Trump Administration Personnel and Ethics

Axios reports that Corey Lewandowski, a longtime Trump ally and former campaign manager, has quietly been rehired for 2026 as a 'special government employee' at the Department of Homeland Security while continuing to function as the de facto chief of staff to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. Officially limited to 130 days of government service per year as a temporary SGE and unpaid by the federal government, Lewandowski nonetheless spent all of 2025 embedded at DHS through what colleagues and ethics experts describe as creative timekeeping, exerting influence over billions in contracts and day‑to‑day immigration‑enforcement strategy that has become politically costly for the Trump administration. An Axios reporter recently overheard him at Reagan National Airport loudly discussing DHS vendor contracts — including Palantir, which was already under scrutiny for its ties to his role — and a drone program, even as a DHS spokesperson insisted he is merely a volunteer adviser and denied he has any involvement in Palantir contracts. DHS says Lewandowski has filed the required ethics and financial‑disclosure forms, but those filings are confidential, unlike most political appointees’ disclosures, leaving the public with little visibility into outside income or potential conflicts as he helps steer major homeland‑security decisions. Ethics specialists quoted in the piece say there is no real precedent for an SGE serving as an agency’s year‑round, unelected power center, raising hard questions about whether the SGE label is being used to evade normal transparency and appointment rules at a cabinet‑level department.