2016 The return of Corey Lewandowski Ousted Trump campaign manager playing a widening role behind the scenes.

Among the Trump campaign staffers and VIPs mingling in a back room at the Manchester Radisson on the last Thursday in August was one blast from the past who is reasserting himself inside Trump world: former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.

Just six days later, on his home turf in New Hampshire, Lewandowski was back offering advice to Trump insiders behind the scenes at an afternoon campaign rally.


Lewandowski and Mike Biundo, Donald Trump’s New Hampshire-based senior national adviser, stepped aside to confer about the campaign, according to four people with knowledge of the meeting. Later, they were joined by the campaign’s New Hampshire state director, Matt Ciepielowski, and its state political director, Mark Sanborn. Lewandowski wanted a briefing on the current state of the New Hampshire operation. Two months into the job, Biundo wanted help navigating a campaign organization that remained chaotic.

Lewandowski apparently was eager to help Biundo coordinate with Trump Tower: “Anything you need, you go through me,” he told Biundo, according to one New Hampshire Republican.

Lewandowski was fired as Trump’s campaign manager in June after manhandling a reporter and in the face of concerns that he encouraged the candidate’s reckless statements. He was effectively replaced by Paul Manafort, his chief rival in Trump’s orbit, who himself resigned under fire on Aug. 19.

Lewandowski declined to comment.

But now, with the departure of Manafort and the installation of a regime much friendlier to him, Lewandowski’s engagement with the Trump campaign appears to once again be on the rise, not just in the swing state of New Hampshire but also nationally.

Even in exile, Lewandowski maintained a close relationship with Trump. But in recent weeks, with the absence of a leadership team actively committed to boxing him out, he has reengaged with the operation more broadly, listening in on morning conference calls and conferring regularly with campaign CEO Stephen Bannon and deputy campaign manager David Bossie — an old friend who persuaded Trump to hire Lewandowski last year — according to Republicans close to the campaign.

Ironically, despite Lewandowski’s reputation for encouraging Trump’s impulses and the elevation of fellow outsiders like Bannon at the expense of Washington veteran Manafort, the resurgence of Lewandowski’s influence coincides with the most disciplined, on-message stretch of Trump’s candidacy.

Trump Tower Kremlinologists see in Lewandowski’s reengagement signs that Trump’s adult children and son-in-law Jared Kushner — who engineered his ouster and urged Manafort on their father — are ceding ground as Trump turns to a bevy of aides loyal to his influential megadonors Bob and Rebekah Mercer.

The Trump campaign emphasizes that Lewandowski has no decision-making authority, and those who work with Lewandowski describe his role as informal and advisory. “He weighs in particularly on issues that involve Trump directly,” said an activist involved in the campaign. “Where he should be going and not going. What he should comment on and not comment on.”

While critics see a conflict of interest between Lewandowski’s engagement with the campaign and his new gig as a paid commentator on CNN, the activist, at least, took the opposite view. “Corey is doing his job as a CNN correspondent to get insider information just like anyone in the journalism business,” said the activist. “Corey’s a journalist now.” A CNN spokeswoman declined to comment.

And campaign staffers describe him as a valuable source of institutional knowledge and New Hampshire expertise. “Corey remains a supporter of the campaign, and we're glad to receive any help he may offer,” said senior communications adviser Jason Miller.

Following Manafort’s departure, the time for a Lewandowski resurgence was ripe. After a summer marked by unforced errors, reports that Trump has one eye on a post-campaign media venture and a general sense of dismay, even staffers who clashed with their old boss were beginning to feel pangs of Lewandowski nostalgia set in.

“He was an a--hole,” said one former staffer, expressing the sentiment of colleagues who remain on the campaign. “But at least you know he wanted to win.”

In late August, ABC News reported that the Secret Service had been ordered to restore Lewandowski’s access to restricted areas at campaign rallies.

In early September, not long after the meeting with Biundo, a state-level campaign official said he was warned that Lewandowski was listening in on the regular morning conference call that includes communications and political staffers.

“His name is popping up more and more and more,” said a Republican official who works with the campaign. “He was not around, and then all of a sudden he was around again.”

Even top campaign staffers who are less than thrilled about the bombastic operative’s enduring presence see little point in resisting it. “They’re aware of it and they’re like, ‘What the hell are we going to do about it? Trump likes him,’” said one New Hampshire Republican who recently conferred with a Trump Tower official about it.

In New Hampshire, the campaign remains staffed with Lewandowski loyalists who stay in touch with their old boss, even as they remain reluctant to highlight the involvement of an operative whose tendency to attract controversy is dwarfed only by that of the candidate himself.

“Corey’s a longtime close friend, and I talk to him on a regular basis as a friend,” said Trump’s New Hampshire co-chair Steve Stepanek. Another New Hampshire co-chair for Trump, state Rep. Fred Doucette, continues to talk politics with Lewandowski over breakfast when his old boss is not in New York, where CNN provides him with a hotel room.

“Do I ask him for advice? Absolutely,” said Doucette. “But is he intimately involved in the Trump campaign? No.”

Bob Burns, the campaign’s youth coalition chair, said he continues to regularly seek political advice from Lewandowski.

Most recently, Burns was slated to drive Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn, a Trump surrogate, during a swing through the state last weekend but was stripped of the duty at the last minute. Burns blamed the sudden change of plans on the machinations of a rival faction of New Hampshire Republicans and turned to Lewandowski’s counsel. “He just told me it was bullsh-- and those guys are a--holes,” Burns recounted.

The view of Lewandowski as Trump’s representative in the North extends beyond the campaign to the rest of New Hampshire’s political class.

“He’s still a trusted resource and a go-to guy,” said Aaron Day, a libertarian running for Senate as an independent. “When I’m trying to get access to Trump, I still go through Corey or through Corey’s guys because otherwise there’s a vacuum. How else do you get to Trump? There’s no legacy political apparatus that Trump has."