President Donald Trump\u2019s former acting chief of staff and current special envoy to Northern Ireland Mick Mulvaney on Thursday said he has resigned from his post after pro-Trump rioters stormed the Capitol.<\/p>\n
\u201cI called [Secretary of State] Mike Pompeo last night to let him know I would be resigning from that. I just can\u2019t do it. I can\u2019t stay,\u201d Mulvaney said in an interview with CNBC, citing the Trump-inspired riot.<\/p>\n
"The president of the United States went on stage and said go march down the street and invade the Capitol, and they did," Mulvaney said.<\/p>\n
Mulvaney, a key figure in the Trump impeachment proceedings who defied a congressional subpoena to testify about what he knew, told CNBC that when he was acting chief of staff "the president never asked us to do anything unethical or certainly illegal.\u201d<\/p>\n
"Clearly, he is not the same as he was eight months ago, and certainly the people advising him are not the same as they were eight months ago, and that leads to a dangerous sort of combination as you saw yesterday," Mulvaney said.<\/p>\n
He acknowledged his resignation is "a nothing thing." "It doesn\u2019t affect the outcome, it doesn\u2019t affect the transition, but it\u2019s what I\u2019ve got, and it\u2019s a position I really enjoy doing, but you can\u2019t do it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Mulvaney said he has spoken with other friends in the administration and expected others to leave in the next day or two.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose who choose to stay, and I have talked with a couple of them, are choosing to stay because they\u2019re concerned the president might put someone in to replace them that could make things even worse,\u201d Mulvaney said.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Melania Trump's chief of staff, Stephanie Grisham, a former White House press secretary, left her post, as did deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews. Social secretary Rickie Niceta stepped down as well, a source familiar with the matter told NBC News.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, Jerome Marcus, a lawyer who worked on behalf of the Trump campaign in a lawsuit involving Pennsylvania's election, asked to withdraw as an attorney on the case.<\/p>\n
In a letter to the judge, Marcus wrote, \u201cthe client [Trump] has used the lawyer\u2019s services to perpetrate a crime and the client insists upon taking action that the lawyer considers repugnant and with which the lawyer has a fundamental disagreement.\u201d<\/p>\n
The letter did not elaborate on the allegations. The underlying case centered on a Trump campaign complaint that poll watchers were not allowed to view the counting of votes in Philadelphia. At an emergency hearing in November, Marcus acknowledged to the judge that there had been a "non-zero number" of poll watchers in the room. "I'm sorry, then what's your problem?" the judge responded.<\/p>\n
The judge ultimately denied the campaign's bid to stop the vote count and worked out a compromise between elections officials and the campaign about how many observers were allowed inside.<\/p>\n