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“I called Mike Pompeo last night to let him know I was quitting. I can’t do it. I can’t stay,” Mulvaney said in the interview.
“Those who choose to stay, and I have spoken with some of them, choose to stay because they fear the president will put someone worse off,” Mulvaney said.
Some of the President’s advisers encouraged him to go further than he did in the declaration and to pledge to stop fighting the election results. Some aides also wanted Trump to pledge to prosecute protesters who violated the Capitol, as Vice President Mike Pence did in his own statements earlier today.
In the end, Trump accepted a minimal declaration promising the orderly transfer of power, but still pledging to fight.
“I always said we would continue our fight to ensure that only legal votes are counted,” he wrote via his social media advisor Dan Scavino.
Deliberations on the late-night statement took place at the White House residence, where Trump collapsed in what 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 convince him to record a video amid the protest of the crowd.
There are now basically two camps of people within the administration: those who resign and those who don’t feel the need to stay to keep the ship afloat for another two weeks.
CNN’s Pamela Brown contributed to this report.
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