DHS scrapped MAGA PR contract after exposé, Noem ouster
The $250,000 contract had alarmed procurement experts over its requirement that the winner have demonstrated loyalty to Donald Trump.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security terminated its arrangement with a MAGA public relations firm after the ouster of former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and the revelation that the company had ties to Noem adviser and Trump campaign veteran Corey Lewandowski.
In February, I reported for The Guardian that American Made Media Company, a firm launched by a former Trump White House staffer and other former campaign staff, had received a $250,000 contract to provide "strategic counsel" and PR advice "to DHS senior executives including the DHS Secretary."
The contract had alarmed experts due to its explicit partisanship — demanding that the recipient "demonstrate an established track record of promoting Trump administration policies" — and how its preference for "those who served in a cabinet agency during the first Trump presidency" appeared designed to strictly limit the pool of applicants.
As I noted, the leadership at American Made Media Company also had ties to Lewandowski: the firm's Justin Clark and Sean Dollman both worked alongside him on President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign. Tim Murtaugh, who was Trump's 2020 communications director and the person specifically tasked with fulfilling the contract, refused to answer my questions about his own relationship with Noem's adviser.
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Both Noem and Lewandowsi were pushed out of DHS in March. Sources "inside and close" to the White House told the New York Post, a right-wing tabloid, that Trump decided to fire Noem after she was asked at a congressional hearing about reports she and Lewandowski had "sexual relations." Noem had also claimed that the president signed off on another $220 million communications contract, which reportedly bothered the president.
Public records show the arrangement with American Made Media Company was terminated soon after. The contract, which began in September 2025 and was set to run through June 2026, ended the same month that Noem and Lewandowski left DHS, according to the government website that tracks federal spending. The early cancellation means that the firm has received less than half of the $250,000 it originally expected, records showing DHS clawed back most of the money obligated under the contract and ultimately spent just under $105,000.
Under Noem, DHS had also awarded a $33.7 million no-bid contract to Clark Construction, the federal contractor that is leading the construction of Trump's White House ballroom, as The Redoubt exclusively reported in February. That contract, to demolish a set of historic buildings on DHS's Washington campus, was worth millions more than an independent government estimate said the work should cost. It has not been cancelled.
