U.S. Chamber of Commerce erroneously announces supposed NLRB nominees from Trump

After President Donald Trump fired the former Biden-appointed chairwoman of the National Labor Relations Board, Gwynne Wilcox, along with former Biden-appointed NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, the quasi-independent board has been left deadlocked with just two members and has been unable to conduct any official business.

On Thursday, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sent an email to members that purportedly announced two new Trump appointments to the NLRB, only for the Chamber to admit moments later that the email had been a mistake, according to the Washington Examiner.

As it turns out, per the White House, Trump has not yet made a final decision on any such appointments, which suggests that the Chamber either jumped the gun on leaked information or, perhaps, inadvertently shared deliberate disinformation that may have been intended to identify possible leakers in the administration.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce announces Trump’s NLRB picks

Politico’s Playbook on Friday reported that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce “accidentally scooped” the White House with an email announcement about two new appointments to the NLRB.

In the email sent to members and later obtained by the outlet, the Chamber stated, “In the lead-up to the long Independence Day weekend, the White House today announced several much-anticipated appointments of two members of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB): Scott Mayer, Chief Labor Counsel at The Boeing Corporation, and James Murphy, a former career official with the NLRB.”

The letter noted the importance of the nominations in breaking the current 1-1 deadlock on the NLRB between Republican Chairman Marvin Kaplan, whom President Trump nominated for that role on his first day in office, and the sole remaining Democratic board member, David Prouty, and mentioned the ongoing legal drama surrounding the disputed firing of former Chairwoman Wilcox.

Given that at least three members are required for a quorum to do business — one of the two new members would presumably replace Kaplan, whose term expires in August — the NLRB has essentially been sitting idle since Wilcox’s dismissal.

The message also claimed that Trump had previously nominated an attorney named Crystal Carey to take the place of the fired Abruzzo as the NLRB’s general counsel.

The Chamber admits its mistake

However, according to Politico, President Trump has not made any such announcements about NLRB nominations, whether involving the two alleged new board members or the alleged new general counsel, and an unnamed White House official told the outlet that no such selections for those positions have been made by the president.

The Chamber quickly realized its mistake, it seems, as a follow-up email was sent to members just 15 minutes after the first announcement was made, which said, “Please ignore our recent email on NLRB nominees. This was sent in error.”

When asked by Politico for an explanation of the erroneous email, a spokesperson for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce declined to comment other than to confirm that it had been sent out by mistake.

The outlet further reported that neither of the two supposed NLRB nominees, Mayer and Murphy, responded to similar requests for comment.

Were the purported nominees leaked?

To be sure, President Trump may well be planning to nominate both Mayer and Murphy to the NLRB, but has not yet decided to announce those picks, and the Chamber may have received advanced word of the nominees and gotten ahead of themselves in sharing that information with others.

That said, those names may have also been purposefully and quietly disseminated by the White House, either to test the public response or to identify possible leakers, in which case the Chamber inadvertently played a critical role in that particular play.

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