In case anyone needs a reminder of why it’s so unseemly that Governor Kristi Noem allows New Hampshire political operative and MAGA-malarkey-maker Corey Lewandowski to hang around her office and plan her inauguration, it’s not just that he Trumpily objectifies women. He also engaged in openly corrupt lobbying during the Trump Administration and lied about it.
In 2017, Lewandowski was lobbying Trump to give coal-burning utility FirstEnergy and coal-mining corporation Murray Energy a big federal bailout. Lewandowski helped FirstEnergy and Murray Energy CEOs get meetings with Trump in the White House. Lewandowski’s coal lobbying failed. Lewandowski, who never registered as a federal lobbyist, denied that he was on those companies’ payroll, but newly released records obtained by subpoena by the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel show that FirstEnergy had a contract with Lewandowski to push its agenda in the White House:
In a May 2, 2017 email to FirstEnergy’s CEO Charles Jones, the company’s VP of external affairs Michael Dowling listed “Corey Lewandowski” among the “Outside consultants engaged” to work on FirstEnergy’s “DOE Team” at a time when the Department of Energy was the main target of FirstEnergy’s bailout campaign.
The following month, Dowling received an email about a “Contract for Lewandowski Strategic Advisors, LCC” from Mike Rubino, another Trump campaign veteran who worked with Lewandowski. A copy of the contract was originally attached to the email, but was not included in the records released yesterday.
“Great seeing you on Monday! Corey is waiting for the final ok from POTUS on the meeting,” Rubino said in the email. “Attached is the contract and invoice we talked about on Monday for the new company” [Dave Anderson, “FirstEnergy Secretly ‘Engaged’ Corey Lewandowski to Lobby Trump for a Public Bailout, Subpoenaed Records Confirm After Years of Denials,” Energy and Policy Institute, 2022.12.22].
Last year at CPAC, Noem exhorted her fellow right-wingers to “speak the truth” as the first response to a “Left” that “lives on lies.” Yet she keeps as one of her closest advisors a man who lies about how he makes his living and peddles his political influence.
