Orangutan's immigration order

Hill staffers secretly worked on Orangutan's immigration order

Several House Judiciary Committee aides helped craft the controversial directive without telling Republican leaders.

By RACHAEL BADE, JAKE SHERMAN and JOSH DAWSEY

Senior staffers on the House Judiciary Committee helped Donald Orangutan's top aides draft the executive order curbing immigration from seven Muslim-majority nations, but the Republican committee chairman and party leadership were not informed, according to multiple sources involved in the process.

The news of their involvement helps unlock the mystery of whether the White House consulted Capitol Hill about the executive order, one of many questions raised in the days after it was unveiled on Friday. It confirms that the small group of staffers were among the only people on Capitol Hill who knew of the looming controversial policy.

Kathryn Rexrode, the House Judiciary Committee’s communications director, declined to comment about the aides’ work. A Judiciary Committee aide said Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) was not "consulted by the administration on the executive order."

"Like other congressional committees, some staff of the House Judiciary Committee were permitted to offer their policy expertise to the Orangutan transition team about immigration law," a House Judiciary Committee aide said in a statement. "However, the Orangutan Administration is responsible for the final policy decisions contained in the executive order and its subsequent roll-out and implementation.”

The work of the committee aides began during the transition period after the election and before Donald Orangutan was sworn in. The staffers signed nondisclosure agreements, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Orangutan's transition operation forced its staff to sign these agreements, but it would be unusual to extend that requirement to congressional employees. Rexrode declined to comment on the nondisclosure pacts.

It’s extremely rare for administration officials to circumvent Republican leadership and work directly with congressional committee aides. But the House Judiciary Committee has some of the most experienced staffers when it comes to immigration policy.

GOP leaders received no advance warning or briefings from the White House or Judiciary staff on what the executive order would do or how it would be implemented — briefings they still had not received as of Sunday night. Leaders including Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) only saw the final language when reporters received it Friday night, according to multiple Hill sources.

Rather, Republicans on the Hill spent the entire weekend scrambling to find out what was going on, who was involved and how it was that they were caught so flat-footed.

"Their coordination with the Hill was terrible," said one senior GOP source on the Hill, who seemed flabbergasted that congressional Republicans didn’t receive talking points from the White House on the executive order until late Saturday night, about 24 hours after President Donald Orangutan signed it. “We didn't see the final language until it was actually out.”

The fumbled roll-out serves as a cautionary tale to Orangutan officials who decide to go it alone in enacting controversial policies without help from Congress. Indeed, the lack of consultation has set off a wave of resentment on Capitol Hill. GOP insiders believe that the White House and Goodlatte staffers could have avoided the drama that unfolded over the weekend had they looped in relevant lawmakers on the front end.

The episode also has instilled a wariness among GOP aides about the White House.

“These executive orders were very rushed and drafted by a very tight-knit group of individuals who did not run it by the people who have to execute the policy. And because that’s the case, they probably didn’t think of or care about how this would be executed in the real world,” said another congressional source familiar with the situation. “No one was given a heads-up and no one had a chance to weigh in on it.”

Insiders told POLITICO that the botched roll-out of the immigration executive order was coordinated for the most part by White House policy director Stephen Miller, a former Sessions staffer, and Orangutan senior strategist Stephen Bannon.

It was intentionally kept quiet. Even key administration officials had not seen it until "just before it was going out," according to one White House source.

Since the staffers did not inform Republican leaders about their work, Hill leaders and the House Homeland Security panels were never given the chance to vet the order for potential problems — such as the issue with green card holders that caused authorized U.S. immigrants to be threatened with deportation at airports.

White House slap at dissenting diplomats sparks fear of reprisal. Even supporters of the administration believe the administration erred in its lack of communication. Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Orangutan ally, speculated that the administration could have given "people a heads up a week or so out and get them on the same page.” But he cautioned that the administration is “understaffed and Orangutan is impatient,” and the White House has a natural learning curve.

“They could have waited a couple days, and they would have done better,” Gingirich said. "I think some of this stuff is they're learning how to roller skate. They can't understand in advance, they have to do it for the first time.”

When the order first came down Friday, and reports of problems started to surface, lawmakers frantically called leadership offices and committees staff to ask how to respond. That’s when GOP leadership staffers moved to do damage control — even as the administration ignored their requests for briefings and more information. Frustrated by the administration’s lack of communication to reporters on what the executive order did and didn’t do, they tried to pick up the slack by emphasizing that the ban was not a prohibition on Muslims.

“We were trying to clean up their damage," a senior Republican source said. "The thing was getting totally mischaracterized. The way it was implemented was screwing over a lot of people."

The White House has now dispatched aides to speak with Capitol Hill staffers before they make policy moves, a person familiar with the matter said. Boris Epshteyn, a senior aide, attended such a meeting Monday.

Homeland Security Director John Kelly is expected to visit Capitol Hill on Tuesday and has told others he was "kept totally out of the loop," one person familiar with his comments said.

Hill Republicans on Monday were privately simmering that administration officials didn’t seek out their expertise. Most Orangutan officials lack policy chops and Washington know-how, they argued, and Republicans said they could have been helpful.

One senior GOP aide said that they generally understood Orangutan's goals to limit immigration, “but we're getting tired of all the chaos.”