New revelations are emerging almost daily regarding procurement irregularities during the last 14 months at the highest levels of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Among other things, former Secretary Noem was featured in a $220 million advertising campaign that reportedly involved a large government contract with a Delaware company created only days before the agreement—a company with no government contracts experience but that had extensive ties to Ms. Noem’s former advisor and her chief spokesperson. Corey Lewandowski, the Special Government Employee working with Secretary Noem, allegedly demanded “success fees” and other improper payments from prospective contractors, expedited procurements to steer contract awards, and engaged in other shocking conduct. See, e.g., here, here, here, here. Although these are only allegations (which have been “adamantly denie[d]”), as GWU Law School’s Associate Dean Jessica Tillipman aptly explained: if a special government employee had control over which companies got contracts and sought payment from companies in exchange for winning contracts, that would “raise bright red flags of illegality.”

Although the alleged DHS procurement improprieties have many in the procurement community sitting on the edges of their seats (and some in the press focusing on alleged salacious personal matters), there are important lessons regarding potential bid protests in the stories swirling around DHS.

Presumably, most readers understand they must just say no to pay-to-play suggestions or demands, contract steering schemes, and other flagrant improprieties. But contractors that pursued and were not awarded DHS contracts during the past 14 months also should consider whether current or future revelations of alleged misconduct reveal previously unknown protest grounds that require urgent action to preserve.

In short, if a contractor has reason to believe that the improper motivations or official misconduct that allegedly occurred during Ms. Noem’s and Mr. Lewandowski’s tenure caused the loss of a DHS contract award, the contractor must actively and continuously investigate the knowable circumstances as they come to light and timely pursue (or lose) protest grounds.

Information regarding such potential bid protests may become available months or more than one year after an agency’s award announcement and debriefing. However, the timeliness period for pursuing a challenge at GAO is 10 days from when the basis of protest is or should have been known by the contractor. Although the Tucker Act generally establishes a six-year statute of limitations for filing bid protest complaints at the Court of Federal Claims (COFC), the court applies the doctrine of laches to bar suits when a the court determines that equitable considerations do not favor a plaintiff that unreasonably delayed in pursuing its claims.[1] Thus, disappointed offerors should remain vigilant to protect their rights to bring a protest challenge at either the COFC or GAO.

Historical Precedent

Timely bid protests filed weeks or months after an award and debriefing are not common—but they also are not unheard of. Typically, such protests occur when a belated revelation provides a basis for a timely challenge after the bid protest period ordinarily would have closed.[2] As explained below, such cases typically involve a timeliness inquiry that turns on whether the protester diligently pursued the information related to the claim.

The most interesting example of a post-award scandal revelation that gave new life to disappointed offerors’ prospects occurred more than 20 years ago and involved a senior U.S. Air Force official named Darleen Druyun. Unlike the developing DHS scandal, the “Druyun Debacle”[3] did not involve accusations of an extremely expensive ad campaign or a hard-knuckle pay-to-play scheme from which high-level political officials and their affiliates allegedly profited.

Instead, Ms. Druyun, who had been a senior civil servant and became the Principal Deputy Undersecretary of the Air Force for Procurement in 1993, later pled guilty to crimes involving decisions that favored a large contractor with which she had developed improper ties. In late 2004, she pled guilty to violating the conflict of interest provisions of 18 U.S.C. § 208(a) because she had engaged in employment negotiations with a large aerospace company while negotiating on behalf of the Air Force for the lease of 100 aircraft from that company. She also contacted the company’s officials and requested employment positions for her daughter and her eventual son-in-law, both of whom were hired by the company.

After Ms. Druyun’s guilty plea and details of her conduct came to light, several contractors pursued bid protests alleging that her improper motivations had negatively affected their evaluations and chances for awards. Ms. Druyun conceded in her plea agreement that she had been “influenced by her perceived indebtedness to [the company] for employing her future son-in-law and daughter.” She admitted that with respect to a large procurement related to an avionics modernization program, she awarded the contract despite the fact that “an objective selection authority may not have selected” the awardee.[4] And with respect to a small-diameter bomb procurement, Ms. Druyun’s bias in favor of the same company improperly affected the procurement when she became “materially involved in the decisionmaking process” that “culminat[ed] in the deletion of” certain requirements that favored the awardee’s competitor. The bid protests were sustained and resulted in relief for the protesters.[5]

Potential Protests of DHS Procurements in 2025 and Early 2026

The allegations swirling around DHS and this potential scandal are in their early days, and we don’t know whether the accusations of improprieties can be demonstrated to the satisfaction of GAO or COFC. But first, a potential protester will have to learn about and develop a sufficient connection between its DHS loss and the alleged Lewandowski/Noem misconduct to satisfy the bid protest pleading requirements. Such a would-be protester will also have to demonstrate that a protest being pursued long after the award decision and debriefing is timely.

Evidence Needed to Substantiate a Protest Allegation

A disappointed DHS offeror will not be able to challenge an award at GAO or COFC simply by alleging, without more, that there was criminal conduct at the highest levels of DHS and that it affected the evaluation and award decision in a specific procurement. Instead, to satisfy the pleading standard, a challenger will be required to allege and explain facts that substantiate the existence of a nexus between the alleged DHS improprieties and the purportedly flawed evaluation process and award decision in the protester’s procurement.

Notably, in July 2025, GAO clarified its bid protest pleading standard and explained that protesters could not pursue “fishing expeditions” but instead must “provide, at a minimum, credible allegations that are supported by evidence and are sufficient, if uncontradicted, to establish the likelihood of the protester’s claim of improper agency action.”[6]

To satisfy GAO’s requirements, a protester must show it submitted an offer and that, absent the alleged impropriety, it was likely to win a specific contract award. To “establish the likelihood of the protester’s claim of improper agency action” in the procurement award being challenged, the protester must tie the specific evaluation and award decision to the alleged Noem/Lewandowski activities. In other words, the protester must have “credible allegations that are supported by evidence” involving the procurement in which it submitted a proposal and be able to demonstrate a sufficient likelihood of prevailing absent the impropriety. General complaints about Lewandowski/Noem improprieties in other procurements will not suffice.

Timeliness and Diligent Pursuit

Putting aside debriefing exceptions (which aren’t relevant here), a disappointed offeror’s protest “shall be filed not later than 10 days after the basis of protest is known or should have been known (whichever is earlier).” That rule applies to information learned weeks, months, or even years after a debriefing is completed. There are at least two interesting twists on this rule that could come into play when developing a protest ground related to the recent allegations of DHS improprieties.

First, to be actionable, the disappointed offeror cannot have known about or reasonably suspected the improprieties affecting the relevant evaluation and award process and have chosen not to pursue an action at that time. For instance, a contractor might have heard rumors or reliable stories about pay-to-play within DHS and then learned something in the debriefing that would have reasonably raised enough suspicion to put the contractor on notice of a protest ground. Alternatively, a contractor could have received and properly declined a pay-to-play demand but chosen to “keep its head down” and not file a timely protest after the debriefing. Such a refusal might be understandable, but the offeror’s contemporaneous knowledge of impropriety related to the challenged procurement decision would likely render a post-public-disclosure protest untimely.

Second, potential protesters must diligently pursue protest grounds and failure to do so will render a challenge untimely. As GAO has explained its rule in Integration Technologies Group, Inc.:

A protester may not passively await information providing a basis for protest. Rather, a protester has an affirmative obligation to diligently pursue such information and a protester’s failure to utilize the most expeditious information-gathering approach under the circumstances may constitute a failure to meet its obligation in this regard.[7]

Thus, a disappointed offeror cannot rest after its debriefing and decision not to protest. This is unlikely to be a substantial concern in most cases because protest-supporting information does not frequently leak out long after contract performance begins and parties move on.

But the news of a developing scandal such as the current DHS allegations could play out differently. Information about the DHS investigation may trickle out in reports from the House Government Oversight Committee, reports from inspectors general, or other sources. And disappointed offerors may not learn about the disclosure or “put two and two together” quickly enough to pursue a protest within 10 days. For instance, in Integration Technologies, the disappointed offeror didn’t file a protest after the debriefing. Several weeks later, the agency’s product catalog related to the procurement was published, revealing that some of the awardees’ products were not compliant with the Trade Agreements Act (TAA) as required by the solicitation. The protester learned about the TAA-compliance issue eight days after the catalog’s publication and filed its protest 16 days after publication. GAO explained that such passive collection and efforts to exploit information failed to satisfy the diligent pursuit requirements.

With respect to the Druyun Debacle, GAO found that some protesters failed to diligently pursue information related to potential protests by not obtaining and utilizing evidence as quickly as possible. For instance, in Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation, filed in 2006, the disappointed offeror pursued a protest immediately after the 2001 award and debriefing; its attorneys received the evaluation record under the GAO protective order; and the record revealed that ratings had been changed in a way that appeared to favor of another company; but Ball nevertheless withdrew its protest. GAO determined that Ball’s knowledge from its own protest coupled with the 2004 public revelations that Ms. Druyun had shown improper bias in multiple procurements were sufficient to place Ball on notice in 2004 of its additional protest grounds. However, Ball did not protest until 2006, when the DoD Inspector General (IG) issued a report specifically finding that Ms. Druyun had “manipulated complex proposal evaluation ratings” to “hinder [Ball’s] proposal[s].” Because Ball had sufficient information to pursue its challenge in 2004 and waited until the 2006 IG report was issued, GAO determined it had not diligently pursued its protest, and its challenge was therefore untimely.

Key Take-Aways:

•   Facts developed and reported concerning alleged Noem or Lewandowski procurement improprieties that have or may soon make the news may revive contractors’ ability to pursue bid protests, though only with respect to grounds related to the newly revealed improprieties from 2025 and early 2026 DHS procurements.

•   Potential protesters cannot rely on alleged high-level corruption alone but must connect specific alleged improprieties to facts in the procurement for which they did not receive an award.

•   Potential protesters must not have known about or had reasonable access to information at the time of the earlier award and debriefing, and must have diligently pursued and developed protest grounds, for a challenge to be timely.

The clock may already be running, so potential protesters should be on the lookout for information that reasonably creates concerns about the fairness or propriety of procurements in which their company was involved. Companies should engage outside counsel with any questions about a potential challenge.

[1] See Harmonia Holdings Group, LLC v. United States, 166 Fed. Cl. 727, 737 (2023) (explaining that a plaintiff’s claim was not barred because its “delay was not unreasonable”).

[2] See, e.g., Integration Techs. Grp., Inc., B-419116.3, Dec. 22, 2020, at 4-5.

[3] J. Branstetter, The Darleen Druyun Debacle: Procurement, Power, and Corruption, GWU Master’s Thesis available at this DoD Defense Technical Information Center website.

[4] GAO Testimony Before a Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, Air Force Procurement: Protests Challenging Role of Biased Official Sustained, No. GAO-05-436T (Apr. 14, 2005), at 5-6.

[5] Id. at 6-7.

[6] Warfighter Focused Logistics, Inc., B-423546, B-423546.2, Aug. 5, 2025, at 4 n.3 (discussing GAO’s Proposal in Response to Section 885 of the Servicemember Quality of Life Improvement and National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025 (FY2025 NDAA), B-423717, July 14, 2025, at 22-23).

[7] B-419116.3, Dec. 22, 2020, at 4-5 (citing Bannum, Inc., B-408838, Dec. 11, 2013, at 5 (and other cases)).