Loyalty to Trump helped Corey Lewandowski survive harassment scandal
Days after a Republican donor accused Corey Lewandowski, a longtime Donald Trump adviser, of sexually harassing her at a Las Vegas charity dinner in September 2021, she received an unexpected and apologetic phone call.
The call was from the former president seeking to reassure her, said the donor, Trashelle Odom, who alleged that Lewandowski had repeatedly groped her and made sexually explicit comments at the event.
“I really appreciated him taking the time to call me,” Odom said in a recent interview with The Washington Post, speaking about Trump’s outreach, which has not been previously reported.
Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s eldest son, also called to check on her, she said, and promised that Lewandowski would face consequences. He was quickly ejected from his leadership role at a pro-Trump organization, with a Trump spokesman announcing that Lewandowski “will no longer be associated with Trump World.”
But three years later, Lewandowski, 50, is officially back in the fold. The former president recently named him a senior campaign adviser — leaving Odom feeling distraught and betrayed.
“They just undid everything,” said Odom, 35. “I am very worried about his access to other women, and I am worried about the power the campaign is giving him over those women.”
Trump’s team earlier this month touted the “unmatched experience” of Lewandowski and several others brought on board as the former president struggles to find his footing against Vice President Kamala Harris, the newly minted Democratic nominee. People who know both men say Trump is trying to recapture the energy of his insurgent 2016 race by elevating one of his first campaign hires, who famously indulged his most pugnacious impulses with the mantra “Let Trump be Trump.”
“In Trump’s mind, Corey helped him win in 2016, so it makes sense to bring him back,” said Jane Timken, a Republican national committeewomen from Ohio who hired Lewandowski during her unsuccessful U.S. Senate bid in 2022 and described him as a savvy and well-connected consultant. “Nobody’s perfect. Trump trusts his political advice.”
Though aides have presented Trump’s third bid for the White House as a more disciplined, professionalized operation, his embrace of Lewandowski points to an enduring feature of the former president’s approach to politics: his high tolerance for people with professional liabilities so long as they remain loyal to him. In addition to Odom, two other women previously reported Lewandowski to police for unwanted physical contact, records show. He has denied wrongdoing.
Trump’s whole campaign is a test of traditional mechanisms of accountability — for himself and those around him. He is seeking to return to power after a felony conviction for falsifying business records to conceal a sex scandal and a civil jury verdict that he committed sexual abuse in the 1990s — wide-ranging legal consequences that he and his allies have converted into a rallying cry and used to cast themselves as victims.
Lewandowski, in a brief phone interview earlier this month, said he didn’t know what his campaign responsibilities would be and to whom he would report. “I’m a friend of the president is what I am,” he said. He did not respond to detailed follow-up questions about the reporting in this story.
In response to questions about Lewandowski’s record and role in the campaign, spokesman Steven Cheung said, “President Trump has a world-class team dedicated to helping elect him once again to the White House.”
Over the past decade, as many Trump advisers have come and gone, Lewandowski has remained faithful — while also faithfully leveraging his relationship with Trump for money and influence, according to a review of his work and interviews with people familiar with it.
Lewandowski has classified his work as consulting and is not registered as a federal lobbyist, which would require him to disclose his clients. But public records obtained by The Post show how he used his connection to Trump to land business contracts. He also has been paid by numerous candidates as they jockeyed, sometimes unsuccessfully, for Trump’s endorsement, according to campaign and court records. And he piggybacked on the former president’s brand by chairing Ultra MAGA PAC, a group purporting to support “America First patriots” but spending only about 2 percent of its donations to directly support Trump-friendly candidates, records show.
The lasting bond between the two men is clear. While campaigning in Lewandowski’s home state of New Hampshire earlier this year, Trump welcomed him to the stage, musing, “Nobody was closer to me.” At another event, Trump called Lewandowski “a very, very good friend of mine who is very powerful actually.” He asked whether Lewandowski would ever leave New Hampshire.
“Only to go back to the White House, sir,” responded Lewandowski, who never formally worked in Trump’s administration.
‘Humiliated and devalued’
Lewandowski said he had met Trump just once before the businessman summoned him to Trump Tower in January 2015 and asked him to manage the 2016 presidential campaign. The political operative and former congressional staffer brought a brash and confrontational style that appealed to the long-shot Republican candidate.
“We hit it off, and if you don’t hit it off with your campaign manager, you have a problem,” Trump told The Post during that campaign.
Trump fired him before Election Day, though. He was arrested on one count of simple battery in March 2016 after grabbing a Breitbart News reporter’s arm as she approached Trump with a question. Lewandowski wasn’t prosecuted. But amid a power struggle with other campaign advisers, Lewandowski was pushed out in June.
Lewandowski continued to champion his former boss in frequent media appearances, and when Trump won, the onetime campaign manager launched a consulting and lobbying shop with another Trump campaign veteran. The following spring, amid media scrutiny of the firm’s offers of access to top administration officials, Lewandowski quit, maintaining that he had not done any lobbying.
About a week later, he incorporated Lewandowski Strategic Advisors. He shared office space and some clients with Turnberry Solutions, a lobbying firm run by two other Trump veterans, according to a person familiar with the arrangement who, like some others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation.
Lewandowski’s access to Trump was a primary selling point, according to records and interviews.
In 2017 and 2018, for instance, Lewandowski worked for a utility company in Ohio called FirstEnergy as it pushed the Trump administration to bail out its struggling coal and nuclear power plants. The federal money never came through, but a parallel state effort culminated in a bribery scandal in which FirstEnergy was accused of funneling millions to state lawmakers in exchange for a $1.3 billion bailout. The result: a $230 million fine against the company and a prison sentence for the speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives.
Lewandowski wasn’t accused of wrongdoing. But emails and text messages subpoenaed by the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel, the state’s consumer protection agency, and released in response to a public records request, show how Lewandowski helped arrange access to Trump for FirstEnergy executives who were later charged with wide-ranging felonies. They have pleaded not guilty and are awaiting trial. FirstEnergy, in a statement, said the firm has “made meaningful improvements to advance our culture of ethics, integrity and accountability.”
A May 2017 email from Michael Dowling, FirstEnergy’s senior vice president of external affairs, identified Lewandowski as an outside consultant retained to “formalize and enhance our advocacy efforts.” In his phone interview with The Post, Lewandowski said that the company “never paid me a dime,” and that he was simply personal friends with Dowling, who is no longer with the company and whose lawyer declined to comment.
A contract reviewed by The Post, between FirstEnergy and Lewandowski Strategic Advisors, indicates that FirstEnergy had agreed to pay Lewandowski $50,000 per month for “strategic advice and counsel.” Lewandowski did not respond to questions about the contract.
The month that the contract was executed, one of Lewandowski’s associates at Turnberry Solutions wrote to Dowling about a meeting Lewandowski was arranging with Trump. “Corey is waiting for the final ok from POTUS on the meeting,” wrote the associate, Mike Rubino, who did not respond to a request for comment.
A year later, FirstEnergy allies shared an article about Trump’s support for a coal bailout. “Boom!!!” wrote Lewandowski, according to the emails. He added, “The WH did the right thing on this … with a little encouragement from us.”
The company’s then-CEO, Chuck Jones, ribbed the Trump confidant for being modest. “That can’t be the articulate, suave Corey Lewandowski I’ve been watching on TV the last year and a half,” he quipped.
The following month, Lewandowski was involved in discussions about arranging for Jones to speak to Trump during a swing through West Virginia, according to text messages among FirstEnergy executives and allies. Jones told Lewandowski and others that Trump seemed supportive when they spoke, telling the CEO, “It’s coming, we’re on it.” Lewandowski reacted positively, writing, “I’m glad he gets it.”
Doing business in Trump’s Washington also meant participating in the MAGA social scene. At a holiday party at Trump International Hotel in November 2017, Lewandowski was accused of slapping the buttocks of a singer and Trump supporter who had made headlines when she wore a “Make America Great Again” dress to the Grammys months earlier.
“I could report you for sexual harassment,” the singer, Joy Villa, recalled telling Lewandowski in an interview with The Post. She said Lewandowski responded, “Go ahead, I work in the private sector” — and then hit her buttocks again.
Villa filed a report with police alleging sexual abuse. “I felt extremely humiliated and devalued,” she said. In an interview on Fox Business at the time, Lewandowski said, “There is a due process and there is a process which they will go through to determine a person’s innocence.” He was not charged.
Villa said her Christian faith has led her to forgive Lewandowski. And as a Republican, she doesn’t want her encounter with Lewandowski to harm the former president’s political prospects. “I’m definitely a Trumper,” she said.
As Trump was preparing to leave office in early 2021, Lewandowski and a business partner made an audacious offer amid the mad dash for clemency in Trump’s final days in power: They would urge the president to pardon Bradley Birkenfeld, a whistleblower and former wealth manager convicted of fraud, according to Birkenfeld’s account to the Atlantic magazine and confirmed to The Post by a person familiar with the discussions. This person said Lewandowski told a Birkenfeld associate over the phone that he would need $500,000 upfront — before a scheduled meeting with Trump on Jan. 5, 2021 — plus $1 million if Birkenfeld landed the pardon.
Birkenfeld told the Atlantic he refused, and no grant of clemency materialized. He declined to comment. Lewandowski contested Birkenfeld’s account to the magazine, saying, “I never asked for money.”
‘Intimidated and frightened’
Lewandowski was prepared to make the most of Trump’s exile from Washington.
On social media, he describes himself as chairman of a political action committee launched in the waning days of Trump’s presidency and aimed at “DRAINING THE SWAMP AND ELECTING AMERICA FIRST PATRIOTS TO TAKE BACK OUR GOVERNMENT,” according to the group’s website.
In early 2021, he also began running Make America Great Again Action, a different pro-Trump PAC that landed a $60,000 contribution from the construction company owned by Odom’s husband, John Odom.
Lewandowski found consulting work for Trump-friendly political candidates preparing for the midterm elections. He became especially active with South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem, helping her raise her national profile and establishing her as a possible running mate for Trump in 2024, according two former Noem aides.
But Lewandowski soon jeopardized his status in Republican politics. In September 2021, he was seated next to Trashelle Odom, a mother of three who was living in Idaho, at a charity dinner at a Las Vegas hotel. According to a police report she later filed, she said Lewandowski drank a half-dozen cocktails while repeatedly touching her hand, buttocks and back and making “multiple inappropriate, aggressive, violent and unwanted sexual comments.”
She said Lewandowski boasted about the size of his genitalia and sexual stamina. He told her he was close to Trump, she told police, and said he could “destroy anyone.” After dinner, she said, he followed her around the hotel and made crude remarks about her body. He later threw a drink at her and called her stupid, she said.
“I was intimidated and frightened and fearful for my safety,” she told police, according to the report.
Noem, who attended the dinner, vowed to sever ties with Lewandowski as a result of the allegations, which were reported at the time by Politico. So did Charles Herbster, a Republican gubernatorial candidate in Nebraska who had hired the longtime Trump ally.
Trump did not publicly comment on the episode, or reveal that he had spoken personally to Odom, who declined to go into detail about what the former president told her. But a Trump spokesman announced that Lewandowski would no longer be in charge of the main pro-Trump super PAC.
Lewandowski was later charged with battery. To get the misdemeanor case dismissed, he agreed to attend an eight-hour impulse control course, log 50 hours of community service and “stay out of trouble” for one year, according to court records. He did not admit guilt, but he did issue an apology.
“I want to state to the court that I wish to apologize to Ms. Odom for any discomfort I may have caused her on the evening of September 26th of 2021,” Lewandowski said one year later in county court in Las Vegas, according to a transcript.
But the repercussions faced by Lewandowski were limited from the outset. Noem continued to rely on Lewandowski as an adviser, according to someone involved in her political operation at the time. (A Noem spokesman did not respond to questions about the episode.) Lewandowski also continued to raise money through the PAC founded in the twilight of the Trump administration and now called Ultra MAGA PAC.
Among the PAC’s first moves was backing the congressional campaign of an Ohio coal lobbyist, Mike Carey, whom Lewandowski has described as a longtime friend. Otherwise, Lewandowski’s PAC has spent little on candidates. Of the roughly $2.35 million collected since 2021, only about $55,000 — or 2 percent — went directly into races, while most of the money was spent on fundraising.
“We see this every election cycle — groups that are raising money through direct mail and then turning around and spending all of their money on that,” said Andrew Mayersohn, a researcher at OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan group that tracks campaign finance. “There’s very little evidence of actual campaign activity.”
Lewandowski has also worked directly for candidates seeking Trump’s blessing. In 2022, he sued Eric Deters, whose bid for governor of Kentucky he had been advising, claiming that Deters owed him about $36,000. Deters countersued “the scoundrel who is Corey Lewandowski,” also claiming breach of contract, according to court records.
Deters had paid $75,000 to mingle with Trump at the Kentucky Derby, he said in court filings. Trump later endorsed one of his opponents.
“The only reason I hired Corey Lewandowski was to get the Trump endorsement,” Deters said in a recent interview. “That was the whole ballgame.”
Lewandowski said in court filings that he told Deters he could not guarantee the endorsement and that the candidate was to blame for failing to secure Trump’s backing. Both suits were dismissed, and Lewandowski continued to land high-profile campaign work, including advising Jeff Landry’s successful bid for governor of Louisiana in 2023.
Earlier this year, Lewandowski inched closer to the presidential race, receiving about $81,000 for advising the Republican National Committee. At the GOP convention in July, he reminisced about his last Trump campaign job while exuding confidence about the present, telling The Post, “I wouldn’t change one minute of the ’16 campaign if I could. But I’ll tell you what, I like the spot that we’re in today in 2024.”
A month later, he joined the Trump campaign.
Lewandowski soon became involved in the campaign’s latest imbroglio. He posted a photo of Trump flashing a thumbs-up in a section of Arlington National Cemetery where his campaign had been told not to take photos, according to defense officials. An employee at the cemetery reported a brief altercation with two campaign workers when she sought to stop the campaign from taking photos. The woman filed a complaint but declined to press charges.
Odom, meanwhile, is still a registered Republican but no longer involved in politics. She and her husband have since divorced. She declined to discuss the presidential race and said she rarely reads news articles because the publicity generated by her encounter with Lewandowski was so painful.
“I think he faced repercussions for a short period of time, but in the end it didn’t matter,” she said. “I don’t mean to sound like a victim because I hate that word, but this was something I was forced to go through, and I never want any other woman to have go through the same thing.”
Clara Ence Morse and Aaron Schaffer contributed to this report.