THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2019 | POLITICO | 13posal, and they don’t plan to take it
seriously unless Trump weighs in.
“You don’t need to worry about
what’s floating around,” Sen.
Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said.
“We aren’t going to do anything
that the president isn’t going to
sign anyway.”
When asked about the propos-
al, Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) first
asked whether Trump publicly
endorsed it.
“Once the president does, I’ll
look forward to reviewing it,”
Yo u n g s a i d.
Barr and White House legislative
affairs director Eric Ueland spent
a second day Wednesday meeting
with Republican senators to discuss
expanding background checks,
but no one is taking ownership of
the document discussed at some
of these meetings. The proposal
would expand background checks
to all commercial sales and create
an entity to perform them.
Republicans discussed the mixed
messages during lunch and how
most of them needed to hear from
the president before weighing in on
anything, according to attendees.
Barr wouldn’t say whether the
document came from the Justice
Department, but Sen. Pat Toomey
(R-Pa.) said after meeting with Barr
that “there’s no question that the
heart of the attorney general’s
idea is a mechanism for expanding
background checks beyond what we
have today.”
A senator who met with Barr said
the attorney general made clear he
had authorization from the White
House.
Yet the White House seemed to
brush off the proposal, creating
confusion and echoing a consistent
theme of the Trump presidency:
Only Trump speaks for Trump.
“The president has not signed off
on anything yet but has been clear
he wants meaningful solutions that
actually protect the American peo-
ple and could potentially prevent
these tragedies from ever happen-
ing again,” White House spokes-
man Hogan Gidley said.
As far as the document circulat-
ing on the Hill, he added: “That is
not a White House document, and
any suggestion to the contrary is
completely false.”
The NRA is not on board either,
with Jason Ouimet, executive di-
rector of the NRA’s Institute for
Legislative Action, calling it “a
nonstarter with the NRA and our
5 million members because it bur-
dens law-abiding gun owners while
ignoring what actually matters: fi x-
ing the broken mental health sys-
tem and the prosecution of violent
criminals.”
The release of actual paper docu-
mentation of discussions between
senators and the White House rap-
idly accelerates the political debate
over background checks. And the
NRA’s swift denouncement of the
plan highlighted how much more
difficult sensitive discussions be-
come once they spill into the open.
“You know what happens when
people have a target,” Sen. John
Cornyn (R-Texas), who met with
Barr this week, said. “And I don’t
know who leaked it, but obviously
that wasn’t the idea.”
Just hours after being first re-
ported by the Daily Caller and ob-
tained by POLITICO, the proposal
was already taking on heavy water.
Incoming House Freedom Caucus
Chairman Andy Biggs said the
proposal wasn’t from the White
House, that it might be from the
Justice Department, and that he
wouldn’t support it regardless of
where it originated.
Barr met this week with Cornyn
and GOP Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas,
John Kennedy of Louisiana and
Josh Hawley of Missouri and on
Wednesday evening with Toomey
and Democratic Sens. Chris Mur-
phy of Connecticut and Joe Man-
chin of West Virginia, who have
been negotiating with the White
House on expanding background
checks. They said the 45-minute
meeting was positive but there were
no breakthroughs.“The attorney general’s bringing
back the opinions of Republicans to
the president,” Murphy said. “This
is a complicated issue and it prob-
ably needs a creative solution to get
to 60 votes. I can understand why
the attorney general would want to
spend some time up here survey-
ing opinion before the White House
firmly lands on a proposal.”
The next steps were unclear. Sen.
Mike Braun (R-Ind.) said he believes
what “is going to happen is AG Barr
is going to come up with a recom-
mendation.” But Barr downplayed
the expanded background checks
proposal to reporters Wednesday,
saying he hadn’t shared “any list of
proposals with the senators” during
his visits. He added that “there are
a number of different proposals that
are being considered.”
“I’m up here just kicking around
some ideas, getting perspectives so
I can be in a better position to ad-
vise the president,” Barr said. “But
the president has made no decision
yet on these issues.”
Manchin said Barr “deserves all
the credit” and “wants to keep this
on track,” while Toomey noted that
“it’s significant that the attorney
general is putting a specific idea on
the table.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).
said he, too, met with Barr and that
the president has “got to lead” or
nothing will get done. He attributed
the White House’s distancing from
the proposal on background checksas a way to preserve options.
Barr and Ueland are seen less as
advocates and more as carrying out
the president’s mission of talking
to Republicans to see what they can
support. At the same time, former
NRA staffer and current deputy
assistant to the president Michael
Williams is pushing back against
the efforts from within the White
House, much to the consternation
of those involved. Ivanka Trump,
the president’s daughter, has also
reached out to several senators on
the issue and has made it clear she
wants to see some type of action.
“There are former NRA employ-
ees in the White House. And so, for
every two or three steps that they
seem to be taking, it seems to be
pushing them back,” Sen. Doug
Jones (D-Ala.) said.
While senators, White House
officials and the president himself
have been discussing firearm re-
forms for six weeks now, the first
concrete proposal came out with
roughly a week before a two-week
recess and amid a bruising fight
over spending bills in the Senate.
Some senators working on curb-
ing gun violence want much more
urgency.
“My preference would be that we
bring the bill to the Senate floor be-
fore the recess,” Sen. Susan Collins
(R-Maine) said.
Under the administration pro-
posal, background checks would
be conducted through federal
firearm licensees or a new group
of licensed transfer agents. Sellers
would choose whether the federal
firearm licensees or a transfer agent
keeps records of the transactions.
Both are concessions to Republi-
cans fearful that gun owners would
object to any proposal that requires
them to submit to background
checks as well as a fear that the
government keeps their personal
information.
The plan is narrower than a
universal background checks bill
passed by the House and pushed by
top Democrats like Senate Minority
Leader Chuck Schumer.
Trump has yet to comment di-
rectly on it as both his White House
staff and Barr have kept the pro-
posal at arm’s length. Until they
hear from Trump, the draft float-
ing around Capitol Hill says far less
than a tweet or a statement from
the president himself.
“In the end, [Trump] is going to
have [to] make a hard decision,”
Senate Majority W hip John T hune
(R-S.D.) sa id.James Arkin, Anita Kumar and
Melanie Zanona contributed to this
report.GUNS from page 1
Senators look to Trump on gun proposal
Welcome to PI. Tips: tmeyer@
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me on Twitter if you want to
reach me via Signal or Confide:
@theodoricmeyer.Longtime American Airlines
lobbyist to retire
Norma Kaehler, a longtime
in-house lobbyist for American
Airlines, will retire at the end of
the year. “She has been involved
in every significant policy battle
facing our industry during that
time — and there have been a
lot — and those of you who have
ever walked down a hallway of
the Capitol with her know that
she is a legend,” Nathan Gatten,
American Airlines’ senior vice
president for government affairs,
wrote in a note to colleagues on
Monday obtained by PI. Gatten
described her as “an absolute
force of nature” who “has
left only success in her wake,
including the recent long-term
reauthorization of the” Federal
Aviation Administration.Mercury will lobby for Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Foreign
Affairs and International Trade
has hired Mercury to handle
“government affairs work and
strategic consulting,” according
to a Justice Department disclosure
filing. It’s the latest Washington
hire for Zimbabwe, which brought
on Ballard Partners and Avenue
Strategies earlier this year to help
build relationships in Washington
in the wake of the late President
Robert Mugabe’s rule. It’s not
clear how much the contract is
worth.
Q Mercury’s work has already
started. The firm distributed
a memo on the country’s
behalf, filed with the Justice
Department on Tuesday, stating
that Zimbabwean President
Emmerson Mnangagwa wants
“the world to know that
Zimbabwe is open for business
and that his administration is a
new one with its own vision and
is unequivocally committed to
moving forward and past the
Mugabe era.”Jobs report
Q Susie Wiles has left Ballard
Partners, the lobbying firm
where she was a managing
partner and represented clients
such as Citizens for Responsible
Energy Solutions and General
Motors, due to health issues. Her
departure comes amid a behind-
the-scenes conflict between
Republicans in Florida, where
Wiles helped elect GOP Gov. Ron
DeSantis last year and played a
key role in delivering the state to
President Donald Trump in 2016.
Q The American Petroleum
Institute has hired Paul Afonso
as vice president and chief legal
officer. He previously was a
partner at Brown Rudnick in
Boston, where he co-led the
firm’s energy, utilities and
environmental group.
Q The Pharmaceutical Research
and Manufacturers of America
has named Lori Reilly as chief
operating officer, a new position.
Reilly previously was executive
vice president of policy, research
and membership.
— Theodoric MeyerPOLITICO INFLUENCERep. Ilhan Omar on Wednesday
called on Twitter to take action
against President Donald Trump’s
account and remove a tweet in
which he shared a false claim
that the Minnesota Democrat had
“partied” on the anniversary of the
Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
“They have a responsibility and
they set community standards
and clearly the president has
shown many-a-times that he has
violated their community stan-
dards,” she told POLITICO. “I don’t
even know why his account is not
fully suspended — why he’s not
deplatformed.”
Omar said her staff has con-
tacted Twitter regarding the post,
which echoed Trump’s repeated,
debunked claims that American
Muslims celebrated the attacks.
Trump on Wednesday shared a
tweet by conservative actor and
comedian Terrence Williams thaterroneously claimed Omar was out
dancing on the anniversary of 9/11.
“Ilhan Omar, a member of AOC
Plus 3, will win us the Great State
of Minnesota. The new face of the
Democrat Party!” Trump wrote in
a caption.
In fact, the video accompany-
ing the tweet of Omar dancing
was from a Sept. 13 Congressio-
nal Black Caucus event. Omar
later rebuked the president for his
rhetoric and Twitter for failing totake down the post. “The Presi-
dent of the United States is con-
tinuing to spread lies that put my
life at risk. What is Twitter doing
to combat this misinformation?”
she tweeted.
A Twitter spokesperson con-
firmed Williams has deleted
his tweet, but the company did
not comment on the president’s
post. Omar told POLITICO she’s
“still getting threats” because of
Trump’s retweet.BY CRISTIANO LIMA
Omar urges Twitter to take down Trump’s false tweet
J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE/AP
Josh Hawley is one of the senators who met this week with Attorney
General William Barr on a gun proposal to expand background checks.