Senior staff members on the House Judiciary Committee assisted President Donald Trump's aides in writing his executive order halting immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries, Politico reports.
"We were trying to clean up their damage," an unnamed senior GOP source told Politico. "The thing was getting totally mischaracterized. The way it was implemented was screwing over a lot of people."
Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and other GOP leaders were neither informed nor involved. Although the committee's communications director Kathryn Rexrode would not comment on staffers' involvement, she did confirm that Goodlatte wasn't "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 Trump transition team about immigration law," an unnamed Committee aide told Politico in a statement. "However, the Trump Administration is responsible for the final policy decisions contained in the executive order and its subsequent roll-out and implementation."
According to two of Politico's sources, the staffers signed nondisclosure agreements just as members of Trump's transition team did.
"Their coordination with the Hill was terrible," a Republican source told Politico. He mentioned the frustration and confusion that stemmed from GOP leadership not seeing talking points on the order until late Saturday night.
"We didn't see the final language until it was actually out," he added. The two top Republicans in Congress, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., only saw the final text of the order on Friday night when reporters received it as well.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., told reporters on Monday that he wasn't briefed on the order before it was signed, according to The Chicago Tribune.
"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," another unnamed congressional source told Politico.
"No one was given a heads-up and no one had a chance to weigh in on it."
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