Who runs DHS, asks New York mag

Under the deck “Kristi Noem is the face of Trump’s police state. Corey Lewandowski is the muscle. Who really runs DHS?”, New York **magazine goes Page Six on Homeland Security leadership.

The article starts off recounting the firing of acting FEMA administrator Cameron Hamilton. After accusations of press leaks and testimony to Congress that eliminating FEMA was a bad idea, Hamilton showed up to Noem’s office expecting to be fired. He was, but by Lewandowski, “technically an unpaid and temporary special government employee.”

Lewandowski was forced into this position after failing to secure DHS chief of staff. His unpaid designation permits up to 130 days of federal service per year and allows him payment from private clients without public disclosures. Meanwhile, DHS’s chief security officer wrote a memo questioning whether Lewandowski should hold a top-secret clearance; DHS officials have denied some of these claims.

DHS leadership must contend with the White House players; there’s of course Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff, and the administration’s most trusted immigration strategist. Border czar Tom Homan is both partner and occasional rival for media and policy primacy. President Trump tolerates the arrangement but has intervened when complaints about management style and Lewandowski’s sway escalated, leading to closer monitoring even as Noem and Lewandowski retained in their roles.

Elsewhere on background, New York’s Washington correspondent Ben Terris reports rumors of a Noem-Lewandowski affair:

In one meeting, they appeared to have such a close connection that their millionaire host called a mutual acquaintance afterward to ask if the two were dating. The mutual acquaintance called around and reported back it appeared that they were. They both were, and remain, married, though Noem’s husband, Bryon Noem, lives in South Dakota. Over the years, there have been plenty of tabloid reports about Noem and Lewandowski’s relationship. “Everybody knows they’re together. Can I prove it? No, but they’re together,” the administration official said.

Also,

In April, the Daily Mail snapped photographs of Lewandowski outside her Navy Yard complex with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder, and partly in response to the presence of the Mail’s paparazzi, which a DHS spokesperson said had led to threats and safety concerns, she moved into military housing usually reserved for the top admiral of the Coast Guard, which is under DHS’s purview. This has only fueled the rumors surrounding Noem. “They’ve sent no three- or four-stars in the Coast Guard up for confirmation,” a top administration official told me, “because she doesn’t want to get kicked out of the commandant’s house.”

It’s a very New York read.