During an interview on CBS News, former Trump administration official Mick Mulvaney, who served as acting White House chief of staff from January 2019 to March 2020 before Mark Meadows succeeded him, said that a “friend” in the White House during the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, told him that Meadows was exhibiting incompetence and having a “nervous breakdown” as the chaos ensued just blocks away.
Mulvaney also expressed confidence in the testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, the ex-Meadows aide who late last month gave a bombshell testimony to the House committee investigating the riot.
He said he was texting with a friend who was in the West Wing on Jan. 6 as Hutchinson was testifying.
“I said, if I listen to Cassidy closely, it sounds like Mark was either completely incompetent at the job or having a nervous breakdown, and the person texted back it was a little bit of both,” Mulvaney said.
Mulvaney said the position of chief of staff was “critical” in a moment like the insurrection, but Meadows seems to have “checked out entirely.”
During the hearing, Hutchinson told the committee that Trump was aware that some rally attendees at the Ellipse before the insurrection were armed and that Trump insisted on going to the Capitol along with his supporters in order to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s election victory.
She also told the panel that a Secret Service agent had claimed that the former president tried to grab the steering wheel of the presidential vehicle to change course when agents refused to take him to the Capitol.
Mulvaney said Friday he knows Hutchinson and she has “no reason to lie.”
