When Corey Lewandowski was at the Department of Homeland Security, he approached senior Qatari officials with a proposal.

Hire me on the side, the longtime Trump aide who was effectively the shadow secretary at the department last year, told them, according to people familiar with his pitch. He said he could help the tiny, wealthy Gulf state with any issues that fell under the department's purview, such as visas, the people said.

He approached representatives of the United Arab Emirates with a similar offer, people familiar with the outreach said.

Some of the foreigners were taken aback and confused why they would need Lewandowski's help when they already had traditional relationships with top administration officials. Qatar and U.A.E. declined the proposals, the people said.

The alleged moneymaking efforts, which appeared to be offers by Lewandowski to sell government services for personal gain, came while he had an expansive portfolio at one of the most powerful agencies in the federal government. The role gave him de facto decision-making authority over large amounts of recently appropriated billions of dollars, the president's border and immigration enforcement agenda and the collection of tariffs, which have been vastly expanded under President Trump.

Lewandowski held the status of a "special government employee," or SGE, which allowed him to carry out private business. He also was in a close personal relationship with the actual DHS secretary at the time, Kristi Noem.

A wide-ranging probe by the department's internal watchdog is scrutinizing any potential improprieties in the contracting process, including any evidence of personal enrichment by top officials. It has since found evidence that Lewandowski may have been involved in improperly awarding government contracts, the Journal reported in July.

A representative for Lewandowski denied Lewandowski had "sought contracts with foreign governments," said he played no role in contract review or approval at the department and said he hadn't been contacted about any investigation into contracting at DHS. The representative said Lewandowski "adamantly denies ever demanding any payment or compensation from any potential, former, or current government contractor or seeking or soliciting or entering contracts with foreign governments while volunteering his time with DHS," and that "Lewandowski denies any wrongdoing." The representative didn't respond to other detailed questions from The Wall Street Journal.

Both Noem and Lewandowski left DHS after Trump ousted the secretary in March and replaced her with Markwayne Mullin. Trump pushed out Noem over a chaotic tenure that culminated in two high-profile killings of U.S. citizens by federal agents and a pair of congressional hearings that displayed bipartisan frustration with her leadership.

While running the department, the pair also installed allies in jobs where the people influenced or directed contracts.

SGEs are advisers who usually have specific expertise and are brought in for short-term stints. Only a sliver of SGEs must publicly disclose clients or potential conflicts of interest, but government officials are generally prohibited from using their roles for private gain.

Lewandowski now operates as a consultant. One client is Bahrain, which signed a contract with him after he left office, a Bahraini official said.

Officials said they didn't know the extent to which Noem herself was aware of Lewandowski's alleged efforts. Lewandowski traveled and attended most department meetings with Noem, and the pair have reportedly been romantically linked for years. Lewandowski and Noem have denied having such a relationship.

A spokesperson for Noem didn't respond to requests for comment on her tenure at DHS.

Mullin and White House officials have been briefed on the DHS inspector general's inquiry, the Journal previously reported. Investigators are weighing a potential criminal referral to the Justice Department, and Democrats in the House of Representatives are preparing for a related probe if the party wins a majority in November's midterm elections.

A White House spokeswoman declined to comment.

DHS representatives didn't respond to repeated requests for comment.

Billions in budget

Soon after taking office, Noem consolidated under the secretary's control decision-making that had been delegated to sub-agencies. Essentially all department spending over $100,000 was put under the secretary's purview, with the stated goal of reducing fraud and waste. Officials said it created a massive bottleneck.

The move was widely seen within the administration as giving Lewandowski-as Noem's right hand-the power to closely monitor and ultimately decide which companies could receive government contracts.

One of the biggest drivers of spending under Noem was Trump's deportation agenda. Congress gave the department an extra $75 billion to spend during Trump's term on new deportation officers, technology and detention facilities.

Executives at data-analysis company Palantir worked with DHS officials for weeks in fall 2025 to negotiate a sprawling $2.7 billion contract, known as a blanket purchase agreement. They came to a deal for a wide swath of work that included an immigration and Secret Service portfolio.

DHS officials wanted to move quickly and have it signed before Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year, Palantir officials were told, according to people familiar with the matter. But the contract then sat for weeks on Noem's desk without a signature, and Palantir officials struggled to get answers from DHS on why the contract wasn't signed.

Then in November, Palantir received scheduling requests from Lewandowski, who wanted a meeting with Palantir CEO Alex Karp. Over the course of several weeks, DHS officials repeatedly asked for the meeting, saying it needed to be a one-on-one meeting between Karp and Lewandowski, the people said.

Palantir officials, who thought the terms of the deal were settled, weren't given an agenda for the meeting. The previous negotiations had followed the usual practice for government contracts, in which teams negotiate following standardized procedures, to provide some oversight over the disbursement of taxpayer dollars.

Palantir executives set up a meeting but then canceled it. Karp and others at Palantir felt uncomfortable and concerned about the circumstances of the meeting and didn't want to take it, given the large contract on the table, the people said. They had never previously had a contract held up for so long.

The meeting never happened, and the $2.7 billion blanket purchase agreement wasn't signed. Lewandowski told associates at the department that he was going to consolidate Palantir's work across the agency so the company would receive less money. Eventually, in early 2026, Palantir scheduled a larger meeting with Lewandowski, Noem and a number of Palantir officials including Karp. At that meeting, Palantir was told the blanket purchase agreement would be revised to $1 billion instead of $2.7 billion. That deal was signed in February.

A Palantir spokesperson said the company was given no explanation why the contract was reduced.

"Palantir is proud to support the United States government in a wide variety of missions, and to do so, it is essential for our company to uphold the highest standards of ethical conduct," the company said in a statement.

Lewandowski also played a role in contracts with GEO Group, the largest provider of private prisons in the U.S., according to people familiar with the matter.

When the company declined to hire Lewandowski as a lobbyist in Trump's first term in 2017, Lewandowski threatened the company that it would never receive another government contract so long as Trump was president, according to people familiar with the threat. Lewandowski had been Trump's campaign manager for a time in the 2016 election and remained close to the administration, though he didn't have an official role. The company ignored his threat, but they still made a record profit under Trump's first term.

At DHS this term, GEO expected to get even more business, given the massive deportation campaign Trump had promised and the billions of dollars in increased spending.

For months, Lewandowski blocked the firm from getting government contracts, according to DHS officials.

Later, Lewandowski boasted to the officials that he was forcing GEO to accept less business than it had previously received. Officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Lewandowski openly and frequently advocated for detention options that could cut GEO's involvement, including by asking states such as Florida and Louisiana to operate their own makeshift facilities rather than use GEO's, arguing it would save money.

While GEO has added new immigration detention contracts under Trump, the company has lost significant market share compared with its work during the Biden administration-moving from handling 37% of the market under Biden to 25% under Trump, according to a Journal analysis of federal contracts. The decline came even though GEO had detention facilities sitting idle. The overall market for the detention services has more than doubled so far under Trump, to around $4 billion.

GEO has booked almost $1 billion in detention contracts in the roughly 500 days of the Trump administration, compared with more than $600 million in such deals in the previous 500 days, under Biden.

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee are now investigating allegations of Lewandowski "shaking down contractors for kickbacks," Rep. Robert Garcia, ranking member of the committee, wrote in a letter to GEO chairman and founder, George Zoley, referencing a report by NBC News.

GEO and Zoley didn't respond to requests for comment.