Reporters erupted in frustration with Kevin McAleenan after the acting homeland security secretary abruptly departed a rescheduled press conference after taking only four questions amid crossfire over questions about his leadership.
After reading Friday from a prepared statement for 11 minutes, McAleenan opened the floor to questions. He took four of them over seven minutes then cut off the briefing and said “thanks” before exiting.
“This is ridiculous! We get no…” one reporter in the front row yelled as McAleenan walked out.
“Seriously, Andrew, it’s so unprofessional,” another reporter said, directing her comment to the only DHS official still onstage, acting Public Affairs Assistant Secretary Andrew Meehan.
“Four questions and we haven’t had a press conference in months,” one person said, referring to McAleenan’s installation in his current role nearly three months earlier.
“We’ll be more engaging in the future,” Meehan responded.
“Why don’t we keep rolling and you keep answering our questions?” one of the reporters asked.
Reporters immediately began asking a handful of additional questions before Meehan excused himself after four minutes of it.
McAleenan was accused by five current and former senior administration officials, in comments published by the Washington Examiner over the weekend, of attempting to sabotage a federal immigration operation by leaking details to a media outlet.
Since then, top officials at DHS and across the administration have used various press outlets, including the Washington Examiner, to try to undermine McAleenan by calling for him to resign and charging he is a liar for an alleged cover-up of what they claim was his own leak.
The Friday afternoon press conference was announced in an email from DHS around 9:30 a.m. The Washington Examiner, which received an invitation to attend the same event a day earlier, did not receive an invitation Friday.
On Thursday, the Washington Examiner reported that McAleenan was expected to lay the blame on Immigration and Customs Enforcement chief Mark Morgan for the revelation in a Washington Post story of details about immigration raids. The report was published a half-hour before the Thursday briefing was scheduled to take place. Moments before it began, DHS abruptly called off the briefing.
A DHS spokesman claimed it was because the department did not want McAleenan’s comments to interfere with Capitol Hill negotiations for supplemental border funding, even though House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had publicly announced nearly an hour before the briefing the chamber would pass the Senate’s supplemental bill, according to reporters.
DHS had said Thursday the event would be used for McAleenan to discuss the “supplemental funding request for DHS and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the changes needed to the immigration legal framework to address the humanitarian and border security crisis.”
McAleenan did not address the leaks in his appearance Friday.
