“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.
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.