“Trump says dishonest people have to be prosecuted after DOJ launches investigation into Corey Lewandowski”, 22 October 2026 (Photo via Washington Examiner — the original report)
As it ran on the front
I went back to the federal building on Church Street for something that had nothing to do with any of this — a notarized form for the county, because the fan belt on the Buick is down to threads and I didn't want to fail inspection over a sticker again. The guard at the first window sent me to the second floor. The second floor sent me to records. Records told me records had moved to the annex a year and a half ago, which nobody had told the guard, and somewhere between the annex and the elevator I picked up, without asking for it, most of a story a different agency had been having a different morning about.
The clerk at records, who was eating a sandwich and in no hurry, told me the Justice Department had opened an inquiry into Corey Lewandowski on the twenty-second of October. I wrote the date on the back of my own form, since I didn't have anything else to write it on. The same day, she said, the president had told reporters that if people in his administration weren't being honest, they had to be prosecuted. Does the reporting give a different date for either one of those?…
…(cont) I'm sorry, I'll come at the day again, from a different side. Something had to travel for that inquiry to exist at all. A referral from the inspector general's office over at Homeland Security had to leave one building and arrive at another before the Justice Department could open anything on the twenty-second. Who carried it? Whose hands, whose inbox, whose car? The reporting doesn't say, and neither did anybody at records.
I don't mean to linger on this, but here's another side of the same day. At the house I took two things out of the toolbox drawer where I keep the odd screws, not to fix anything, just to lay them on the bench the way you'd lay down two receipts to see if they're for the same job. One was the sentence about honesty. The other was a word the Times used — rare. One of the rare instances, they called it, of a Trump ally facing an inquiry at all in this term. Does that tell us how many instances there have been that weren't rare? It doesn't say.
Forgive me, one more pass at the day, because I keep finding a different piece of it. Nine days before this Thursday, on the thirteenth of October, the same president used almost the same sentence about a different ally. Kimberly Guilfoyle was stepping down as ambassador to Greece over allegations she'd asked a donor to cover her credit card bills, and asked about the decision, he said the administration didn't like what they were reading. Nine days. Two allies. The same shrug, near enough, both times.
I'm sorry, I keep coming back to this. I stood on the porch while the dog did her business, holding two slips of paper — one with a date circled, one with a quote on it — and hadn't decided whether to throw either one away.
I was almost to the truck when the clerk came out after me. Excuse me, she said, before you go — you've dated the form wrong. I looked down at what I'd written. It was the twenty-second. I asked her: which twenty-second?
🍺
“He says if people in his government aren't honest, they have to be prosecuted, and the same day his own Justice Department opens a file on Corey Lewandowski off a DHS referral. That's not irony, that's the rule showing you how it actually gets enforced — on everybody, until it reaches somebody he knows. Nine days before it was Guilfoyle and a donor's credit card; the rule holds right up until it walks into the room he's standing in.”
“This proves the president holds everyone to the same standard — an inquiry happening at all is the accountability working exactly as designed. Sure, the Times called it one of the rare times an ally's faced one in two terms, but rare just means thorough, not — wait, that's not landing the way I wanted it to.”
The DOJ disbanded its crypto enforcement team and ordered inconsistent investigations closed while the president's family runs a crypto business CNBC, 8 April 2025 (Blanche memo)
President Donald Trump declared that employees of his administration needed to be honest on the same day it was disclosed that the Department of Justice opened an inquiry into Corey Lewandowski, a former adviser at the Department of Homeland Security. The investigation reportedly originated from a referral from the DHS inspector general.…
The DOJ disbanded its crypto enforcement team and ordered inconsistent investigations closed while the president's family runs a crypto business CNBC, 8 April 2025 (Blanche memo)
The details of the inquiry remain unclear, but it is one of the rare instances in which a Trump ally or appointee has been investigated for potential wrongdoing during the president’s second term.
The DOJ disbanded its crypto enforcement team and ordered inconsistent investigations closed while the president's family runs a crypto business CNBC, 8 April 2025 (Blanche memo)
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.
