "the facts support the allegation that Mr. Lewandowski did grab Ms. Fields' arm against her will" but that "the evidence cannot prove all legally required elements of the crime alleged and is insufficient to support a criminal prosecution."^[45]

On March 19, 2016, during a campaign event in Tucson, Arizona, Lewandowski drew criticism for his handling of a protester. A video shows Lewandowski grabbing the protester by the collar.^[46][47][48] The campaign and Lewandowski denied the allegation.^[49][50]

Departure

In April 2016, Lewandowski's influence within the Trump campaign was reported to be waning.^[51][52]

On June 20, 2016, Trump's campaign announced that it was parting ways with Lewandowski; according to reports, Lewandowski was fired, although Mr. Trump’s son Donald Jr. described the split as "amicable."^[53][54] The move occurred after Lewandowski clashed with Trump chief strategist and campaign chairman Paul Manafort in an internal "power struggle."^[53][54] After Lewandowski's departure, Manafort (who had been brought on the campaign in March 2016) became the de facto campaign manager.^[54][55]^

CNN commentator

Days after Lewandowski left the Trump campaign, he was hired the cable news network CNN as a political commentator.^[56] Lewandowski remains subject to a non-disclosure agreement that he signed with Trump, forbidding him "from making disparaging or revealing remarks about the candidate."^[57] Lewandowski receives severance pay from the Trump campaign while working for CNN. In July 2016, after the group Media Matters for America noted that CNN had not disclosed this to viewers, CNN hosts began making on-air disclosures of the severance payments before Lewandowski's appearances.^[58]

In July 2016, Lewandowski defended Trump after the presidential candidate received criticism after tweeting an graphic that labeled Hillary Clinton the "most corrupt candidate" alongside a pile of cash and a six-pointed star evoking the Star of David. (The image originated on an Internet message board featuring antisemitic conspiracy theories). During an appearance on CNN's State of the Union with Brianna Keilar, Lewandowski denied allegations of antisemitism and said that criticism of the tweet was "political correctness run amok."^[59][60]

In an August 2016 appearance on CNN, Lewandowski espoused the **"birther"** conspiracy theory, incorrectly suggesting that President Barack Obama was not a natural-born-citizen of the United States.^[57][61] Lewandowski's statement was criticized by the other panelists, Angela Rye and Bakari Sellers.^[57][61]

Personal life

Lewandowski met his future wife Alison when he was in ninth grade and she was in eighth. She married one of his best friends in 1998, but he died on United Airlines Flight 175 [2nd plane to hit WTC, 2; vs barb olson flt 77 pentagon] during the September 11, 2001 attacks. She married Lewandowski four years later.^[16] Lewandowski is a father of four children.^[24]

Lewandowski is Roman Catholic.^[16] He lives in Windham, New Hampshire.^[10]

Electoral history

1994

Massachusetts House of Representatives, 15th Middlesex, General Election, 1994^[12]	Massachusetts House of Representatives, 15th Middlesex, General Election, 1994^[12]	Massachusetts House of Representatives, 15th Middlesex, General Election, 1994^[12]	Massachusetts House of Representatives, 15th Middlesex, General Election, 1994^[12]	Massachusetts House of Representatives, 15th Middlesex, General Election, 1994^[12]
Party	Candidate	Votes	%	%
	Democratic	Thomas A. Golden Jr	7,157	99.9
	Republican	Corey Lewandowski (write-in)	7	0.1

2012

Town Treasurer, Windham, Election, 2012^[30]	Town Treasurer, Windham, Election, 2012^[30]	Town Treasurer, Windham, Election, 2012^[30]	Town Treasurer, Windham, Election, 2012^[30]	Town Treasurer, Windham, Election, 2012^[30]
Party	Candidate	Votes	%	%
	Non-partisan	Robert Skinner	1,941	73
	Non-partisan	Corey Lewandowski	714	27

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^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corey_Lewandowski#cite_ref-Babington_20-1) ^c(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corey_Lewandowski#cite_ref-Babington_20-2) ^d(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corey_Lewandowski#cite_ref-Babington_20-3) ^e(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corey_Lewandowski#cite_ref-Babington_20-4) ^f(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corey_Lewandowski#cite_ref-Babington_20-5) ^g(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corey_Lewandowski#cite_ref-Babington_20-6) Babington, Charles. "Smith Takes Swipe at Sununu, White House Swipes Back". The Washington Post (December 23, 2001).
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Fahey, Tom. "White House gets involved in Smith-Sununu election discord". The New Hampshire Union Leader. December 15, 2001.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ "Federal Elections 2002 U.S. Senate Results". Federal Election Commission. 2002.
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corey_Lewandowski#cite_ref-UnorthodoxManager_23-1) Haberman, Maggie (September 4, 2015). "For His Unconventional Campaign, Donald Trump Looks to an Unorthodox Manager". The New York Times.
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corey_Lewandowski#cite_ref-PoliticoConcerns_24-1) ^c(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corey_Lewandowski#cite_ref-PoliticoConcerns_24-2) ^d(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corey_Lewandowski#cite_ref-PoliticoConcerns_24-3) Vogel, Kenneth; Schreckinger, Ben; Gold, Hadas (March 15, 2016). "Trump campaign manager's behavior prompted staff concerns". Politico. RetrievedMarch 30, 2016.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ "Can Corey Lewandowski save New England's seafood industry?". Intrafish. July 16, 2003.
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corey_Lewandowski#cite_ref-JasonDick_26-1) ^c(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corey_Lewandowski#cite_ref-JasonDick_26-2) ^d(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corey_Lewandowski#cite_ref-JasonDick_26-3) Dick, Jason (March 30, 2016). "Who Is Corey Lewandowski? Trump campaign manager, seasoned political operative". CQ-Roll Call.
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corey_Lewandowski#cite_ref-Choma_27-1) ^c(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corey_Lewandowski#cite_ref-Choma_27-2) ^d(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corey_Lewandowski#cite_ref-Choma_27-3) ^e(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corey_Lewandowski#cite_ref-Choma_27-4) ^f(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corey_Lewandowski#cite_ref-Choma_27-5) Choma, Russ (March 30, 2016). "Donald Trump Campaign Manager's Diametric Double Life as a Solar Power Lobbyist". Newsweek.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Stevenson, Seth. "A Week on the Trail With the "Disgusting Reporters" Covering Donald Trump". Slate. Retrieved March 30, 2016.
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corey_Lewandowski#cite_ref-freer_29-1) "How to Live Freer in New Hampshire". Wall Street Journal. February 25, 2011.
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corey_Lewandowski#cite_ref-2012p_30-1) "Windham Town Results". Eagle-Tribune (North Andover, Massachusetts). March 5, 2012.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Ballhaus, Rebecca; Haddon, Heather (July 17, 2015). "One Sign of Inflation: Salaries for Some Presidential Campaigns". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved June 20, 2016.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Sherman, Gabriel (August 6, 2015). "The Trump Campaign Has Descended Into Civil War - Even Ivanka Has Gotten Involved". New York. Retrieved June 20, 2016.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Kirkland, Allegra (June 20, 2016). "How Did Corey Lewandowski Last This Long?". TPM. Retrieved June 20, 2016.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Diamond, Jeremy. "Trump campaign fires staffer over Facebook posts". CNN. Retrieved June 20, 2016.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Nuzzi, Olivia (June 20, 2016). "The Mystifying Triumph of Hope Hicks, Donald Trump's Right-Hand Woman". GQ. Retrieved June 21, 2016.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Caputo, Marc (August 8, 2015). "Sources: Roger Stone quit, wasn't fired by Trump in campaign shakeup". Politico. Retrieved June 20, 2016.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ "Meet the Man Who Helps Trump Be Trump". Wall Street Journal. February 10, 2016.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ "Michelle Fields: In Her Own Words". Breitbart. Retrieved March 31, 2016.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ "Inside Trump's inner circle, his staffers are willing to fight for him. Literally.". The Washington Post. March 10, 2016.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ "Exclusive: Transcript of female Breitbart reporter allegedly being roughed up by Trump campaign manager". Politico. March 10, 2016.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ "Video Shows Trump Campaign Manager Corey Lewandowski Grabbing Reporter Michelle Fields". Daily Beast. March 11, 2016.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ "Trump campaign manager Lewandowski charged with battery". CNBC. March 29, 2016. Retrieved March 29, 2016.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ "Trump aide charged with misdemeanor battery vs. ex-Breitbart reporter". Palm Beach Post. March 29, 2016.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Tesfaye, Sophia (March 29, 2016). "Busted! Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski officially charged with assaulting ex-Breitbart staffer". Salon. Retrieved March 29, 2016.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Anderson, Curt (April 14, 2015). "Prosecutor won't pursue battery charge against Trump aide". Associated Press. Archived from the original on April 14, 2016. Retrieved April 14, 2016.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Revesz, Rachael (March 21, 2016). "Donald Trump's campaigner was filmed grabbing a protester by the collar". The Independent. UK. Archived from the original on April 3, 2016. Retrieved March 21, 2016.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Corasaniti, Nick. "Trump faults protesters over violence, not their assailants". The New York Times. Archived from the original on May 10, 2016. Retrieved May 10,2016.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Vitali, Ali (March 20, 2016). "Trump Campaign Denies That Video Shows Lewandowski Grabbing Protester". NBC News. Archived from the original on March 20, 2016. Retrieved March 21, 2016.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Jacobs, Ben (March 20, 2016). "Trump campaign denies manager grabbed protester at Arizona rally". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved March 21,2016.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ "Trump Campaign Denies Campaign Manager Grabbed Protester". ABC News. March 21, 2016. Retrieved March 21, 2016.
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Ben Schreckinger & Kenneth P. Vogel,Trump campaign shrinks Lewandowski's role: Despite the billionaire's staunch defense, his embattled campaign manager is losing clout, Politico (April 2, 2016).
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Ben Jacobs, Trump's campaign manager Corey Lewandowski will not face battery charges, Guardian (April 14, 2016) ("While Trump has stood by Lewandowski through the controversy, the political operative's influence has been waning in recent weeks. This has not been connected to allegations of violence but instead to internal maneuverings as the Trump campaign tries to build an operation, led by veteran Republican operative Paul Manafort, capable of wooing delegates in a contested convention.").
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corey_Lewandowski#cite_ref-NYTSplits_53-1) Maggie Haberman, Donald Trump Fires Corey Lewandowski, His Campaign Manager, New York Times (June 20, 2016).
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corey_Lewandowski#cite_ref-FoxSplits_54-1) ^c(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corey_Lewandowski#cite_ref-FoxSplits_54-2) Trump splits with campaign manager Lewandowski, Fox News (June 20, 2016).
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Jonathan Martin, Trump Campaign Denounces John Kasich in Ohio, Where Convention Begins, New York Times (July 18, 2016).
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Stelter, Brian (June 23, 2016). "CNN hires Corey Lewandowski as political commentator". CNN. Archived from the original on June 24, 2016. RetrievedJune 30, 2016.
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corey_Lewandowski#cite_ref-CorasanitiBirther_57-1) ^c(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corey_Lewandowski#cite_ref-CorasanitiBirther_57-2) Nick Corasaniti, Corey Lewandowski, Former Trump Campaign Manager, Dives Back Into 'Birtherism', New York Times (August 3, 2016).
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ David Bauder, CNN revealing Lewandowski's severance payments, Associated Press (July 13, 2016).
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Jeremy Diamond, Trump campaign defends tweet as a 'basic star' in wake of criticism, CNN (July 4, 2016).
:{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Robillard, Kevin (3 July 2016). "Politico: Lewandowski blames Star of David blowup on 'political correctness:{':(style="padding-right:0.2em"):}:". Politico. Retrieved 4 July 2016.
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corey_Lewandowski#cite_ref-GassBirther_61-1) Nick Gass, CNN contributor Corey Lewandowski: Was Obama a citizen when he went to Harvard?, Politico (August 3, 2016).

External links

Appearances on C-SPAN

Categories:

corey lewandowski bak

Trump Super PAC rebrands: 'Make America Great Again, Again!'

Lewandowski out at 'Trump world' after allegations he 'stalked' and 'inappropriately touched' donor

Corey Lewandowski unravels as Democratic lawyer grills him over his lies and actions in the Mueller report

Contents

History

Clients

Recognition

*Lewandowski*: I won't 'become a swamp creature'

Early life and education

Political career

1994 State House campaign

Early work

Smith campaign

Schwartz MSL, Americans for Prosperity, and other work

Trump 2016 presidential campaign

Alleged physical incidents

Departure

CNN commentator

Personal life

Electoral history

1994

2012

References

External links

Lewandowski: I won't 'become a swamp creature'