McAleenan testifies at a House committee hearing in July. Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images
Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan's top aide and spokesperson is resigning amid frustration in the White House over the Department of Homeland Security's handling of major policy rollouts and White House distrust of McAleenan and his inner circle, sources familiar with his resignation tell Axios.
Why it matters: Andrew Meehan's departure comes amid broader internal tensions between the White House and DHS leadership. President Trump is wary of McAleenan, whom he associates with the Obama administration, and his top aides, several current and former administration officials tell us. These sources say Trump has no intention of formally nominating McAleenan for a permanent position.
"Meehan, who was in Panama in advance of the secretary's visit during the Flores rollout, made the decision to leave government a couple of weeks ago," a senior DHS official told Axios.
The White House and DHS did not respond to Axios' requests for comment.
Behind the scenes: These growing tensions were exacerbated by what some White House officials saw as DHS’ botched rollout of a new proposal that would reverse the Flores agreement, a decades-old court decision that prevents the government from holding minors in detention for longer than 20 days with their parents, per sources with direct knowledge.
White House press and communications officials were frustrated with McAleenan for holding a press conference about the new proposal at the Ronald Reagan building, which houses U.S. Customs and Border Patrol's D.C. office, rather than at a location like the White House that would have attracted more media attention, according to senior administration officials.
"Flores is a huge deal to the president," a senior official said. "This is the underpinning of the whole fight. This just seems to me this is a very important rollout and they ... undersold it at the Reagan Center.
"[McAleenan] could have been on all the TVs if he wanted to. But not everybody's taking live coverage from the Reagan Center at the last minute. At some point something has got to go right at DHS with their messaging and rollouts."
Trump was also dissatisfied with the coverage of the July ICE raids. Stories from Breitbart and the New York Times that stated that only 35 of the roughly 2,000 migrants ICE targeted were detained angered the president, a source with direct knowledge said. Not long after the raids, Carol Danko, the spokesperson for ICE, was pushed out, White House officials tell us. Danko says she resigned.
A senior White House official added in a text: “Decision to fire Carol Danko was made by ICE, not WH, although we support whatever they feel is necessary to manage their team. There was disagreement between WH and DHS Comms on how to execute the Flores rollout, but COS ultimately signed off on the plan as executed.”
However, a source familiar says the decision to remove Danko was made by senior DHS officials, not ICE officials.
The big picture: McAleenan's position at DHS has been fraught for weeks, and it's an open secret within the White House and DHS that Trump prefers acting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services director Ken Cuccinelli and acting Customs and Border Protection director Mark Morgan, who have fiercely defended his immigration policies on TV.
CNN reported earlier this month that McAleenan was prepared to resign in June and that he had felt "undermined" by subordinate immigration hardliners.
"Going from [former DHS Secretary Kirstjen] Nielsen to McAleenan makes no sense," a senior administration official said. "McAleenan doesn’t agree with the president on immigration, and that’s no secret. It’s unclear why he's even still there."
Editor's note: This story has been updated with new details about Danko's removal, and to reflect that McAleenan's position at DHS, not ICE, has been fraught for weeks.
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Data: Presidential Coalition's forms 8872 from the IRS; Note: Chart excludes undated contributions; Chart: Harry Stevens/Axios
Former Trump campaign deputy manager David Bossie, who Axios recently exposed as milking donors by flaunting President Trump’s name, is trying to repair and revive his controversial fundraising operation.
The bottom line: Bossie suspended fundraising after Axios revealed that very little of the money he was raising was going to political campaigns. Trump was livid, forcing the Bossie retreat. Now, Bossie tells us he is making several changes — presumably to get back into Trump’s good graces and back into the fundraising business.
The impact: Bossie directed his political group, the Presidential Coalition, to cease all fundraising on May 7, 2 days after Axios published the findings of its investigation, done in collaboration with the Campaign Legal Center (CLC).
That's in part thanks to the president, who personally authorized the Trump campaign to issue a blistering statement, without naming Bossie, condemning "any organization that deceptively uses the president's name, likeness, trademarks, or branding and confuses voters," in the wake of our story.
"The president was pissed," a Trump campaign official told Axios. "He doesn’t like the idea that his supporters would be tricked into donating to things they thought were the campaign ... and he doesn’t like it when people benefit from using his name, especially financially."
The fallout: Bossie told Axios that the group is "currently redesigning our fundraising programs, because of my longstanding relationship with the president and because of my desire to only help the president and the administration."
The Presidential Coalition will no longer reference "The Trump Coalition" in its mailers and fundraising materials, Bossie said. He claims they were going to stop using that language after 2019 anyway, "due to the regulatory regime."
The group will also be far more clear that the Presidential Coalition is an affiliate of Citizens United: "We will print it in our mailers and on the envelopes to be even more transparent," Bossie said.
Despite these changes, Bossie still claims that he doesn't think "there was anything whatsoever that was done outside of the appropriate fundraising avenues."
By the numbers: The Presidential Coalition's average daily contributions plunged from over $20,000 per day in early May to under $2,000 per day by the end of June, according to a new Axios/CLC analysis of the organization's latest IRS filing from the first half of 2019.
Worth noting: The majority of donations made to the Presidential Coalition (62%) in the first half of 2019 came from unitemized, small donors who gave less than $200 in a year — similar to the contributions from previous years. The dates of those small-donor contributions are not known, given IRS regulations.
The state of play: Despite the backlash it faced, the Presidential Coalition is still spending just a small percentage of its money on direct political activity, though the percentage is higher than that of 2017 and 2018:
The group spent $5.9 million in the first half of 2019, but devoted just $148,100 (or 2.5%) of its overall spending on political contributions. Another $325,000 was spent on "digital ad buys" that correspond to a July pro-Trump digital ad campaign, according to CLC's analysis.
Taken together, the Presidential Coalition dedicated nearly 8% of overall spending to direct political activity, up from 3% in 2017 and 2018.
As before, most of the Presidential Coalition's spending went toward more fundraising, as well as rent and payroll.
What to watch: Bossie said his group has also been building up a $4.3 million war chest, and that starting after Labor Day, the Presidential Coalition will spend $3 million — or $1 million per month — over September, October and November on ads supporting the president and state and local candidates.
Worth noting: Bossie, a Fox News contributor, was totally absent on the network for nearly 3 months after our story ran. However, he did appear on the network again on July 31 to defend Trump after his tweets attacking Baltimore Rep. Elijah Cummings. A Fox News spokesperson told Axios that Bossie is still a contributor.
If new gun legislation doesn't pass in September, it won't get done before the 2020 election, sources involved in the talks between the White House and Capitol Hill tell Axios.
The bottom line: "It's September or bust," said a source involved in the discussions. "We'll either have everything ready for when Congress returns, drop it on the floor, vote on it and move on — or we blow it."
The state of play: The president genuinely wants to expand background checks, according to White House and Hill officials. He's directed the Domestic Policy Council and Office of Legislative Affairs to provide him with options for a reform package, these sources said.
As of now, Trump has expressed support for big, vague ideas — including tougher background checks and restrictions on firearms access to the mentally ill — but on the gun issue, consensus typically evaporates when lawmakers dive into the details.
It's also still unclear whether House Democrats, who have already passed a bill to extend background checks to all gun purchases, would support a slimmer package.
Behind the scenes: Rudy Giuliani says that he and Trump have discussed the need for "a bigger debate" over how much a psychiatrist is able to share from sessions with their patients.
"If a psychiatrist could disclose a little more, you might have been able to catch that guy," Giuliani said, referring to Sandy Hook gunman Adam Lanza, who had seen a psychiatrist before gunning down the elementary school.
Reality check: The Department of Health and Human Services sent a letter to doctors after the Aurora and Sandy Hook shootings specifically clarifying that they are allowed to release a patient's information "when you believe the patient presents a serious danger to himself or other people." It was also never reported that Lanza had revealed his intent to kill during his sessions with his psychiatrist.
"It would be really illuminating" to have psychiatrists testify about when their patients reveal a desire to kill people, Giuliani added.
Giuliani also argued that the controversial New York "stop, question and frisk" policy is an effective deterrent for illegal gun owners.
In 2013, a judge for the Southern District of New York ruled the policy violated the 14th Amendment's promise of equal protection.
Worth noting: It's unclear how serious these discussions were, and whether Trump agrees with Giuliani. Two senior White House officials say they haven't heard anything about bringing psychiatrists into the larger gun debate.
The big picture: The White House has been in listening mode over the past 2 weeks, including setting up staff sessions with aides to Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and others. The president and Ivanka Trump have also called around for advice on how to proceed.
As of now, the Manchin-Toomey bill, which would expand background checks to nearly all commercial firearm sales, is the jumping-off point.
But the bill, introduced in 2013 after the Sandy Hook shooting, previously failed after only getting the support of 4 Senate Republicans. Capitol Hill sources say they are waiting on White House officials to draft a "framework" showing the gun legislation that Trump has in mind.
Republicans who support gun control say that Trump is uniquely positioned — thanks to his alliance with the NRA — to give Republicans political cover to move to the left on guns.
Yes, but: Democrats familiar with the conversations and sources close to the president are deeply skeptical that any efforts will succeed.
"You think Donald Trump Jr. and the NRA, Stephen Miller, Mick Mulvaney and Mike Pence are going to let him be the first president to restrict gun ownership?" said a Democratic congressional aide involved in the talks. "I'm not their political adviser, but their strategy is to get as many base voters as they can. ... A congresswoman got shot in the head. Babies were slaughtered. If we couldn't do it then, we won't do it now."
"I'm not surprised he's going to try and push for more reforms," said a former White House official. "Remember, the man is not an ideologue. He supported gun control for years before he became president. I'm surprised because it's bad politics."
