EXCLUSIVE: Married South Dakota governor Kristi Noem and Trump advisor Corey Lewandowski

A rising Republican star tipped by many to be Donald Trump‘s running mate should he win the presidential nomination has been involved in a clandestine affair for years, multiple sources tell DailyMail.com.

Married South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, 51 – who stresses her belief in ‘family values’ – and Trump advisor Corey Lewandowski, who is also married, began carrying on in 2019, if not before.

Now news of the relationship threatens to wreck Noem’s chances of joining Trump’s ticket in a potential rematch with President Joe Biden.

Neither denied the affair when asked by DailyMail.com. The Governor issued a statement attacking us for the timing of the article, while Lewandowski did not respond to a request for comment

However, after the initial publication of the article, Noem’s spokesman Ian Fury vehemently insisted the pair had never had an affair.

The two met up on Friday last week when Lewandowski traveled with Trump to Rapid City, South Dakota, for a campaign rally. But the pair – who were made aware of a pending story about their relationship – were careful to have no public interaction in contrast to previous occasions, as DailyMail.com’s exclusive photos show.

Glamorous Noem – who served four terms as her state’s only member of the US House of Representatives – won the governorship in 2018 promising to uphold the wholesome family values that she said South Dakotans have ‘long embraced’.

Defending ‘traditional marriage’, which she defined as ‘a special, God-given union between one man and one woman’, was particularly important to her.

It was the foundation for her beliefs, policy priorities and the ideals she lives by, said Noem, who has a son and two daughters with her husband Bryon who she married in 1992.

She has long been linked with Lewandowski, 49, who has been pushing hard for Trump to add her to his ticket.

‘He may not be very smart, but it takes big balls to lobby to have your mistress named one of the most powerful people in the country,’ one GOP operative told DailyMail.com. 

The far-right website American Greatness claimed in 2021 the two had been romantically involved, although it gave no details.

At the time she scornfully dismissed the story as ‘total garbage and a disgusting lie’, and said she loved her husband and was ‘proud of the God-fearing family’ they had raised, and the story quickly died.

But a DailyMail.com investigation has uncovered extensive evidence of the couple’s romantic relationship: Dozens of trips that mixed business with pleasure, flights on donors’ private planes, and stays at luxury resorts where their intimacy was observed and noted.

Former Trump operative Charles Johnson wrote in a Substack post that he had seen them acting ‘in a very flirtatious manner’ at the August 2020 meeting of the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) at The Cloister resort on Sea Island, Georgia.

Johnson told DailyMail.com he had seen Noem discreetly take Lewandowski’s hand and put it in her lap. Lewandowski put his arm on her back at the same time.

The pair ‘seemed to be dating despite being married to other people’, Johnson wrote on Substack.

Two other sources who were at the RAGA event were surprised by the obvious affection between Noem and Lewandowski. 

‘A lot of people were talking about it,’ says one, a conservative political strategist who saw the two as they were headed off for a long walk on the beach.

Event organizers were happy to have Noem on hand because of her star quality, but her presence was unexpected as South Dakota’s then-attorney general, Jason Ravnsborg, was there to represent the state.

Noem and Lewandowski have often traveled together – frequently on private planes provided by Republican power brokers.

‘We often had no idea where she was, or even if she was in state or out of state, she would simply disappear,’ one staffer in Pierre, the South Dakota capital, told DailyMail.com.

Fury, the governor’s spokesman said in his initial statement: ‘This is so predictable that you would attack Governor Noem less than a week after she endorsed Donald J. Trump as the 47th President of the United States.

‘As Governor Noem said during that endorsement speech: “Yes, I will be attacked for speaking the truth to all of you tonight. Yes, I expect Joe Biden, these candidates, their political operatives, and the media will perpetuate ugly, hateful misinformation in an attempt to destroy me and my family because of my opinions. 

‘It’s nothing new. I’m getting used to it honestly.” ‘

Lewandowski, who married 9/11 widow Alison Hardy in 2005 and has four children, did not respond to requests for comment.

He allegedly had an affair with campaign press secretary Hope Hicks, and in the run-up to the 2016 election he was arrested for manhandling Breitbart News reporter Michelle Fields at a press conference in Florida. Charges were later dropped.

After Trump’s election, Lewandowski gained a reputation for being a loose cannon. 

‘Corey was always running his mouth off, and after a few drinks you could see the pin starting to fall out of the grenade,’ a defense contractor who knew him said.

Following a party at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, singer Joy Villa filed a police report against Lewandowski for sexual assault, saying he ‘smacked my ass really hard’, and that it was ‘almost violent in nature’.

By 2019 he was a key advisor to Noem and the pair went on a deep-sea fishing trip hosted by the late conservative billionaire and GOP mega-donor Foster Friess, who along with his wife, Lynn, ranked among Noem’s top political and financial supporters.

In October 2019, when her state was blanketed by an early snowstorm, the governor, accompanied by Lewandowski, embarked on at least a week of travel that included stops at three political events.

Noem’s appearance at these affairs doesn’t seem to have been essential, especially as she had been in office for only 10 months at that point and was already drawing criticism over the time and money she was spending on out-of-state travel.

On October 5, the duo attended the Denim & Diamonds Gala fundraiser in Carmel, Indiana, which raises money for the agricultural industry.

Four days later, they were at another fundraiser, in Lake Charles, Louisiana, for a conservative website called The Hayride. 

From there they traveled to AmpFest, a regular gathering of the MAGA hard core held at a Trump property in Miami.

Noem’s appearance at AmpFest, which stretched over parts of at least two days, seems particularly superfluous.

Her presence wasn’t even announced and a source who was also there reported she spent much of her time leisurely accompanying Lewandowski on his rounds and sharing food, drink and other VIP perks.

‘It was not an A-tier event,’ says the source, a Trump Administration official. ‘It was weird to see a governor from the other side of the country be there.’

The two spent so much time at AmpFest cozily secluded, the official concluded that they were a couple happily in love.

He spotted them several times when he drove a golf cart to a remote building on the property where Lewandowski and other VIPs were lodged. 

‘I had met Corey a few times, but that was the first time I saw Kristi,’ he recalled. ‘I told Corey it was nice to meet his wife.

‘He looked at me and said, ‘That’s not my wife’.’

In the months leading up to the 2020 election, Noem and Lewandowski became virtually inseparable companions on the Trump campaign trail.

By then, their relationship was an open secret at the White House and among high-level GOP lobbyists and political consultants.

‘It became a joke,’ says the Trump Administration employee who had first seen them at AMPFest.

‘Every time someone said something about how Kristi would be a savior to the conservative movement, someone else would say, ‘Right, the savior that’s f**king Corey Lewandowski’.’

In summer 2021, Noem and Lewandowski were at the Republican Governors Association event at the St. Regis in Aspen, Colorado.

According to sources on hand or who heard directly about what transpired from multiple people that were, Noem missed several events she was expected to attend.

The reason, said one, was she was ‘holed up’ with her companion, who had been given a room at the nearby Hotel Jerome, much to Noem’s annoyance.

‘She raised a stink about it with event organizers and succeeded in getting Lewandowski transferred to a room at the St. Regis near hers,’ another source said.

In September that year Lewandowski and Noem were off again, this time to a Las Vegas fundraiser for an organization that fights substance abuse.

Noem was the keynote speaker at the event, which was held at a Benihana restaurant – Lewandowski officially attended in his capacity as head of the super-PAC Trump had appointed him to the prior year.

According to published accounts, after quickly getting drunk, Lewandowski was escorted to a banquet table where he joined dignitaries including Trashelle Odom, wife of a major Trump donor, construction executive John Odom.

Lewandowski propositioned Odom after disclosing that he had once stabbed two people to death, that his penis was way longer than normal, and showed her his hotel key.

In a complaint to police, Odom said Lewandowski’s ‘statements, demeanor and aggressive behavior’ made her ‘intimidated and frightened and fearful for my safety and that of my family members.’

When Odom tried to change the subject by asking Lewandowski about his wife, he told her he satisfied his sexual needs ‘elsewhere’.

He also shared that he found Governor Noem ‘hot’.

Odom fled the table after Lewandowski touched her behind, but he chased after her, threw a drink at her, and called her ‘stupid’.

Trump immediately fired him from his super-PAC post and Noem announced she was axing him too from his role as her senior political advisor.

Yet Noem didn’t sever the relationship. 

In fact, the morning after the Benihana incident, the two flew on a private plane, provided by a donor, to Santa Barbara, California, where Noem spoke at a Young America’s Foundation event at Rancho del Cielo, President Reagan’s vacation home.

‘When Las Vegas happened, she fired him without really firing him,’ a source revealed. ‘He never left.’

Noem didn’t want word to leak that Lewandowski was still working for her and that they continued to spend after-hours time together, especially to her family. 

‘Her husband would have lost his mind,’ the source said, so Noem ‘only told staffers that needed to know’.

The source described Lewandowski’s Las Vegas clownery as par for the course at the governor’s office as well.

He’d make comments about Noem’s appearance – ‘that she was hot or had a nice ass’, said the source.

‘Kristi would make excuses for his behavior and apologize to staffers for him.’

Six months after the Vegas incident, Noem and Lewandowski made plans to book a hotel room together in Seattle while there for an event to raise money for Republican candidate Jesse Jensen, an informed source said.

Then in April 2022 they went together to a Houston fundraiser for GOP candidate Greg Travis.

Travis posted a photograph on Twitter of himself and his wife standing with the couple. Lewandowski was beaming. Noem did not look so happy.The following month, Politico reported that the governor had officially brought Lewandowski back as a political adviser.

Noem then implemented additional procedures – including instructing staffers not to share her private schedule with her husband – in hopes of minimizing more information seeping out about the scope of his role or their personal relationship, two former staffers told DailyMail.com.

They continued to travel together when she was promoting her memoir in July 2022.

Last week when Lewandowski traveled to South Dakota, Noem greeted the arrivals on the tarmac, but she and Lewandowski were careful to have zero interaction in public. 

The presence of Noem’s husband Bryon – who is said to ‘detest’ the operative – and her mother Corinne Arnold may have contributed to the apparent snub.

‘The governor and her husband welcomed everyone as they disembarked in Rapid City – first Secret Service and then other members of the team who had traveled with the former President,’ said one onlooker.

‘When Lewandowski began coming down the stairs Noem was looking in the other direction. He clearly registered her and almost immediately he looked away and off to the left. 

‘As he did Noem looked over towards him before she too immediately looked the other way.’

‘But unlike other members of Trump’s party, Lewandowski walked straight past the state’s first couple. ‘He can hardly have had time to say ‘Hi’,’ said the witness.

One political operative told DailyMail.com the ethics and propriety of a  romance between Noem and Lewandowski is in some ways in the eye of the beholder.

‘I’m a cynical political consultant, so I assume everybody is f**king somebody,’ he said, and in his personal case, he wasn’t surprised or bothered by the idea that Noem would have an extramarital affair while simultaneously promoting her brand as a conservative Christian.

‘But,’ he concluded, ‘if I put on my normal-person hat, especially in a state like South Dakota, where family values are important, yes, I think a lot of people would be mind-blowingly angry.’