- Katie Walsh worked as Reince Priebus' chief of staff at the Republican National Committee in 2016 and led secret talks to pull Donald Trump off the presidential ballot, sources told Insider.
- She served briefly in the White House under Priebus. Ever since, she and her husband, Mike Shields, have become two of Trump's most powerful outside operators.
- In an exclusive interview, Rick Gates, a former Trump campaign deputy, said Walsh and the Republican National Committee were part of multiple talks about pulling Trump in 2016.
- Fox News' Tucker Carlson recently dedicated a segment on his show to slamming the couple and accusing them of undercutting Trump's agenda.
- Walsh's lawyer told Insider that the notion that Walsh worked to undermine Trump was "demonstrably false."
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
A powerful Republican central to the president's 2020 reelection bid was part of a more concerted effort than previously known to remove him from the ballot in 2016, sources told Insider.
The maneuvers of Katie Walsh and, to a lesser degree, her husband, Mike Shields, have been discussed quietly among some of President Donald Trump's closest advisers for years. They have both served in powerful posts, including in the White House and the Republican National Committee. Some of those advisers have debated whether the two actually want to help the president or whether they simply want to cash in on their access to Trump.
GOP efforts to strip Trump of the nomination during the closing weeks of the 2016 campaign have been reported in news stories and published in books. At the time, the news cycle was dominated by The Washington Post's October 7 story about an audio recording from "Access Hollywood" on which Trump could be heard boasting about sexually harassing women. "Grab 'em by the p---y," Trump had said. Many observers thought it might doom his campaign.
Now, some people with direct knowledge of the roles Walsh and Shields played in those events are going on the record to tell the behind-the-scenes story of a dramatic moment in US politics that could have changed history had it gone a different way:
- In a rare interview, Rick Gates, a senior Trump 2016 campaign adviser, provided Insider an in-depth look at Walsh's efforts to deny Trump the party's nomination.
- A tell-all book from one of Walsh's closest friends published last week purports to reveal new details about the Republican National Committee considering the removal of Trump from the ballot after the "Access Hollywood" tape came out.
- And one of America's most-watched cable-news hosts, Tucker Carlson, ran a segment on August 7 dedicated to blasting Walsh and Shields for the profits they'd made working for the president while, behind the scenes, he told viewers, they undermined his agenda.
'To come into the fold and take credit for his win, and making it look like you helped him win, that's what I have a problem with'
Gates has rarely spoken in public since he was arrested by federal agents in 2017, but in a 30-minute conversation with Insider last week he unloaded on his onetime colleagues. Gates, who was sentenced to 45 days in jail after pleading guilty to financial crimes and lying to federal investigators probing Russian election interference in 2016, said he was particularly disappointed in the hypocrisy of Walsh, who he said actively tried to pull Trump off the ballot only to later cash in on the Republican administration.
"To come into the fold and take credit for his win, and making it look like you helped him win, that's what I have a problem with," Gates told Insider.
In text messages, Walsh denied ever trying to remove Trump from the ballot. She also directed her lawyer, James Wareham, to respond to Insider's questions. Wareham threatened to sue Insider, sent a cease-and-desist letter, promised a full-fledged investigation of this reporter's sources, told this reporter he was spreading defamatory information when contacting sources, and said this article would harm Walsh's ability to earn money.
"The statements with respect to some effort to dislodge the president from the ballot with respect to Ms. Walsh are demonstrably false and people who repeat those false statements run the risk of significant damages," Wareham said. "The effort to destroy her business will no longer be countenanced. Action will be taken."
Shields declined to comment for this story. Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee chairman in 2016, declined to comment for this story. A White House spokesman directed questions to the RNC. The RNC declined to comment for this story.
But 10 other GOP insiders spoke at length about the DC power couple's role in both of Trump's presidential campaigns and in Republican National Committee operations.
As the Trump steamroller gained speed, Republicans became alarmed
Walsh and Shields ascended in Republican politics from different generations.
Shields, 50, grew up in London and got his start in US politics in the early 1990s cutting newspaper clippings for the RNC. He later worked for House Speaker Newt Gingrich and saw his own power grow in GOP circles by helping House Republicans win campaigns throughout the 2000s.
Walsh, a 35-year-old St. Louis native, got her start interning on Sen. John Ashcroft's 2000 reelection bid before moving into fundraising full time. Among her clients were Sen. Fred Thompson's 2008 presidential campaign and the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
For the 2016 election cycle, Walsh served as Priebus' chief of staff at the RNC. Shields helped the party from the outside, according to Republicans familiar with the work. Among their tasks was to assist Republicans' efforts to improve the data used to get their voters to the polls; less robust data was one of the many reasons Mitt Romney lost to President Barack Obama in 2012.
Walsh and Shields officially stayed on the sidelines through the bloody primary season as veteran politicians like Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz fell one by one to Trump. The RNC cast itself as a neutral group focused on ensuring that whoever won the nomination could beat the eventual Democratic nominee in November.
But as Trump steamrolled his competition — and with old-guard Republicans increasingly alarmed that the unpredictable, polarizing, gaffe-prone reality-TV host might tank them at the polls — Walsh began talking up the idea of saving the party by denying him the nomination, Gates said.
Gates: Walsh protected Trump, then talked about removing him
Gates said he saw the discussions about dropping Trump as an effort to protect the party from losing disastrously in other House and Senate races because of conservative voters' disgust with the unruly Republican nominee at the top of the ticket.
Plenty of Republicans had tried to deny Trump the nomination. But this attempt was different, Gates and several other current and former Trump advisers said. Instead of the "Never Trump" Republicans tossing bombs from the outside, this time it was the party leadership itself.
Republicans familiar with Walsh's and the RNC's discussions about Trump also said that Walsh, Shields, and Priebus had worked to protect Trump as the nominee at the convention in Cleveland that July. This was proof, they said, that the RNC leadership was not fervently Never Trump but merely worried about protecting the party from longer-term damage should Trump lose.
Throughout 2016, Walsh floated various ideas for either denying Trump the nomination or pulling him off the ticket, Gates and three other Republicans told Insider. Gates also said that Priebus broached the idea with Paul Manafort, who in the spring of 2016 had taken over as the Trump campaign's chairman to help ensure he secured the nomination at the Cleveland convention.
"There was absolutely a movement by Reince and the RNC to remove Trump on several occasions during the 2016 campaign," said Gates, who plans to detail those efforts in a tell-all book set to be published in October.
Some Republicans who spoke with Walsh and Priebus heard their comments as a definitive attempt to depose Trump. Other Trump advisers told Insider they saw the talks as trial balloons or little more than fantasy football for exasperated donors.
Once the 'Access Hollywood' tape came out, talks became serious
The "dump Trump" talk got more serious in September 2016 during meetings at the RNC between Walsh, Priebus, and a couple of other senior officials. Gates and others said they worried about Trump hurting their other down-ballot candidates. Shields was a part of some but not all of those talks, a Republican familiar with the meetings said.
"Here's a guy who came to the process as an outsider — at every turn they wanted to get rid of him," said Gates, who joined the Trump team as Manafort's deputy and then remained as the 2016 campaign liaison to the RNC despite Manafort's ouster that August.
Booting Trump from the ticket took on a new level of importance on October 7, 2016, when The Washington Post published the hot-mic tape of Trump bragging that he could grope women because he was rich and powerful. Unlike any other moment in the campaign, the "Access Hollywood" revelations made time stand still.
Within hours, donors who said they spoke as backchannels on behalf of Priebus had called up Mike Pence's chief adviser and said they were ready to install Trump's running mate as the party's nominee. An aide to Pence, then Indiana's governor, beat back the requests.
Pressure to remove Trump wasn't just coming from inside the party's headquarters. Several senior Republican lawmakers, including Sens. John Thune and Cory Gardner, also publicly said that Trump should step down and that Pence should replace him on the top of the ticket.
Walsh herself attempted to get Priebus, then-House Speaker Paul Ryan, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to sign a statement calling on Trump to abort his campaign, two Republicans with direct knowledge of the effort said. Walsh and aides to Ryan said that there was never any discussion of having the three GOP leaders sign a statement urging Trump to step down.
Walsh's efforts to get the top Republicans in Congress to have Trump removed from the ticket were previously reported in "Piety & Power," this reporter's biography of Pence.
'Is there a way we can get him off the ballot?'
Over the past two weeks, new details emerged. Gates disclosed his discussions with Walsh for the first time in his conversation with Insider last week. And Madeleine Westerhout, a former Trump White House aide who worked as Walsh's assistant at the RNC during the 2016 campaign, published a memoir on Aug. 11 describing the party's failed effort to remove Trump.
"The question for the RNC became: Is there a way we can get him off the ballot?" she wrote in her book, "Off the Record," which Trump himself touted. "We checked into it, but it was too late, the absentee ballots had already gone out."
As Insider reported this story, Westerhout changed her story, pointing blame for the effort in another direction.
After Insider contacted Walsh, she directed Insider to speak with Westerhout. In an initial statement via text, Westerhout backed away from the account in her book and said the RNC never looked at removing Trump. Westerhout also said Priebus asked the party's lawyers to review what to do if Trump resigned as the nominee.
"The RNC did look into legal solutions if candidate Trump had voluntarily decided to step off the ticket, following the Access Hollywood tape. This request by the chairman to the counsel's office was soon dropped," Westerhout told Insider.
But in a second statement texted three hours later, Westerhout removed the reference to Priebus.
A Republican with direct knowledge of the events said it was Walsh, not Priebus, who asked RNC lawyers to investigate how to replace a candidate.
Republicans noticed a distraught Walsh on election night 2016
Ultimately, it would have been nearly impossible to take Trump off the ticket, Republicans who spoke with Insider said. He had secured the nomination fair and square, albeit through a long battle that exposed deep fault lines in the party.
It also would have required a logistical lift unlike anything seen in modern times. Officially replacing Trump with Pence or anyone else on the ballot would have required wrangling the votes of 168 RNC members spread across the country.
They'd already made one trek to Cleveland that summer. Beyond that, few of these party stalwarts — from local elected officials to powerful lobbyists — were in a position to publicly cross Trump.
Also critically important: As Westerhout wrote in her book, many people had already voted for Trump in the 2016 election via absentee ballots.
On election night, Walsh wasn't with the Trump campaign in New York. Instead, she had gathered with other party loyalists at RNC headquarters a block from the US Capitol. Republicans who saw her that night told Insider that when Trump pulled off a surprise victory, they noticed Walsh crying in despair. Walsh said she never cried on Election Night, but was instead consoling Westerhout.
The 'ultimate political couple'
Walsh's concerns about Trump didn't stop her from taking a new job in his White House.
She landed the title of deputy chief of staff, the same role she had under Priebus at the RNC. But she didn't last long. Trump booted her at the end of March 2017 over allegations that she leaked stories to the press, Trump advisers familiar with the matter said. Reports at the time described it as a resignation.
Out of the White House, Walsh went to work for the pro-Trump outside political group America First Policies. There, she developed a closer relationship with two other people in the president's innermost circle: Brad Parscale and Jared Kushner.
Parscale and Walsh had worked closely during the 2016 campaign coordinating Trump's online attacks against Clinton. Parscale, a former Texas-based web developer favored by Trump's family, quickly morphed from an internet entrepreneur into one of Trump's top political aides. In February 2018, Trump made Parscale his reelection campaign manager.
Kushner, the president's son-in-law and a senior White House adviser, valued Walsh and Shields for their expertise in voter data and their work ethic, Trump advisers said. "They get stuff done," one said.
Walsh and Shields got engaged in December 2016 at the British prime minister's residence at 10 Downing Street in London. At their engagement party, the British ambassador to the US, Kim Darroch, called them the "ultimate political couple," a Politico report said. They wed the next September in a star-filled gala in Charleston, South Carolina, attended by Parscale and other top Republicans.
$12.6 million in billings
But behind the scenes, the couple had been unifying important factions of the GOP establishment under the Trump banner. They were also busy building out a lucrative business for themselves, Republicans who spoke to Insider said.
Last October, The Washington Post published an extensive review of Walsh's and Shields' campaign ties and earnings. The paper calculated that they had earned $12.6 million in a little more than two years from 23 Republican Party committees and groups.
The New York Times reported this March that Walsh and Shields ran "a network of private businesses whose operations and ownership are cloaked in secrecy, largely exempt from federal disclosure." The Times calculated that Parscale, Walsh, Shields, and their allies had billed the party, the Trump campaign, and others $75 million for their work.
Much of the couple's work is spelled out in federal campaign filings. Documents show, for example, that Walsh has maintained her job consulting for the RNC for $25,000 a month while building her fundraising firms the Laymont Group and the Endicott Group, which raise money for Senate candidates, the Republican National Committee, and the Republican National Convention.
Shields gained new business for Convergence Media and Excelsior Strategies, a pair of political consulting firms that have helped run campaigns for various Republican lawmakers, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Rep. Devin Nunes, a close Trump ally. Walsh's and Shields' tight-knit group of political protégés also lined up additional work from the party and the Trump campaign with the blessings of Kushner and Parscale.
Walsh's and Shields' power was undeniable, but Trump advisers also grumbled that it was impossible to determine just how much they controlled.
Last month, the progressive ethics group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission accusing the Trump campaign of "laundering" $170 million to consultants through its ad-buying company. Republicans close to the campaign said the nonprofit watchdog only scratched the surface of the financial arrangements among Parscale, Walsh, and Shields.
Inside Trump's campaign, advisers have long said the president doesn't have a problem with his aides earning a living — but he doesn't want staffers earning money he believes is rightfully his or taking credit for his victories. GOP insiders said Trump's demotion of Parscale last month was the result of him running afoul of both cardinal rules for surviving with the president.
Walsh and Shields have done a good job staying off the covers of magazines and avoiding the glare of the spotlight — until recently. But the couple also went far beyond Parscale in terms of cashing in on Trump's presidency, Trump advisers who spoke with Insider said.
The fall of Parscale and the Trump campaign audit
2020 hasn't been kind to Walsh and Shields.
At the start of the year, alongside Parscale and Kushner, they had an iron grip on running the president's reelection campaign, as well as the expansive Republican Party. Their mission went beyond winning Trump a second term to holding GOP control of the Senate and winning back the House.
But a series of events — from the COVID-19 pandemic to the tanking US economy and global protests of police brutality — has upended American politics and caused more problems for the president and Republicans.
Trump's poll numbers cratered in crucial swing states. So Kushner overhauled the reelection campaign by elevating the former White House political director Bill Stepien and demoting Parscale. A new power center emerged in Trump's world around Stepien and Jason Miller, a senior adviser who worked on the 2016 campaign and is back for a cameo in 2020.
Parscale's demise meant something else too: He was no longer able to protect Walsh and Shields, his informal business partners, Trump advisers said.
After Insider reported last month that the Trump campaign was conducting an internal audit of the campaign spending overseen by Parscale, Trump advisers began asking whether it would move beyond Parscale to focus on Walsh's and Shields' financial arrangements.
"As the onion gets peeled, Brad was the first to fall," one Republican close to the campaign said, adding that Walsh and Shields had been propping up Parscale and supporting him from outside attacks to protect their own financial arrangements. "You're missing the point: It wasn't Brad, it was Walsh and Shields," the Republican said.
But inside the Trump campaign, there is little expectation that the internal review will dig deep into past operations. Republicans familiar with the audit say the 2020 team is singularly focused on the sprint to Election Day and winning the president a second term.
Tucker Carlson weighs in
Walsh and Shields came under even more scrutiny on August 7 when Carlson, the Fox News ratings king, dedicated a segment to the power couple.
"GOP OPERATIVES SECRETLY UNDERMINING TRUMP'S GOALS," read the chyron below the conservative cable host, who then interviewed Ned Ryun, an early Tea Party supporter and longtime conservative activist, about how Walsh and Shields had been working quietly behind the scenes against Trump.
"The most powerful couple in DC that you don't know about are Katie and Mike," Ryun said. "And they really do control a massive part of the GOP ecosystem."
Ryun declined to comment for this story.
The segment lit up social media. Advisers to Trump and his campaign texted each other footage of the appearance. They speculated about whether Walsh and Shields would be exiled from Trump's political operation as many other ambitious operatives had been.
So far, Republicans close to the president told Insider that Walsh and Shields are still in Trump's good graces thanks to Kushner's status in the White House.
Shortly after this reporter emailed a Kushner aide for comment, Walsh's lawyer wrote back with another threatening text message: "You have reached out to witnesses and in so doing continued to re-publish false and defamatory information. Proceed at your own peril."
Some Trump advisers surmised that Walsh's and Shields' fate rests with Trump's performance on Election Day. A win would help them become fixtures in GOP politics like Karl Rove or Ed Rollins. A loss could open them up to an internal review of campaign spending from Trump himself, Trump's advisers said.
"It's fascinating to see how two swamp creatures like Katie Walsh and her husband, Mike Shields, have consolidated so much power and money inside of Trump's GOP," Ryun said on Carlson's show.
The comment seemed almost uniquely pointed at Trump, one of the most loyal viewers of Carlson's program.
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