Tag: Mick Mulvaney

White House staggers after tumultuous 48 hours

The Hill logoThe White House is slumping into the weekend after one of the most difficult 48-hour periods in President Trump’s tumultuous term of office.

Wednesday and Thursday produced a slew of damaging headlines for an administration battling an impeachment push by Democrats and a revolt by Republicans over the president’s handling of foreign affairs.

If all that wasn’t enough, the White House also announced long-anticipated plans to hold the next Group of Seven (G-7) summit at a Trump-branded property in Miami, dismissing criticism that doing so would raise emoluments issues.

View the complete October 19 article by Morgan Chalfant and Brett Samuels in The Hill website here.

Mulvaney admission deals blow to White House impeachment defense

The Hill logoThe White House defense against Democrats’ impeachment inquiry suffered a major blow Thursday with acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney’s admission that aid for Ukraine was linked to President Trump’s desire for the country to pursue a political probe related to the 2016 election.

The stunning admission marked the first time a White House official had publicly undermined Trump’s repeated denials of any quid pro quo. It also coincided with a host of current and former administration officials raising concerns during closed-door testimony about the administration’s Ukraine policy.

Mulvaney indicated he felt the behavior was nothing out of the ordinary, telling reporters to “get over it.”

View the complete October 18 article by Brett Samuels and Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

Trump advisers and DOJ enraged by Mulvaney remarks; Pelosi puts no timetable on impeachment inquiry

Washington Post logoWhite House and Justice Department officials were angered Thursday after a combative news briefing by acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney in which he insisted President Trump did nothing inappropriate, but seemed to confirm that Trump’s dealings with Ukraine amounted to a quid pro quo.

Mulvaney later said that his comments were misconstrued and that no conditions were put on releasing military aid to Ukraine.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) refused to put a timeline on the impeachment process, declining to say whether she agrees with the assessment of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that the House would vote by Thanksgiving, setting up a Senate trial late this year.

View the complete October 17 article by Colby Itkowitz, Felicia Sonmez and John Wagner on The Washington Post website here.

An avalanche of confessions: Trump’s chief of staff just admitted a stunning amount of wrongdoing on live TV

AlterNet logoActing White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney adopted a new approach to President Donald Trump’s war on impeachment in a Thursday press briefing: admitting a gigantic amount of wrongdoing in one sitting and daring Republicans to care.

The avalanche of confessions began in the White House briefing room, where Mulvaney revealed that the United States will host the upcoming G7 summit of world leaders at Trump National Doral in Miami, the president’s own Florida resort.

This is a grotesquely corrupt move, and the White House knows it. Even if, as Mulvaney claimed, the Doral was the best possible location for the G7 in the country — a ridiculous assertion — it would still be incumbent on the administration to choose another location to avoid the appearance of corruption and the reality of a conflict of interest. Mulvaney claimed that, all things considered, Trump decided he would “take the hit” of accusations of corruption. But it’s not just Trump who “takes the hit,” it’s the entire federal government, and the United States itself, that gets stained with corruption, and that’s a condemnable choice to make.

View the complete October 17 article by Cody Fenwick on the AlterNet website here.

Mulvaney Says, Then Denies, That Trump Held Back Ukraine Aid as Quid Pro Quo

New York Times logoConflicting comments by the acting White House chief of staff threw Washington into turmoil.

WASHINGTON — Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, threw the Trump administration’s defense against impeachment into disarray on Thursday when he said that the White House withheld nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine to further President Trump’s political interests.

Mr. Mulvaney told journalists in a televised White House briefing that the aid was withheld in part until Ukraine investigated an unsubstantiated theory that Ukraine, not Russia, was responsible for hacking Democratic Party emails in 2016 — a theory that would show that Mr. Trump was elected without Russian help.

The declaration by Mr. Mulvaney, which he took back later in the day, undercut Mr. Trump’s repeated denials of a quid pro quo that linked American military aid for Ukraine to an investigation that could help Mr. Trump politically.

View the complete October 17 article by Michael D. Shear and Katie Rogers on The New York Times website here.

Mulvaney walks back comments tying Ukraine aid to 2016 probe

The Hill logoWhite House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said Thursday that the flow of security assistance to Ukraine was not conditioned on Kiev investigating a theory related to 2016 election interference, walking back statements he made earlier in the day.

Mulvaney issued a statement Thursday afternoon accusing the media of “misconstruing” his earlier remarks to the press at the White House “to advance a biased and political witch hunt against President Trump.”

“Let me be clear, there was absolutely no quid pro quo between Ukrainian military aid and any investigation into the 2016 election,” Mulvaney said. “The president never told me to withhold any money until the Ukrainians did anything related to the server.”

View the complete October 17 article by Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

Mulvaney ties withheld Ukraine aid to political probe sought by Trump

The Hill logoActing White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney indicated Thursday that the Trump administration held up military aid to Ukraine in part because officials wanted Kiev to investigate unproven election interference allegations linking the country to a Democratic National Committee (DNC) server.

“The look back to what happened in 2016 certainly was part of the things that he was worried about in corruption with that nation. And that is absolutely appropriate,” Mulvaney told reporters at the White House Thursday.

Mulvaney was referring to unsubstantiated allegations that Ukraine, and not Russia, was involved in the 2016 hack of the DNC server.

View the complete October 17 article by Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

Mulvaney emerges as a key facilitator of the campaign to pressure Ukraine

Washington Post logoIn late May, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney organized a meeting that stripped control of the country’s relationship with Ukraine from those who had the most expertise at the National Security Council and the State Department.

Instead, Mulvaney put an unlikely trio in charge of managing the U.S.-Ukraine account amid worrisome signs of a new priority, congressional officials said Tuesday: pressuring the fledgling government in Kiev to deliver material that would be politically valuable to President Trump.

The work of those “three amigos,” as they came to call themselves — diplomats Gordon Sondland and Kurt Volker, plus Energy Secretary Rick Perry — has come to light in recent days through newly disclosed text messages and the testimony of government witnesses appearing before an impeachment inquiry in Congress.

View the complete October 15 article by Greg Miller, Josh Dawsey and Greg Jaffe on The Washington Post website here.

Senior State Dept. Ukraine Expert Says White House Sidelined Him

New York Times logoGeorge Kent told investigators he was cut out of Ukraine policymaking and told to “lay low” on it, after a May meeting orchestrated by Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff.

WASHINGTON — A senior State Department official in charge of Ukraine policy told impeachment investigators on Tuesday that he was all but cut out of decisions regarding the country after a May meeting organized by Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, describing his sidelining by President Trump’s inner circle as “wrong,” according to a lawmaker who heard the testimony.

The revelation from George P. Kent, the deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, emerged as he submitted to hours of closed-door testimony to the House committees investigating how President Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate his political rivals.

Despite an edict by the White House not to cooperate with what it has called an illegitimate inquiry, Mr. Kent was one of a procession of top officials who have made the trip to the secure rooms of the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill, unspooling a remarkably consistent tale. They have detailed how Mr. Trump sought to manipulate American policy in Ukraine to meet his goals, circumventing career diplomats and policy experts and inserting his personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani into the process, raising alarms in the West Wing and throughout the government.

View the complete October 15 article by Nicholas Fandos, Kenneth P. Vogel and Michael D. Shear on The New York Times website here.

Mick Mulvaney implicated by Trump official who testified before Congress on Monday: report

AlterNet logoActing White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney was implicated by a former top National Security Council official during nine-hours of congressional testimony, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

The newspaper reported, “In her testimony, she detailed a July 10 meeting she attended with senior Ukrainian officials, then-National Security Adviser John Bolton, and other U.S. officials in which the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, raised the issue of the investigations, the people said.”

“People in the room took the comments to refer to an investigation that could implicate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son, the people said. Both Ms. Hill and Mr. Bolton left the meeting with concerns about what had transpired, and Ms. Hill said Mr. Bolton instructed her to talk to NSC lawyer John Eisenberg,” the newspaper’s sources said.

View the complete October 15 article by Bob Brigham from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.