Tag: Mick Mulvaney

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.

Trump’s former Russia aide met with White House lawyer over Giuliani

Fiona Hill departed the administration days before Trump’s July 25 call to Ukraine.

President Donald Trump’s former top Russia aide Fiona Hill told House impeachment investigators on Monday that she had at least two meetings with a National Security Council lawyer about Rudy Giuliani’s efforts to convince Ukrainian officials to investigate the president’s political rivals, according to a person who was in the room for the testimony.

Hill told lawmakers and aides that then-national security adviser John Bolton, after learning of Giuliani’s efforts, told her to speak with lawyer John Eisenberg, the person said. Hill testified that she met with Eisenberg briefly on July 10, the same day she attended a meeting with Ukrainian officials at the White House. Hill said she had a longer meeting with Eisenberg on July 11, the person added.

Hill also told House impeachment investigators that Bolton told her, “I am not part of whatever drug deal Rudy and Mulvaney are cooking up,” referring to the acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, whom Hill believed was involved in the discussions about Ukraine. Hill also said Bolton described Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, as “a hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up.”

View the complete October 14 article by Andrew Desiderio and Kyle Cheney on the Politico website here.

Bolton Objected to Ukraine Pressure Campaign, Calling Giuliani ‘a Hand Grenade’

New York Times logoWASHINGTON — The effort to pressure Ukraine for political help provoked a heated confrontation inside the White House last summer that so alarmed John R. Bolton, then the national security adviser, that he told an aide to alert White House lawyers, House investigators were told on Monday.

Mr. Bolton got into a tense exchange on July 10 with Gordon D. Sondland, the Trump donor turned ambassador to the European Union, who was working with Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, to press Ukraine to investigate Democrats, according to three people who heard the testimony.

The aide, Fiona Hill, testified that Mr. Bolton told her to notify the chief lawyer for the National Security Council about a rogue effort by Mr. Sondland, Mr. Giuliani and Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, according to the people familiar with the testimony.

View the complete October 14 article by Peter Baker and Nicholas Fandos on The New York Times website here.

Mulvaney sidelined as Trump’s impeachment crisis rages

The head of Trump’s White House staff is lying low — an approach being adopted by a wide swath of Trump aides paralyzed by an all-consuming fight.

Mick Mulvaney has gone noticeably quiet over the past week, just as the president’s impeachment fight picks up.

The White House’s acting chief of staff has not appeared on any major TV shows to defend President Donald Trump, nor has he had any success in setting up an internal White House war room to respond to Democrats’ impeachment inquiry.

Instead, the president’s top aide has found his influence dwindling inside the West Wing as Trump faces the greatest threat to his presidency to date. It’s the same place where Reince Priebus and Gen. John Kelly found themselves, despite each having a wildly different management style and philosophical approach to the chief of staff job. Trump sidelined all three of them, even after Mulvaney made nice with his family and adopted his “let Trump be Trump” ethos.

View the complete October 9 article by Nancy Cook and Gabby Orr on the Politico website here.

Trump pushed staff to deal with NOAA tweet that contradicted his inaccurate Alabama hurricane claim, officials say

Washington Post logoLawmakers, Commerce Department launch investigations into NOAA’s decision to back the president over forecasters.

President Trump told his staff that the nation’s leading weather forecasting agency needed to correct a statement that contradicted a tweet the president had sent wrongly claiming that Hurricane Dorian threatened Alabama, senior administration officials said.

That led White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to call Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to tell him to fix the issue, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly about the issue. Trump had complained for several days that forecasters from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration contradicted his Sept. 1 Alabama tweet, the officials said.

Mulvaney then called Ross, who was traveling in Greece, and told him that the agency needed to fix things immediately, the officials said. Mulvaney did not instruct Ross to threaten any firings or offer punitive actions. But Ross then called NOAA acting administrator Neil Jacobs, the officials said. That led to an unusual, unsigned statement from NOAA released on Sept. 6 that backed Trump’s false claim about Alabama and admonished the National Weather Service’s Birmingham, Ala., division for speaking “in absolute terms” that there would not be “any” impacts from Dorian in the state. The Weather Service is an arm of NOAA, which is an agency within the Commerce Department. The New York Times first reported some elements of the White House involvement.

View the complete September 11 article by Andrew Freedman, Josh Dawsey, Juliet Eilperin and Jason Samenow on The Washington Post website here.

‘That isn’t what he said!’ Fox News host laughs in Mick Mulvaney’s face as he brazenly lies about Mueller’s testimony

AlterNet logoWhen former Special Counsel Robert Mueller testified before Congress on Wednesday, Democrats had him thoroughly debunk President Donald Trump’s lies about his investigation. The president wasn’t exonerated, the special counsel didn’t conclude there was “no obstruction,” it wasn’t “witch hunt,” and Russia interference in the 2016 election wasn’t a “hoax,” Mueller confirmed.

So when White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney appeared on Fox News Sunday morning in an interview with Chris Wallace, he decided to invent new lies to tell about Mueller.

“Mueller answered the single, one oustanding question,” Mulvaney said. “They asked him: Would you have indicted the president if he were not the president, and Mueller said, ‘absolutely not.’ He would not do that.”

View the complete July 28 article by Cody Fenwick on the AlterNet website here.

‘His own fiefdom’: Mulvaney builds ‘an empire for the right wing’ as Trump’s chief of staff

Washington Post logoMick Mulvaney’s battles with Alexander Acosta began almost immediately.

Weeks after he was named acting White House chief of staff, Mulvaney summoned the labor secretary for a tense January encounter that became known inside the West Wing as “the woodshed meeting.”

Mulvaney told Acosta in blunt terms that the White House believed he was dragging his feet on regulation rollbacks desired by business interests and that he was on thin ice as a result, according to advisers and a person close to the White House. Soon after, Acosta proposed a spate of business-friendly rules on overtime pay and other policies.

View the complete July 15 article by Seung Min Kim, Lisa Rein, Josh Dawsey and Erica Werner on The Washington Post website here.

GOP lawmakers want Mulvaney sidelined in budget talks

The Hill logoSenate Republicans, eager to avert a government shutdown or automatic spending cuts, want acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney pushed to the sidelines in budget negotiations with Democrats.

GOP lawmakers would prefer Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin take the lead in representing the White House, as they see him being more amenable to a two-year spending deal that would also raise the debt limit.Mulvaney, on the other hand, is viewed as resistant to striking a two-year deal, which would take the prospect of another government shutdown off the table until after the 2020 election.

View the complete June 22 article by Alexander Bolton on The Hill website here.

Senate GOP grows frustrated with Trump chief of staff

GOP senators see the former House lawmaker as an obstacle to striking deals on spending, including a stalled disaster relief package. The intraparty battle could spill over into high-profile debates on fiscal matters, such as raising the debt ceiling and avoiding another government shutdown.

Before joining the administration, Mulvaney was a founding member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, which rose to prominence after the Tea Party wave of 2010 by opposing spending increases and the implementation of ObamaCare. Some GOP lawmakers worry that Mulvaney has ingrained the Freedom Caucus’s staunch conservative worldview to the White House, making it tougher to cut deals with Democrats.

“There is a feeling that the Freedom Caucus may be on the wane in the House, but it’s on the ascendency in the West Wing,” said one Republican senator, who requested anonymity to discuss colleagues’ frustration with Mulvaney.

View the complete May 9 article by Alexander Bolton on The Hill website here.

In Push for 2020 Election Security, Top Official Was Warned: Don’t Tell Trump

WASHINGTON — In the months before Kirstjen Nielsen was forced to resign, she tried to focus the White House on one of her highest priorities as homeland security secretary: preparing for new and different Russian forms of interference in the 2020 election.

President Trump’s chief of staff told her not to bring it up in front of the president.

Ms. Nielsen left the Department of Homeland Security early this month after a tumultuous 16-month tenure and tensions with the White House. Officials said she had become increasingly concerned about Russia’s continued activity in the United States during and after the 2018 midterm elections — ranging from its search for new techniques to divide Americans using social media, to experiments by hackers, to rerouting internet traffic and infiltrating power grids.

View the complete April 24 article by Eric Schmitt, David e. Sanger and Maggie Haberman on The New York Times website here.