President Trump decided to leave much of his senior staff out of the loop before announcing his pick to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
A number of senior Trump officials learned of the president’s pick to lead the FBI the same way everyone else did: on Twitter.
President Donald Trump’s top communications staff, and much of his senior White House team, did not know the president was going to make the official announcement for nominating James Comey’s successor early Wednesday morning via a single tweet, according to multiple White House officials. Several observers noted on Wednesday morning that Trump’s Christopher Wray announcement did not arrive with any fact sheet or official press release, as would be expected with news of this weight.
And it’s just the latest instance of President Trump’s senior staffers, particularly his communications and press shop, being cut out of the loop, undermined, and frazzled by their unpredictable boss and his compulsive tweeting habit.
One senior administration official said “of course not” when asked by The Daily Beast whether top communications staff such as press secretary Sean Spicer and his deputy Sarah Huckabee Sanders were informed that the president would be tweeting out the news about Wray on Wednesday morning, sans a basic press strategy in place.
Also left in the dark were key members of Congress whose support could be vital to Wray’s confirmation—and to building goodwill in the face of intense scrutiny of every administration decision with respect to the agency investigating alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Sens. Chuck Grassley and Diane Feinstein, respectively the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, learned of Wray’s expected nomination through Twitter. So too did House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
It is unclear who, exactly, besides the president himself knew that this major development was coming when and how it did. Of the six White House and senior administration officials who spoke with The Daily Beast about Wray’s nomination, none said that they were aware of it before Trump’s early morning Tweet in advance.
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NEW: Senior White House officials—including, we're told, Spicer and Sanders—were blindsided by Trump's Wray tweet https://t.co/5DaBIZbH3p
— Lachlan Markay (@lachlan) June 7, 2017
Tweet first, prepare later? The WH finally released a statement about the new FBI director nominee, hours later. pic.twitter.com/flAmQCD1d2
— David Martosko (@dmartosko) June 7, 2017
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