Mick Mulvaney joins others in resigning as special envoy to Northern Ireland

“I called Mike Pompeo last night to let him know that I was waiving this. I can’t do this. I can’t stay,” said Mulvaney in the interview.

“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,” said Mulvaney.

President Donald Trump encouraged protesters in a speech immediately prior to the Capitol violation and only reluctantly tried to contain his emotions.
He was initially reluctant to issue a statement promising an “orderly transition” on Thursday morning, after Congress claimed the Electoral College’s victory for President-elect Joe Biden. But Trump ended up going after pressure from several advisers, including White House lawyer Pat Cipollone, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Some of the president’s advisers encouraged him to go further than he did in the statement and promise to stop fighting election results. Some advisers also wanted Trump to commit to prosecuting protesters who violated the Capitol, as Vice President Mike Pence did in his own statements earlier in the day.

Ultimately, Trump agreed to a minimal statement promising an orderly transfer of power, but still promising to fight.

“I always said that we would continue our fight to ensure that only legal votes were counted,” he wrote through his social media advisor Dan Scavino.

The deliberations on the dawn declaration took place at the White House residence, where Trump hid in what his advisers described as an unstable emotional state. Among the advisers he consulted throughout the day were Scavino, chief of staff Mark Meadows and his daughter Ivanka, who helped to convince him to record a video amid the crowd’s protest.

There are now essentially two camps of people within the administration: those who resign and those left without the feeling that they need to stay to keep the ship afloat for another two weeks.

CNN’s Pamela Brown contributed to this report.

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