T-Mobile said on Friday that Corey Lewandowski was advising Turnberry Solutions on the proposed merger as part of its work with Turnberry. | Mark J. Terrill/AP Photo Lewandowski advising T-Mobile on Sprint merger

Corey Lewandowski is advising T-Mobile on how to win approval for its proposed merger with Sprint, according to the company.

Lewandowski is advising T-Mobile through Turnberry Solutions, a lobbying firm started last year by two fellow veterans of President Donald Trump’s campaign, which Lewandowski managed before being fired.


T-Mobile hired Turnberry last year, but Lewandowski has denied any connection to the firm in the past. “I have nothing to do with Turnberry Solutions,” he told POLITICO in September.

But T-Mobile said on Friday that Lewandowski was advising the firm on the proposed merger as part of its work with Turnberry.

“Corey Lewandowski is now affiliated with that firm and they have offered perspective to T-Mobile on a variety of topics, including the pending transaction,” T-Mobile said in a statement.

The arrangement was first reported by The Wall Street Journal. Lewandowski didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Jason Osborne, a Turnberry lobbyist, said in an interview that Lewandowski was acting as an “unpaid strategic adviser” to the firm and had never lobbied for its clients.

“Corey Lewandowski has never gotten any money from Turnberry Solutions,” Osborne said. “He is not a paid employee of the firm.”

Lewandowski started a lobbying firm, Avenue Strategies, with another Trump campaign veteran weeks after Trump was elected. But he never registered as a lobbyist, saying he did consulting work that didn’t meet the definition of lobbying.

Lewandowski quit Avenue last year after questions arose about whether he was selling access to the president. Two of Lewandowski’s former colleagues at Avenue, Mike Rubino and Osborne, left the firm around the same he did and started Turnberry, bringing along several former Avenue clients. Lewandowski sometimes lived and worked out of the same Capitol Hill rowhouse that served as Turnberry’s headquarters, but he insisted he had no connection to the firm.

Osborne declined to say when Lewandowski became an informal adviser to Turnberry.

“Corey has been providing, as a friend for over 20 years, advice and counsel, and that relationship has never changed,” Osborne said.

There’s evidence that Lewandowski has offered at least some advice to other Turnberry clients, as well. Joel Sheltrown, vice president of governmental affairs at Elio Motors, a Turnberry client, told POLITICO last year that Lewandowski had joined a conference call that it held with Turnberry.

Lewandowski is also working as an adviser to Vice President Mike Pence’s leadership PAC, Great America Committee.

POLITICO Influence Intelligence and analysis on lobbying — weekday mornings, in your inbox. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

The PAC didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Marty Obst, the PAC’s executive director, told The Wall Street Journal that Lewandowski had been “nothing but professional.”

“To the best of my knowledge, he has never mentioned any clients in front of the vice president and the vice president’s team,” Obst said.

T-Mobile isn’t the only telecommunications company to turn to the president’s associates for advice on navigating Trump’s Washington. AT&T secretly hired Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime lawyer, paying him $600,000 in consulting fees.

Like Lewandowski, Cohen offered the company’s advice without registering as a lobbyist. Randall Stephenson, AT&T’s chief executive, later apologized for hiring Cohen and said it had been “a big mistake.”

T-Mobile maintains a major presence in Washington, spending more than $8.3 million on lobbying last year, according to disclosure flings. The company retains nine other lobbying firms in addition to Turnberry.

The company said it hired Turnberry in August, although Turnberry didn’t register to lobby for T-Mobile until January. Osborne said Turnberry’s work for T-Mobile in the first few months didn’t require the firm to register.

A scope-of-work document that Turnberry provided to T-Mobile dated July 29 — months before T-Mobile announced the proposed merger — and that was obtained by POLITICO states that Turnberry “will execute meetings with important Administration officials to work towards building an active dialogue that will serve as a pre-cursor to any moves that T-Mobile does in the telecom business community.”

T-Mobile has paid Turnberry $100,000 in lobbying fees, according to disclosure filings, although that does not include any earlier payments for work that Turnberry didn’t count as lobbying.

Marianne LeVine and Daniel Lippman contributed reporting.