Vice President Kamala Harris’ communications director, Ashley Etienne, is leaving the Biden administration, a White House official confirmed to multiple outlets on Thursday.
“Ashley is a valued member of the vice president’s team, who has worked tirelessly to advance the goals of this administration,” the official told CNN. “She is leaving the office in December to pursue other opportunities.”
It is understood that the official also confirmed the news to The Independent.
Etienne has not yet commented on her alleged exit but it is not unusual for White House staffers to leave after 12 months.
The Epoch Times has contacted the White House for comment.
The communications director, 43, was formerly a senior advisor to the Biden presidential campaign and current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) when she was minority leader. She also worked as special assistant to then-President Barack Obama.
Prior to her start in politics, she obtained her Master’s degree in political communications at Johns Hopkins University, according to her LinkedIn profile.
“Creative. Strategic. Bold,” her LinkedIn bio reads.
Vanity Fair was first to report Etienne’s departure, which is described as coming after “a raft of stories on infighting and low morale in the vice president’s office” this week.
CNN last week reported growing tensions in the West Wing as a number of Harris staff members feel that she is not being “adequately prepared or positioned, and instead is being sidelined.”
The Epoch Times has been unable to verify such reports.
The alleged exit also comes just days after Harris saw her approval ratings drop to 28 percent, 10 percent below that of President Joe Biden’s, as per a Suffolk/USA Today poll. The same poll showed that 51 percent of Americans disapprove of the job Harris is doing while 21 percent are undecided.
Harris faced criticism for failing to visit the U.S.-Mexico border earlier this year at a time when illegal immigration surged to unprecedented levels. She later visited a Border Patrol station in El Paso, Texas, and told reporters, “It’s not my first trip, I’ve been to the border many times,” referring to trips she made to the border when she was a California lawmaker.
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