Tag: Mick Mulvaney

New transcripts tie Mulvaney to quid pro quo effort

The Hill logoTwo White House witnesses in the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry implicated acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney in an alleged effort to press Ukraine for investigations sought by President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, according to transcripts of their private testimony released Friday.

Former National Security Council (NSC) official Fiona Hill described a meeting with Ukrainian officials on July 10 during which U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland said he had an agreement with Mulvaney that a White House meeting with Ukraine’s president would be contingent on Kiev launching investigations.

“Sondland, in front of the Ukrainians, as I came in, was talking about how he had an agreement with Chief of Staff Mulvaney for a meeting with the Ukrainians if they were going to go forward with investigations. And my director for Ukraine was looking completely alarmed,” Hill told three House committees on Oct. 15, according to the 446-page transcript of her closed-door deposition.

View the complete November 8 article by Morgan Chalfant and Olivia Beavers on The Hill website here.

Mulvaney defies House subpoena, cites immunity ‘one minute’ before deposition

The Hill logoActing White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney on Friday defied a subpoena for his testimony in the House impeachment probe at the last minute, in what is likely the Democrats’ final effort to hear privately from witnesses about President Trump’s contacts with Ukraine before their inquiry goes public.

Mulvaney did not appear for his closed-door deposition in the Capitol, citing White House claims of immunity, according to an official working on the inquiry. The official said Mulvaney’s outside counsel informed House investigators “one minute” before his scheduled deposition that he would not appear.

“This morning, one minute before his scheduled deposition was to start, Mr. Mulvaney’s outside counsel informed us that his client had been directed by the White House not to comply with the duly authorized subpoena and asserted ‘absolute immunity,’ ” the official said in a statement.

View the complete November 8 article by Olivia Beavers and Mike Lillis on The Hill website here.

Mulvaney allies to try to stonewall Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, officials say

Washington Post logoBudget chief and other top aides will attempt to create firewall after other senior officials gave testimony that questioned Trump’s motivations

One of acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney’s top allies is preparing to deliver what President Trump wants but has failed to achieve so far in the impeachment inquiry: unquestioning loyalty from administration staff.

Russell Vought, a Mulvaney protege who leads the White House Office of Management and Budget, intends a concerted defiance of congressional subpoenas in coming days, and two of his subordinates will follow suit — simultaneously proving their loyalty to the president and creating a potentially critical firewall regarding the alleged use of foreign aid to elicit political favors from a U.S. ally.

The OMB is at the nexus of the impeachment inquiry because Democrats are pressing for details about why the White House budget office effectively froze the Ukraine funds that Congress had already appropriated.

View the complete November 3 article by Rachael Bade, Josh Dawsey and Erica Werner on The Washington Post website here.

Impeachment Probe Eyes Mulvaney’s Office in Early Effort to Hold Up Ukraine Aid

When the Trump administration first decided to send anti-tank weapons to Ukraine, Mick Mulvaney’s OMB put a mysterious, previously-unreported hold on the sale.

When the Trump administration first decided to sell Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine, officials at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) moved to temporarily pause the effort, according to multiple sources briefed on the matter.

The unusual move didn’t just foreshadow the huge fight that has President Donald Trump now facing impeachment. It also caught the eye of congressional investigators in the impeachment inquiry. This summer, OMB delayed the provision of a second shipment of military aid to Ukraine. An Intelligence Community whistleblower pointed to the Trump administration’s decision to temporarily hold up the aid as a source of concern about alleged efforts to extort Ukraine. Democrats responded by opening an impeachment inquiry.

In 2017, with the enthusiastic support of Defense Sec. Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the Trump administration moved to greenlight sending of over $40 million worth of Javelin anti-tank missiles to Kyiv. But enthusiasm for the move wasn’t unanimous; in late 2017, as the interagency process moved forward, OMB temporarily gummed it up.

View the complete November 1 article by Betsy Swan and Sam Brodey on the Daily Beast website here.

Trump and Mulvaney’s claim that corruption concerns held up Ukraine aid

Washington Post logo“We have an obligation to investigate corruption. And that’s what it was.”

— President Trump, in an interview on “Hannity” on Fox News, Oct. 21, 2019

“There were two reasons that we held up the aid. We talked about this at some length. The first one was the rampant corruption in Ukraine. Ukraine — by the way, Chris, it’s so bad in Ukraine that in 2014, Congress passed a law making it, making us, requiring us, to make sure that corruption was moving in the right direction. So, corruption is a big deal, everyone knows it. The president was also concerned about whether or not other nations, specifically European nations, were helping with foreign aid to the Ukraine as well.”

— White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, in an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” Oct. 20, 2019

Trump and Mulvaney say they held up $250 million in security assistance for Ukraine this year because of concerns about corruption.

Congress approved the aid in September 2018. A top Defense Department official certified to congressional committees on May 23 that Ukraine had made sufficient progress on anti-corruption efforts to merit the security funds. The Pentagon announced the $250 million aid package June 18.

That’s how it typically works. But, on Trump’s orders, the White House informed the Pentagon on July 18 that Ukraine’s aid was being frozen, and didn’t release the funds until Sept. 11, weeks before the deadline.

Pinocchio Test

View the complete October 23 article by Salvador Rizzo on The Washington Post website here.

Trump barked at ‘weak’ Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney in a room full of aides ⁠— and insisted he’s ⁠’in charge of the Hatch Act’

AlterNet logoThe Wall Street Journal has published an exposé about the Trump 2020 re-election campaign and how the president is “banking on base-pleasing campaign events – more meticulously produced this time – to outweigh any need for a fresh message.”

In one disturbing tale WSJ White House reporter Michael Bender relays how Trump has apparently grown frustrated with White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney – his third in under three years – and attacked him during a meeting with other aides present.

The Wall Street Journal has published an exposé about the Trump 2020 re-election campaign and how the president is “banking on base-pleasing campaign events – more meticulously produced this time – to outweigh any need for a fresh message.”

View the complete October 22 article by David Badash on the New Civil Rights Movement on the AlterNet website here.

Republicans rip Mick Mulvaney’s ‘rough patch’

Senate Republicans are astounded by the troubled performances from the acting White House chief of staff.

Fighting for President Donald Trump is one thing. But Republicans aren’t eager to defend a struggling White House acting chief of staff they’ve never really loved.

Mick Mulvaney’s two stumbling public appearances over the past week have deepened the president’s Ukraine scandal, undercut a chief GOP talking point and left the party stunned and frustrated as Republican lawmakers look to hold off Democrats’ impeachment drive.

Iowa’s Chuck Grassley, the most senior GOP senator, put it this way: Mulvaney is “probably somebody that didn’t know what they were talking about.”

View the complete October 21 article by Burgess Everett and Marianne Levine on the Politico website here.

Mick Mulvaney Struggles to Explain Comments on Ukraine

New York Times logoWASHINGTON — Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, tried again on Sunday to back off assertions he made to reporters last week that the Trump administration had held up an aid package to Ukraine because the president wanted the country to investigate Democrats, acknowledging he did not have a “perfect press conference.”

During an appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” Mr. Mulvaney disagreed with an assertion by the show’s anchor, Chris Wallace, that Mr. Mulvaney’s remarks were proof of a quid pro quo, an exchange the president has publicly denied for weeks. But he struggled to explain how his comments Sunday were not at odds with what he said last week.

“That’s what people are saying that I said, but I didn’t say that,” Mr. Mulvaney said, adding that he had outlined “two reasons” for withholding the aid to Ukraine in a news briefing with reporters on Thursday. In the briefing, however, he outlined three reasons: the corruption in the country, whether other countries were also giving aid to Ukraine and whether Ukrainian officials were cooperating in a Justice Department investigation.

View the complete October 20 article by Katie Rogers and Emily Cochrane on The New York Times website here.

Mulvaney faced White House ouster threat before impeachment crisis took over

WASHINGTON  (CNN) — Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney faced internal efforts to oust him before House Democrats moved ahead with their impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump, multiple sources tell CNN.

Top aides including Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner were in the process of reaching out to at least two potential replacements for the top West Wing job shortly before House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced in late September that she would move ahead with an impeachment inquiry.

These previously unreported efforts did not come to fruition, but underscore the weakness of Mulvaney’s position even before his headline-generating performance in the briefing room last week. One person familiar with Mulvaney’s thinking said the search came as Mulvaney himself was looking for an exit after 10 months in the role, though people close to Mulvaney have denied he wanted to leave.

View the complete October 20 article by Kaitlin Collins, Dana Bash, Jim Acosta and Gloria Borger on the CNN website here.

Mulvaney seeks to correct quid pro quo remarks in withering interview with Fox’s Chris Wallace

The Hill logoActing White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney insisted he never said the Trump administration expected a quid pro quo linking U.S. aid to Ukraine to Kiev launching investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden during a withering interview on “Fox News Sunday” with Chris Wallace.

Mulvaney repeatedly insisted his remarks at a Thursday press conference were taken out of context, saying he never used the language of “quid pro quo.”

“That’s not what I said. That’s what people said that I said,” he told a skeptical Wallace early in the interview.

View the complete October 20 article by Justine Coleman on The Hill website here.