Mick Mulvaney, special U.S. envoy to Northern Ireland and former chief of staff to President Trump, resigned from his position Thursday morning, reportedly telling Secretary of State Mike Pompeo he “can’t stay.”
Mulvaney is the latest to resign from the Trump administration following the protests that breached the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday afternoon, forcing evacuations and lockdowns.
“I called [Secretary of State] Mike Pompeo last night to let him know I was resigning from that. I can’t do it. I can’t stay,” Mulvaney said during an appearance on Squawk Box.
He signaled that other officials may follow suit.
“Those who choose to stay, and I have talked with some of them, are choosing to stay because they’re worried the president might put someone worse in,” Mulvaney said, later adding Trump was “not the same as he was eight months ago.”
“We didn’t sign up for what you saw last night,” he explained. “We signed up for making America great again, we signed up for lower taxes and less regulation. The president has a long list of successes that we can be proud of.”
All of that “went away” on Wednesday, he added.
First lady Melania Trump’s Chief of Staff and Press Secretary, Stephanie Grisham, resigned from her post on Wednesday evening amid the protests, marking her status as the “first high-profile White House official to resign since the presidential election.”
Deputy National Security adviser Matt Pottinger has also resigned, and other resignations could be forthcoming.
Meanwhile, many lawmakers have placed the blame for Wednesday’s chaos solely on the president and are moving to draw up articles of impeachment:
President Trump called for peace as the protests unfolded on Wednesday. On Thursday, Trump promised an “orderly transition on January 20th.”
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