Mick Mulvaney, who served as White House chief of staff under former President Donald Trump, strongly criticized the former president’s last statements on Capitol Hill on Saturday.
On Thursday, Trump struck down Capitol security measures that were put in place after the deadly January 6 uprising, which left five people dead, including a Capitol police officer. “I think it is shameful – it seems, for the world to watch – absolutely, it is a political maneuver that they are doing. It was a zero threat from the start, it was a zero threat, ”he said.
Mulvaney called the former president’s comments “grossly untrue” in an interview on CNN Redaction on Saturday. “I was surprised to hear the president say that,” he said. “Clearly, there were people who were behaving, and then there were people who were absolutely not.”
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He added: “To go out and say that everyone was fine and that there was no risk is fair, this is manifestly untrue,” he said. “People died. Other people were seriously injured. To say there was no risk is just wrong.”
Mulvaney explained that he watched the riots unfold live on television and the violence taking place. “There are videos of people behaving and protesting peacefully. But they shouldn’t be there. And it is not right to say that there was no risk. I don’t know how you can say that when people were killed, ”he said.
Newsweek contacted Trump representatives for comment.
So far, nearly 400 people have been arrested and charged with connection to the riot that forced Congress to close and lawmakers to hide.
Several Trump administration officials resigned because of the violence, including Mulvaney from his then role as a special envoy to Northern Ireland. In January, Mulvaney told CNBC that he called Secretary of State Mike Pompeo after the turmoil and said, “I can’t do this. I can’t stay.”
“Those who chose to stay, and I talked to some of them, are choosing to stay because they are concerned that the president might put someone worse,” he said at the time.
On January 6, Mulvaney tweeted, “The president’s tweet is not enough. He can stop it now and needs to do just that. Tell these people to go home.”
Trump made his strongest criticisms of his supporters who broke into the Capitol building a week after the incident. “I want to be very clear. I unequivocally condemn the violence we saw last week. Violence and vandalism have absolutely no place in our country, and nowhere in our movement,” he said in a video shared by the official White House Twitter. account.