President Trump secured the Republican presidential nomination on May 3, 2016, when he crushed a final “Never Trump” effort to stop him in the Indiana primary.
At the GOP Data Trust, a voter outreach organization based in Washington, the mood was bleak. It was clear Trump was heading for a blowout victory.
When Trump had delivered his victory speech shortly after 9 p.m., Data Trust staffer Courtney Mullen invited her colleagues to attend an “end of the world” happy hour to mark Trump’s triumph, which the party establishment had watched in horror.
Although Trump had already all but taken over the Republican Party with a script-flipping populist message — opposed to illegal immigration, existing trade deals, and foreign wars — people such as Mullen and her boss, Data Trust President Johnny DeStefano, would soon work for him.
At 10:21 p.m., Mullen wrote to colleagues on the workplace chatting app Slack: “Heads up – the ‘End of the World Happy Hour’ has been added as an addition to the happy hour on Friday due to the nature of tonight’s events and the inevitable truth that Trump will be our nominee.”
Her immediate superior at the time was Ellen Bredenkoetter, who wrote a response on the Slack channel at 12.19 a.m.: “#allthedrinks.”
The Slack messages were obtained by the Washington Examiner.
Since January 2017, Mullen has worked to review and approve Trump’s political appointees as a key mid-level staffer in the White House presidential personnel office, or PPO, which DeStefano led for a year before taking a promotion and additional duties at the White House.
Mullen, now 25, has been in her role more than two years amid high turnover, and earns $94,000 helping review potential candidates for suitability for about 4,000 presidential appointments, about 1,200 requiring Senate approval. Bredenkoetter, also 25, is now chief data officer at the Republican National Committee.
Among Trump supporters, there’s long been skepticism of the PPO, and the nearly three-year-old messages are likely to amplify concerns of anti-Trump bias within his administration.
Fear about a bias toward establishment picks emerged in 2017, when Trump selected DeStefano to lead the PPO. He had worked as an aide to former House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, before leading Data Trust. Eyebrows raised with appointees with views at odds with some of Trump’s, such as former national security adviser H.R. McMaster, former foreign policy adviser Dina Powell, and Venezuela envoy Elliott Abrams.
“They have slow-walked pro-Trump people to the point that they drop out or lose interest,” a Trump ally close to the White House told the Washington Examiner. “They don’t like the pro-Trump crowd. They like to bring in Bushies.”
A former White House official said DeStefano, 39, set the tone for the PPO with an “us versus them” mentality, often referring to Trump backers as “the MAGA people.”
The official said: “He’s always complaining about how ‘the MAGA people’ are coming after him. But wait, aren’t you supposed to be a MAGA person? Johnny is constantly disparaging the president. He’s always making these jokes that the president is erratic, is irrational.”
The PPO under DeStefano gained something of a frat-house reputation. At one point, a staffer was reportedly “iced,” meaning forced to chug a Smirnoff Ice. But DeStefano himself was generally well-liked, becoming a counselor to Trump and frequently traveling with the president.
With his promotion, former deputy Sean Doocey took over the day-to-day operations at PPO, though DeStefano retained a key role supervising the office.
Trump is said to have grown angry with DeStefano at times, including upon finding that a National Security Council official, Jordan Kelly, had not been dismissed from her role as a cyber expert more than a year after he requested it, according to a source.
The president, concerned about Kelly’s reputation of being close to fired FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe and former FBI attorney Lisa Page, grew upset after finding she had not been returned to the FBI. Instead, she was still at the White House and said to be interviewing for a job with the anti-Trump House intelligence committee chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif.
During a recent meeting with conservative activists this year, Trump is said to have agreed with concerns expressed about hiring processes, with DeStefano present.
But one Trump supporter who speaks routinely with the president denied that he was alarmed about bias in the hiring process.
“If the president ever raised this issue, I’d be well aware of it,” the person said.
DeStefano, who is expected to leave the White House next month, did not respond to an email or LinkedIn message asking for comment on his decision to hire Mullen in light of her Slack message, or say whether he attended the happy hour.
Bredenkoetter did not respond to a request for comment. Mullen referred the Examiner to the White House press office. The White House press office declined to comment on the record.
Michael Reed, deputy chief of staff for communications for the RNC, said: “Ellen [Bredenkoetter] has been an unwavering supporter of the president and his agenda, and to insinuate otherwise based on this three year old Slack comment is pretty dumb.”
