Trump Dredges Swamp To Re-Name Felons as Top Campaign Aids
A former trump campaign chief who was fired after he groped a donor’s wife and had an affair with a married governor, has been rehired to help rescue trump’s sinking campaign for another term in the White House.
And so have been three convicted felons who were all pardoned by trump during his disgraceful four years in office. Nothing unusual here.
Corey Lewandowski, 50, is the latest deplorable who has been reborn and brought back to the trump campaign, repeating his earlier role as a senior advisor. Lewandowski was returned to the sagging trump campaign last week along with Taylor Budowich, a trump 2020 campaign veteran; trump’s 2020 press aide, Tim Murtaugh; and two other former MAGA workers, Alex Pfeiffer and Alex Bruesewitz.
Lewandowski, who is married with four children, has a history of being overly aggressive toward women and unsympathetic toward people with disabilities, making him a perfect fit to work for a man who has a history of being overly aggressive toward women and unsympathetic toward people with disabilities.
Lewandowski managed trump’s 2016 campaign but in 2021, he was fired as trump’s director of communications and head of a pro-Trump super PAC after he allegedly made crude sexual advances toward a donor’s wife at a campaign dinner.
“He will no longer be associated with Trump World,” the trump spokesman Taylor Budowich said at the time.
Other felons who remain active in the trump campaign include Michael T. Flynn, a former national security adviser who leads the far right, “ReAwaken America Tour.” Flynn was one of the leading proponents of trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. In May 2023, trump told a crowd at an Iowa campaign rally, “We’re going to bring you (Flynn) back.” It was not clear when or in what capacity Flynn would be back in the trump fray.
Flynn resigned from the trump administration less than a month after the president’s inauguration in 2017. He was charged later that year with lying to the FBI about conversations he had with the Russians on trump’s behalf. He twice pleaded guilty, but trump ultimately pardoned him in the final weeks of his presidency.
Paul Manafort, the longtime Republican strategist and chairman of trump’s 2016 campaign, assumed an unpaid role advising party officials on the GOP nominating convention. Manafort stepped aside in May after questions arose about his involvement in the convention’s planning process.
In 2018, Manafort was sentenced to 73 months’ imprisonment, including the maximum 60 months for the conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA). He was charged with failing to register, providing false statements in a document filed with FARA, laundering money and tampering with witnesses. Manafort failed to register under FARA as an agent of the Government of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Party of Regions, and former Ukrainian President Yanukovych.
Budowich was named as executive director of the MAGA Inc. super pac. In June 2023, Budowich testified before a federal grand jury in Miami as part of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump’s handling of classified documents.
“America has become a sick and broken nation — a decline led by Joe Biden and power-hungry Democrats,” Budowich said in June 2023, after he testified in the classified documents case. “I will not be intimidated by this weaponization of government. For me, the need to unite our nation and make America great again has never been more clear than it is today.”
Budowich was subpoenaed in 2021 by the House Select Committee to Investigate January 6, which claimed it had reason to believe that Budowich had directed roughly $200,000 from undisclosed sources to fund an ad campaign encouraging people to attend the rally that devolved into the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol by trump supporters.
Murtagh, communications director for trump’s 2020 campaign, has been brought on board for the 2024 race. In Murtaugh’s autobiography, “Swing Hard in Case You Hit It: My Escape from Addiction and Shot at Redemption on the Trump Campaign” he describes his struggles with alcoholism for years and how he was jailed in 2015 for public drunkenness. He had two drunk driving convictions, served five days in jail with some suspended time for the first one and spent 10 days in jail with 80 days suspended for the second one. He also had a variety of different drunk in public and different public intoxication charges.
Murtaugh was a visiting fellow at the far right Heritage Foundation, which commissioned “Project 2025,” a conservative blueprint for a second trump administration that includes eliminating the department of education, extending an abortion ban nationally and other drastic objectives.
Murtaugh also is the founder and principal of the consulting firm Line Drive Public Affairs LLC.
George Nader, a former trump foreign policy advisor, who was one of the most heinous members of the trump circle, will fortunately not be returning to trump world as he is spending the next six years in prison.
Nader, a key witness in the special-counsel probe of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, was sentenced in 2020 to 10 years in prison and a lifetime of supervised release for transporting a child into the country for sex and possessing child pornography. Nader also agreed to pay $150,000 in restitution to the victim, who was 14 at the time Nader brought him from the Czech Republic to the United States.
A Lebanese-American, Nader had helped arrange trump’s first trip in 2017 to Riyadh, the Saudi capital. Throughout the years, he has been involved in high-level diplomatic negotiations in Israel, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. He also was an adviser to the United Arab Emirates and acted as an intermediary for members of the trump campaign seeking to forge contacts in the Middle East. In addition to the pornography charges, Nader was charged with conspiring to make conduit campaign contributions to trump and related offenses to the 2016 trump campaign.
The special council investigated Nader’s involvement in a January 2017 meeting between a trump associate and a Russian official. During the investigation, FBI agents searched Nader’s phones and found what appeared to be child pornography in WhatsApp messages sent to him. Nader maintained that while the images showed naked children, they were meant to be humorous rather than sexual and he did not realize they were on his phone. But he admitted to receiving an email containing child pornography in 2012 and bringing a child into the country for sexual purposes in 2000.
Nader had been convicted of similar conduct in the past but received only light punishment. In 1991, after being convicted of transporting child pornography in Alexandria, Va., he was given a six-month sentence in part because he was actively involved in negotiating the release of hostages from Lebanon. In 2003, he was sentenced to a year in prison in the Czech Republic for soliciting underage boys. He was convicted in the 1990s of transporting child pornography publications, and imprisoned in 2003 for sexually abusing 10 boys in the Czech Republic. He pleaded guilty in early 2020 to flying a 14-year-old boy from Europe to the U.S. for sex, and transporting pornography depicting child sexual abuse and bestiality.
In August 2016, Nader met with Donald Trump Jr. at Trump Tower offering assistance to his father’s presidential campaign. Nader served as an envoy representing Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince and de facto ruler Mohammad bin Salman, and Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Crown Prince of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. The meeting included Erik Prince and Joel Zamel, an Israeli specialist in social media manipulation and owner of intelligence gathering firms.
Lewandowski
After he was fired as trump’s campaign manager, Lewandowski and Barry Bennett, an unpaid adviser to trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, started a lobbying firm, Avenue Strategies. Bennett managed Ben Carson’s presidential campaign and then was a senior adviser to trump when Carson left the race. Trump nominated Carson as secretary of housing and urban development (HUD) and Bennett was given a job as a community planner with HUD.
“I can promise you I will not be a registered lobbyist,” Lewandowski said. “Yeah, I can promise you I will not be a swamp creature.”
Lewandowski resigned from the lobbying firm in May 2017 amid concerns the company had unfairly capitalized on his relationship with trump.
In January 2024, Bennett and Republican political consultant Doug Watts acknowledged they accepted funds from the Qatari government in exchange for promoting efforts to influence U.S. policy in the Middle East and engaged in a scheme to mislead investigators about those dealings. Court documents show that Avenue Strategies submitted false information to authorities enforcing the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a law that requires people lobbying on behalf of foreign entities to declare that work to the U.S. government. Bennett was fined $100,000 and Watts was fined $25,000.
Lewandowski was fired from the MAGA Inc. super PAC in 2021 after he was accused of making unwanted sexual advances toward Trashelle Odom, the wife of a donor, at a Las Vegas charity dinner. He was charged with misdemeanor battery but agreed to a plea deal to dismiss the charge after he promised to undergo eight hours of impulse control counseling, pay a $1,000 fine and serve 50 hours of community service.
Lewandowski denied the allegations but after the incident, trump spokesman Budowich tweeted that he “will no longer be associated with Trump World.”
Odom, then wife of Idaho construction executive, John Odom, was among around two dozen GOP donors at a charity dinner held at the Westgate Las Vegas Resort & Casino’s Benihana restaurant. Mrs. Odom was seated next to Lewandowski during the event, which was part of a four-day conference held by the substance abuse charity Victoria’s Voice Foundation.
Mrs. Odom said that she had been intimidated by Lewandowski’s claims that he controlled who had access to trump’s inner circle. She later told reporters that Lewandowski had touched her and made lewd comments.
“He repeatedly touched me inappropriately, said vile and disgusting things to me, stalked me,” she said, “and made me feel violated and fearful.”
Odom alleged that Lewandowski told her about the size of his genitalia, described his sexual performance and showed her his hotel room key while he tried to hold her hand and touched her leg. Odom said she spoke out “because he needs to be held accountable” and that she wanted other women “to know that you can be heard, too, and together we can stop terrible things like this from happening.”
Lewandowsky’s lawyer, David Chesnoff, later told the media that “accusations and rumors appear to be morphing by the minute and we will not dignify them with a further response.”
The alleged incident and Lewandosky’s response again echoed trump’s behavior, most notably when he sexually abused E. Jean Carroll in a luxury department store dressing room in the spring of 1996. A jury awarded Carroll $5 million for battery and defamation. Trump denied he even knew Carroll, let alone assaulted her.
John Odom is a construction magnate with projects in Texas and Idaho, a professional racer, and a former trump donor. As of 2022, Odom’s net worth is estimated to be over $6 million.
In 2022, John Odom contributed $100,000 to the Louisiana gubernatorial campaign of Republican Jeff Landry who also was a close supporter of trump. Odom said he later told Landry that Lewandowsky had sexual harassed his wife. Odom demanded a return of the $100,000 donation but Landry refused. Odom later learned that Landry had hired Lewandowsky to help in his gubernatorial campaign.
Odom and his wife married in 2017 and they have three children. The Odoms have since divorced.
Lewandowski also was reported to be in a relationship with then-White House communications director Hope Hicks.
Joy Villa, a singer who wore a MAGA dress to the Grammy Awards, accused Lewandowski in 2017 of smacking her in the butt at a Trump International Hotel holiday bash.
“I’m wearing this silver suit and stretchy pants, and after the photo, he smacks my ass really hard,” Villa said. “It was completely demeaning and shocking.”
Villa said she warned him to watch his behavior but that he whacked her again. She filed a complaint of assault but the outcome of the charge was not available.
In 1999, Lewandowski was arrested for carrying a handgun, three magazines, a holster and several rounds of ammunition into the Longworth House Office Building. He claimed the weaponry was accidentally mixed up with his dirty clothes in an overnight bag. He sued, unsuccessfully, to get the weapon back, along with $50,000 in punitive damages.
Lewandowski was fired in 2017 from One America News Network (OANN), a pro-trump cable channel that competed with Fox News. Lewandowski was hired as a trump insider but was let go after he angered OANN leadership with his frequent appearances on Fox and other competitors.
In 2018, Lewandowski mocked a story about a 10-year-old girl with Down syndrome who the Mexican government said was forcibly separated from her mother as a result of the trump administration’s much maligned, “zero tolerance” immigration policy.
Lewandowski made his comments during an interview on Fox News. Democratic strategist Zac Petkanas also was interviewed to discuss the trump administration’s practice of separating children from their parents at the border.
“I read today about a 10-year-old girl with Down syndrome who was taken from her mother and put in a cage,” Petkanas said.
“Womp womp,” Lewandowski interrupted, making a dismissive trombone-like sound effect in a cold, sarcastic and demeaning way.
Fox News later asked Lewandowsky if he owned the child an apology.
“An apology? I owe an apology to the children whose parents are putting them in a position that is forcing them to be separated,” Lewandowski responded. “We owe an apology … to the families of individuals killed by illegal aliens.”
Lewandowski defended the hard-line immigration policy, saying, “When you cross the border illegally, you have given up the rights of this country.”
Like Lewandowski mocked the girl with Down syndrome, trump notoriously ridiculed Serge Kovaleski, a New York Times reporter with a disability, at a campaign rally in South Carolina in 2015.
Trump was widely criticized at the time for having claimed that he watched in Jersey City as “thousands and thousands of people were cheering” the collapse of the World Trade Center following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. To bolster his preposterous and later bogus claim, trump cited a Sept. 18, 2001, story co-written by Kovaleski, who was a Washington Post reporter at the time. Kovaleski reported that law enforcement had questioned “a number of people who were allegedly seen celebrating the attacks and holding tailgate-style parties on rooftops while they watched the devastation on the other side of the river.”
Kovaleski later said that reporters couldn’t verify the celebrations actually occurred. This led trump to ridicule Kovaleski for his comments, saying, “You gotta see this guy (Kovaleski)” and wildly flailed his arms, his right hand flopping at an odd angle as he shouted in a weird, agitated voice: “Ahh, I don’t know what I said! Ahh, I don’t remember!”
Kovaleski has arthrogryposis, a congenital condition which limits the movement of his joints and has left his right hand sharply angled at the wrist.
In 2023, the Washington Post reported that Lewandowski had engaged in a years-long affair with South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem. The post quoted several sources including one who recalled seeing Noem and Lewandowski getting “handsy” at a bar during a 2021 Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla. Another source said the affair had been widely known in Republican political circles for “years” and that Noem’s husband, Bryon, had moved out of the governor’s mansion in Pierre two years earlier.
Noem, 51, and her husband, Bryon, have been married since 1992 and have three children.
The alleged relationship was reported a week after Noem formally endorsed trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. At the time, Noem was speculated as a possible vice presidential running mate with trump.
“These rumors are total garbage and a disgusting lie,” Noem tweeted regarding the alleged affair. “These old, tired attacks on conservative women are based on a falsehood that we can’t achieve anything without a man’s help. I love Bryon. I’m proud of the God-fearing family we’ve raised together. Now I’m getting back to work.”
Lewandowski and his wife, Alison (Hardy), married in 2005 and have four children. The two met when he was in ninth grade and she was in eighth grade. In 1998, Hardy married her first husband, Brian Kinney, but he was killed on board United Airlines Flight 175 on September 11, 2001.
Lewandowsky also was charged with battery in 2016 after former Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields accused him of grabbing her and bruising her arm in an effort to stop her from questioning trump at an event in Florida. Palm Beach County prosecutors later dropped the charges, citing a lack of evidence. Police charged Lewandowski with simple battery, releasing video from surveillance cameras that shows Lewandowski reaching for and grabbing Fields.
Fields and six other colleagues resigned from Breitbart after the incident, claiming the trump-friendly website was not properly supporting Fields. Fields also was forced to flee her home because of death threats she received after several news organizations accidentally published Lewandowski’s full police report, which included Fields’ personal contact information.
From December 1997 to February 2001, Lewandowski worked as an administrative assistant for Ohio Republican Rep. Bob Ney. In 2007, Ney was sentenced on federal corruption charges arising from the Abramoff lobbying scandal.
Lewandowski was the campaign manager for the 2002 re-election campaign of U.S. Senator Robert C. Smith, R-N.H. Smith was challenged in the Republican primary by the eventual general election winner John E. Sununu. With Lewandowski as campaign manager, Smith was the first sitting U.S. senator in 10 years to lose a primary campaign.
Lewandowski first met trump in April 2014 at a political event in New Hampshire. In January 2015, six months before trump announced his campaign, Lewandowski was invited to Trump Tower, where he accepted an offer to become campaign manager at a monthly salary of $20,000.
When Lewandowski was hired, trump’s political staff included his lawyer and fixer, Michael D. Cohen; veteran operative and political dirty trickster, Roger Stone; and aide Sam Nunberg. In April 2016, another veteran GOP operative, Paul Manafort, was hired and the following month Manafort was named “campaign chairman.” Each was later subpoenaed regarding the federal probe into Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election.
On June 19, 2017, Lewandowski, who was a private citizen, joined trump in the Oval Office where trump told Lewandowski that he would not have appointed Attorney General Jeff Sessions if he had known that Sessions would recuse himself from the investigation into Russia and the trump campaign. Trump dictated a statement that Lewandowski should give to Sessions to make, which would have stated that trump did nothing wrong, and limited the special counsel investigation into future election interference only. Lewandowski eventually asked a government employee to relay the message as the employee had a better relationship with Sessions than he had.
In April 2018, Lewandowski recounted the situation in an interviewed with the special counsel office with regard to whether trump had obstructed justice. In February 2019, Lewandowski was interviewed by MSNBC, when he said, “I don’t ever remember the president ever asking me to get involved with Jeff Sessions or the Department of Justice in any way, shape or form ever.”
In September 2019, Lewandowski was called to testify on the matter by of the House Judiciary Committee. Asked to explain his discrepancy in what he told Mueller and what he told the media, Lewandowski said, “I have no obligation to be honest with the media because they’re just as dishonest as anyone else.”
Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller appointed Lewandowski to the Defense Business Board in December 2020. The Pentagon later blocked Lewandowski’s appointment as part of a purge of the Pentagon’s advisory boards to derail trump’s last-minute installation of political loyalists.