Revealed: Officials didn't know Trump raided their budgets to fund his ads

President Donald Trump’s national ad buy featuring himself immediately drew critics over laws against using taxpayer money to fund political advertising. But government sources now tell NBC News that Trump did not even alert administrators that their budgets would be footing the bill.

“They didn’t sign off on it,” an official said of CBP leaders. “They were thinking, ‘There’s no way they’re going to try to take the funding from CBP for those ads.’”

“Senior leaders at Customs and Border Protection were cut out of the decision to use their agency’s funds for a national ad buy featuring … Trump and learned about it from a news report, according to a Department of Homeland Security official with direct knowledge of the decision-making process,” said NBC reporter Julia Ainsley.

CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott and his senior advisers “were not included in several meetings where the idea of spending the agency’s money on the ads was discussed,” the official said. And while CBP leaders were told that the White House was interested in using the agency’s funds for an ad campaign, the official said, they were not given the opportunity to weigh in. Nor were they told when the final decision had been made.

Instead, Scott and CBP leadership learned that agency funds had been blown for the ad campaign from a Wall Street Journal report earlier this week, the DHS official said.

Ainsley reports that CBP leaders’ being left in the dark over the decision “suggests new tensions between the agency and DHS and White House officials, which have ebbed and flowed since the start of Trump’s second term.”

The DHS official added that Scott and his top advisers often are only asked to weigh in on decisions about border operations, not broader policies or funding.

A White House official told NBC that the ad campaign was Trump’s idea, and also that Trump picks the ads himself.

“It’s reminding viewers that there has been a lot done during the first year and a half,” the official said, adding that the ads will run through Election Day. “Some of it is a feel-good Americana-type message. It runs the gamut of a lot of different messaging points. And it is messaging points that are our strongest points.”

Democratic appropriators bashed the CBP expenditures saying Trump ads were not the intent by Congress when it appropriated CCPB funds. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) also criticized the White House this week for using public rather than private funds on the ads., saying “it shouldn’t be paid for with taxpayer dollars.”

Political ad-tracking firms estimates that the administration has spent more than $4 million so far on the ads, reports NBC. And a DHS spokesperson told NBC that “DHS follows all applicable rules for contracting decisions and keeps all decision makers informed. All contracting decisions are made in accordance with applicable law.”

But when asked by NBC if saying that decision-makers are kept “informed” meant that CBP leaders had a say in the ad funding decision, Ainsley said the DHS spokesperson did not respond.

The White House, when asked, threw the question into a loop by referring questions back to DHS, said NBC.