MORRISTOWN, NJ — Chairman of the House Committee On Appropriations Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, a Republican from New Jersey, held a last-minute, invitation-only "telephone town hall" meeting where he reportedly said he would move to block funding for a Mexican border wall. His office has denied this claim.

"I was on the telephone town hall and can confirm that Mr. Frelinghuysen never said his committee would not fund the wall," Steve Wilson, a media liaison for Frelinghuysen, told Patch. According to the managing editor of New Jersey Public Radio, Nancy Solomon, Frelinghuysen said "that any funding for a wall on the Mexican border would be stopped by his committee. He has no intention of funding that."

Frelinghuysen's office denied this report in a statement sent to Patch, saying: What Chairman Frelinghuysen said was that the members of the Appropriations Committee will review the President's request for funding, as they do all Administration proposals, when they are presented in a supplemental appropriations request or a budget amendment to Congress. Solomon was the only reporter on the invitation-only Feb. 21 call, which did not appear to be publicized or promoted beforehand. MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow reported on Soloman's account during her Wednesday broadcast.

Frelinghuysen said in a statement he would continue to hold telephone town hall calls, and members of the public can participate by sending a contact number to his office.

Patch has not been able to access an audio recording of the call to independently confirm what was said.

President Trump signed an executive order authorizing a wall along the Mexican border in January, as Patch previously reported. That executive order did not specify how the wall would be paid for, but he later suggested a 20 percent import tax as one possible option.



Trump has said many times Mexico would pay for the wall, but Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto has refuted that claim.

The House Committee on Appropriations controls federal purse strings and drafts legislation to fund different aspects of the government.

Estimates for how much the wall might cost vary greatly. Trump has pegged the cost between $10 billion and $12 billion; Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said between $12 billion and $15 billion. According to a U.S. Department of Homeland Security report obtained by Reuters, it could cost as much as $21.6 billion.