US President Donald Trump on Friday said that Mick Mulvaney will remain as his Acting Chief of Staff amid media reports that the aide’s future at the White House is in doubt.
“That was a false report. I have a great relationship with Mick,” Xinhua quoted Trump as saying to reporters at the White House.
Trump also said that he has “a great relationship with Mark,” referring to retiring North Carolina Congressman Mark Meadows, reportedly a possible replacement of Mulvaney.
There is long-running speculation that Mulvaney, a central figure in the House impeachment enquiry into Trump, would leave his White House role after the end of the case, which fell on Wednesday when a sharply divided Senate voted to acquit the president on both impeachment charges.
On Friday, Trump also weighed in on a reported removal of Army Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman from the National Security Council (NSC). The top Ukraine expert on the NSC, Vindman testified in the Democratic-led impeachment inquiry late last year.
“I’m not happy with him. You think I’m supposed to be happy with him?” he told media.
On Wednesday, the Senate voted to acquit President Donald Trump on two articles of impeachment and marked the inevitable and historic end to a bitterly fought, divisive impeachment trial that will reverberate into the 2020 election and shape Trump’s presidential legacy.
The acquittal verdict was the final act of a four-month impeachment process that inflamed the partisan tensions simmering throughout the course of the Trump administration, the friction that boiled over during the State of the Union even though Trump left impeachment out of his speech.
On December 18, President Trump was formally impeached in a historic vote in the House of Representatives.
Adam Schiff, who led the House investigation, said the fact that it came after Mueller’s investigation showed that Trump’s 2016 campaign had actively sought help from Russia forced Democrats to act.
Earlier on Thursday, Trump attended the National Prayer Breakfast, where he attacked his political rivals and claimed that they had inappropriately invoked “their faith as justification” for their decisions to vote to remove him from office.
(With inputs from agency)