Trump campaign manager's behavior prompted staff concerns
Corey Lewandowski's temperament and inappropriate comments drew ire at his previous job, too.By KENNETH P. VOGEL, BEN SCHRECKINGER and HADAS GOLD
03/15/16 05:19 AM EDT
Donald Trump’s staff and advisers have expressed concerns about campaign manager Corey Lewandowski’s quick temper and heavy-handed leadership, and some even planned a coup against him last month, sources involved in the discussions told POLITICO.
A series of presidential primary victories ended the talk of deposing Lewandowski, the sources said. But now, Trump is facing external pressure to fire Lewandowski after he was accused last week of manhandling a reporter.
The Republican presidential frontrunner is standing by his 42-year-old campaign manager, and both men have disputed the reporter’s account. Lewandowski, responding to emailed questions, characterized his relationship with reporters who cover the campaign as “excellent” and said his temperament is not an obstacle to doing his job.
But a POLITICO investigation reveals that the incident was far from the first time in Lewandowski’s political career ― or even during the 2016 campaign ― that the intense, Red Bull-chugging operative has been accused of bullying and other inappropriate behavior.
In interviews with more than 20 sources who have dealt with Lewandowski during his nearly year-long tenure with the Trump campaign and in his previous job with the Koch brothers-backed advocacy group Americans for Prosperity, complaints emerged about Lewandowski being rough with reporters and sexually suggestive with female journalists, while profanely berating conservative officials and co-workers he deemed to be challenging his authority.
Lewandowski is coming under scrutiny at a particularly inopportune time for a campaign struggling to respond to allegations that its candidate’s divisive rhetoric is stoking violent impulses among supporters and protestors. Taken together, the controversies seem to represent the most serious existential threat to an expectation-defying candidacy that has survived all manner of self-inflicted set-backs that might have crippled more conventional campaigns.
Longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone predicted that the persistent questions about Lewandowski’s behavior during last week’s incident, which involved the former Breitbart News reporter Michelle Fields, could trip up Trump in a way that the real estate showman’s own bombast has yet to do.
“I am concerned that the controversy will hurt Donald,” said Stone, who quit the campaign last year citing the candidate’s lewd attacks against another female journalist, Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly.
Multiple insiders say they detected Lewandowski’s fingerprints on the departures of Stone and another longtime Trump official, Sam Nunberg, asserting that Lewandowski seeks to shield Trump from receiving other advice.
That instinct concerns some in Trump’s inner circle who contend that Lewandowski is out of his depth when it comes to political strategy and should bring in more experienced advisers, according to sources close to the Trump campaign and family.
But others close to Trump expressed doubt that he would yield to concerns about his campaign manager, who has helped the candidate go from laughingstock to the precipice of the Republican presidential nomination. Along the way, Lewandowski earned Trump’s trust, according to the sources, who say that’s something Trump does not grant, or withdraw, quickly.
Lewandowski, a father of four, grew up playing pond hockey in the hardscrabble mill town of Lowell, Massachusetts, earning a degree from the city’s branch of the University of Massachusetts, followed by a masters from American University in Washington, where he worked in Republican congressional offices and campaigns.
His last campaign management experience before Trump was an utter failure ― he ran former New Hampshire Sen. Bob Smith’s reelection bid in 2002, when he became the first sitting senator in either party to lose a primary campaign in a decade. After taking a break from professional politics to work as a New Hampshire state police officer, Lewandowski, who sports a buzz cut, hooked up with the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity, which prides itself on being independent from the Republican establishment in Washington. Now, the fast-talking Lewandowski boasts to associates, he’s in line to be White House chief of staff in a Trump administration, according to one person close to the campaign.
In an email containing mostly one-word answers to POLITICO’s questions, Lewandowski said he welcomes dissenting strategic viewpoints and described his relationship with the Trump family as “solid.”
Lewandowski mostly declined to discuss his employment with Americans for Prosperity, which is known for requiring strict non-disclosure agreements.
But half-a-dozen sources familiar with his tumultuous tenure at the group, known as AFP, said it now seems instructive as an instance in which his interpersonal style was seen as undermining his effectiveness as a manager.
AFP is the ground force for the increasingly powerful advocacy network helmed by the billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch. In 2014, the group had a $104 million budget and a staff of 950 staffers spread across more than 30 states.
During his first five and a half years with AFP, Lewandowski rose from the director of the group’s New Hampshire chapter to its East Coast regional director, overseeing about 10 states, despite several fiery confrontations with other officials at the group.
“Corey was kind of a cowboy, and he was fun,” recalled someone who worked with him at the AFP. “He gave AFP a cool factor that we didn’t have, but there were some cultural problems.”
Lewandowski boasted about threatening to “blow up” the car of the organization’s chief financial officer over a late expense reimbursement check during the 2012 election cycle, according to multiple sources who are familiar with his claim. (Lewandowski in an email denied this account.)
But some of his most fiery clashes came with a female official who ran one of the states under Lewandowski’s control. The relationship ― and patience for Lewandowski within AFP ― reached a tipping point in October 2013. On the sidelines of a meeting of the group’s board in Manhattan, Lewandowski loudly berated the employee for challenging his authority, getting in her personal space and calling her a “c---” in front of a group of AFP employees, including some senior officials, according to three sources who either witnessed the exchange or dealt with its aftermath.
An AFP spokesman declined to comment on the incident in Manhattan or Lewandowski’s tenure, citing the organization’s personnel policies. And the female employee, whom POLITICO is not naming, also declined to comment, though she told multiple associates that she found Lewandowski’s behavior “very demeaning and insulting," as one put it.
Not long after the Manhattan incident, Lewandowski was shifted into a newly created role at AFP running a voter registration drive where most of his interactions were with vendors, according to the sources. But the effort drew unwanted attention when it sent incorrect voter registration forms to North Carolina residents, and ultimately it was judged not to justify the costs. It was shut down after the 2014 election, according to sources familiar with AFP and Lewandowski’s tenure. They said it became increasingly clear that Lewandowski didn’t have much of a future with the group.
Lewandowski wouldn’t comment on the altercation in Manhattan, but he suggested he wasn’t forced out of AFP. “I took a job with Mr. Trump,” he told POLITICO when asked why he left the group.
The two men had met backstage at a 2014 AFP event in Concord, New Hampshire. And when Trump started openly exploring a run, operatives with top-tier campaign experience weren’t exactly lining up to work for him. Lewandowski won over the brash billionaire by declaring that he was better and harder working than any other prospective campaign manager.
Trump offered Lewandowski a salary of $20,000 a month and provided him with at least temporary quarters in a Trump-owned Upper East Side apartment near the campaign’s headquarters, according to a source with direct knowledge of the arrangement. Lewandowski built a small campaign team, among whom he quickly developed a reputation for using profanity, controlling access to the candidate and loudly chastising staff who he perceived to be challenging his authority.
A group of current and former high-ranking members of the campaign last month planned to deliver Trump a letter outlining concerns with Lewandowski’s management, according to multiple sources familiar with the planned mutiny. Complicating matters, the businessman is not directly reachable by email and frequently has Lewandowski at his side. So the plan was to deliver the letter in an envelope to Trump’s head of security, Keith Schiller, in the days between the South Carolina primary and the Nevada caucuses, with instructions to give it to Trump and no one else.
But after Trump won big in South Carolina and even bigger in Nevada, the dissenters tabled their plan, believing that Trump would not change course as long as he was having success.
Meanwhile, Lewandowski’s temper increasingly has manifested itself in clashes beyond the campaign staff.
Sources tell POLITICO that Lewandowski unleashed a profanity-laced tirade towards the officials who organized this month’s Conservative Political Action Conference after they insisted that Trump ― like his presidential rivals ― field questions from a journalist of CPAC’s choosing after delivering his speech. The officials refused to yield, and the Trump campaign canceled his appearance entirely, though Lewandowski said the last-minute change of plans had nothing to do with the dispute.
And, separate from the incident with the Breitbart reporter Fields, other reporters who have covered the Trump campaign described instances in which Lewandowski was rough with journalists, using his body to push reporters away from the candidate. They described the former New Hampshire police officer as occasionally acting more like a security guard than a political operative.
“He can get really hot headed at times,” said a reporter who has covered the campaign and interacted with Lewandowski throughout the cycle.
Additionally, reporters told POLITICO that Lewandowski has made sexually suggestive and at times vulgar comments to ― and about ― female journalists who have covered Trump’s presidential bid. One reporter who was on the receiving end of such comments described them as “completely inappropriate in a professional setting.”
Lewandowski said in an email that he’d never behaved inappropriately with female journalists.
While those incidents had not been revealed before now, Lewandowski and his campaign have been publicly called out by the media and rivals for trying to intimidate journalists and flouting accepted terms of engagement between campaigns and the press. Fox News accused Lewandowski of making threats related to its anchor Kelly, and of violating the rules at a debate by consulting with Trump and refusing to leave the stage during a commercial break.
The National Press Club issued a statement on Monday raising concerns "about the increasing attacks and threats against journalists covering the United States presidential campaign, particularly after multiple unsettling reports from Donald Trump events." Breitbart News called on Lewandowski to apologize for the incident involving Fields. She has since filed a complaint against Lewandowski with the Jupiter, Fla. police department, and also has resigned from Breitbart in protest of what she contended was the news outlet's failure to sufficiently stand by her.
Trump rival Marco Rubio on Monday proclaimed "If my campaign manager had done that, my campaign would be over. He would have had to resign, and my campaign may be over."
Lewandowski instead has denied that he grabbed Fields and dismissed her on Twitter as “an attention seeker.”
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