Mick Mulvaney Talks DOJ Dropping Election Obstruction Case

Published Nov 25, 2024, 8:37 PM

Former US Special Envoy to Northern Ireland Mick Mulvaney discusses the DOJ dropping the 2020 election obstruction case against Trump with Bloomberg's Kailey Leinz.

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As expected, the Department of Justice is moving through special counsel Jack Smith to drop the twenty twenty election obstruction case against the now President elect Donald Trump.

There will have been.

Signals that this would happen, as it is long standing DOJ policy not to prosecute a sitting president, which Donald Trump will become once again fifty six days from now. But it does end what was already a historic prosecution series of prosecution sprankly against Trump as an individual that are now going away as he gets set to take office for a second time, and of course the first time around when he was the forty fifth President of the United States, McK mulvaney was active in that administration. He's former acting White House Chief of Staff under Trump, former Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and of course co founder as well of the House Freedom Caucus as a former congressman to boot make We know your resume is long. It's always good to have you here on Bloomberg TV and radio. There's a lot I'd like to get into when it comes to the Omb specifically, but if we could just first get your reaction.

To this news.

I know you had strong feelings about the events in and around January sixth. Now, Donald Trump not necessarily going to be held accountable for any of that alleged action that he took in the lead up to and during it. But this is largely to be expected.

Right it is.

In fact, I think it's probably the biggest story that everybody knew was going to happen anyway.

You can't.

I mean, it's been long standing policy, as you mentioned, that you don't prosecute a sitting president, which means it would have to sit there for at least four years the prosecution would, which is not tenable. So I guess this is an inevitable sort of side effect of the election.

Yeah, and now we're getting a new announcement from the DJ also formally moving to drop the other federal case against Donald Trump, which was the classified documents case in Florida, So both federal prosecutions are now out of the picture. He of course, has had his sentencing in the case in New York, the state case around the falsification of business records in which he was convicted. That sentencing has been pushed back indefinitely. We're not quite sure at this time what's going to happen with the other state case down in Georgia. But this effectively Mick puts to bed all of his at least criminal legal issues. And I do wonder if he wouldn't be about to go back into the White House had they not happened, Had we not had these series of indictments throughout the course of what was his active presidential campaign, do you think he still would have won.

I think it gave him and you and I have talked about this before a couple of times. It gave him a new message, It gave him a rallying cry. Some of the criminal charges were so weak, Kaylee, and I know I'm giving an opinion on that, but they were facially very weak. The basis of the case, and one of the cases in New York was that he that he paid back a loan early that the debtor didn't or the lender didn't complain about. Another case was revolving around it, you know, criminal charges for legal hush money payments.

And it gave him, you know, it raised a lot of.

Questions even with Democrats, as to whether or not he would have been charged with those things if his name wasn't Donald John Trump, and it gave him that new rallying cry that you know, look at what they're doing to me. If they can do it to me, they can do it to you. Elect me, and that won't happen. It reinvigorated his campaign. So from the very beginning, if there's one human being probably most response with Donald Trump going back to the White House, it's probably Alvin Bragg, followed closely by Letitia.

James's incredible to consider, and of course, yes, we did hear a lot about this from Donald Trump on the campaign trail. Something else we heard from Trump frequently while he was campaigning is that he had nothing to do with the Heritage Foundation's Project twenty twenty five. And yet we have seen a number of people named to be part of his second administration who were affiliated or contributed to that project. And in fact, just a few weeks ago, Joe got to sit down with the pressident of Heritage, Kevin Roberts, who told him this about the way in which it could be informing this incoming administration's policy decisions.

We think that this is the beginning of a golden era of conservative reform.

I will say that because the work.

Of Project twenty twenty five represents the conservative movement. It would be very difficult for anybody to implement policies on education, on the border, on taxation without at least consulting those ideas in people. That's not some arrogant or hubistic comment on our part. That's just the nature of how policy making works.

And one of those people make that contributed to Project twenty twenty twenty five has now been tapped to take your old job, OMB Director Russ Vote will be reprising his role.

And I do wonder what you make of that choice.

And if it actually does signal anything about the way in which Project twenty twenty five could be working its way into outcomes in this administration.

Yeah. I mean, look what I think the guy Heritage was trying to say, in so many words, is twenty twenty Project twenty twenty twenty five is just Republican conservative orthodoxy in a lot of different places. So if you're going to be a Republican president, you're going to probably put into place a lot of things that happened to be in Project twenty twenty five. I do think that the Trump campaign sort of moved away from the project because, in large part of the positions on abortion, which they considered to be a liability politically. But look, it's conservative orthodoxy and that's what's going forward.

You asked me about Russ. I'm very excited about this.

In fact, I think, you know, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswami get all the attention for this Department of Government efficiency, and they should, and it's an important thing that they're doing. But in order to implement the things that I think they're going to start recommending, you have to have Omb on board. And nobody knows more about government works or it doesn't work than Russ's votes. I thought it was a really really solid decision at Omb, and he'll make a good member of that government deficiency team. Keep in mind, the last time President Trump asked somebody to restructure the federal government, it was me, and we didn't have much because the whole of the deep state was against us, and.

Some of our cabinet secretaries were against us.

I think I don't think that that troika of Elon, Vivek and Russ are going to have the same impediments that we had in twenty eighteen.

Well, and you could potentially add another name to that team, as well as Congressman Marjorie Taylor Green of Georgia. Apparently we'll be leading a House oversight subcommittee helping implement the DOGE recommendations. I do wonder though, as we know that that Department quote unquote does have intel July fourth of twenty twenty six to make these proposals. To do this work, there are going to be spending battles being thought in Congress well before then. Basically right when we get into the new year, the new Congress and the new administration make we're going to have to deal not just with regular appropriations, but a debt stealing fight as well. And I wonder how you think russ vote will navigate those what it means for the ultimate outcomes of what those deals could look like.

Well, what Russ is going to do, and this is what's good staff as are supposed to do. And Russ was a good staffer in the previous administration. I have every expectation he's going to be a good staffer going forward. Is simply laying out the facts and the arguments for the President. Russ is a lot more fiscally conservative than the president.

United States is, just as I was Trump wanted to.

Hear from the fiscally conservative wing of the party, and he wanted to hear from other folks as well, and Russ will be the loudest voice in those discussions. You're right, we've got appropriations bills to deal with, You've got the debt ceiling to deal with.

You've got to look very closely.

Kailey, to that first sort of that thin budget that will come out in the first couple of weeks of the administration, because that will be the first indication is what their priorities. Our president's budget is a messaging budget, you know, what are their priorities going to be? And Russ will be obviously have his hand in that. So it's going to be a very quick or a fast moving couple of weeks on those spending issues.

And it will be interesting to see.

Whether or not Trump comes down sort of with that more, you know, the heavier spending side of the party or the fiscally conservative side of the party that Russ represents.

So well well.

And in those initial those first weeks, Mick, there also is going to be a really narrow majority in the chamber. You used to sit in the House of Representatives. It's really going to be only a few votes that Mike Johnson can afford to lose as Speaker because Trump has pulled three members of the House for this administration, or I guess when you include Matt Gates having resigned no longer being part of the administration, that's still a vote gone in a special election that's not being held until April first. How hard is this going to be to get done with such a slim majority?

Really hard.

I think people lose sight of the fact it's not quite as bad as it sounds, just because technically Waltz is still a member of the House and can still vote.

Traditionally you don't, but you can.

I never voted after I was nominated for the OMB back in twenty seventeen, but I could have.

It would have been legal for me to do that.

So until those folks are confirmed, all those House members, they are still sitting and can vote, so they don't really lose those Republican votes. Mike Johnson doesn't lose those Republican votes until those folks resign. Now, yes, obviously mentioned Matt Gates has already gone, so that narrows it a little bit. But to your point, it's going to be tight. There's no question about that. And he's not going to be able to afford to lose any folks, I think, any votes. I think the one thing that's sort of sitting there, the eight hundred pound gerrill in the room, is it.

Donald Trump still.

Has a lot of influence over the Republican Party, probably never more so than now, and if they want to whip votes, they should be very successful in doing that well, perhaps.

Though not enough influence over at least the Republicans in the Senate to be able to get someone like Gates through the confirmation process, hence himself gains taking.

Himself out of contention for that role.

When we look at some of these other nominees Toolsey Gabbard, RFK Junior, Pete Hegseeth, do you think there could still be Republican resistance adequate enough to potentially tank those nominations, Mick?

Or is everyone else going to get through?

You know, it's a really good questions, one of those inside the Beltway questions, because oftentimes it's not every single administration, but oftentimes what will happen is an incoming administration will offer up a sacrificial lamb somebody they know they can't get confirmed because they're too extreme one way or the other, but it satisfies their base and it gives sort of a little sop to the minority party in the Senate. We saw this back in twenty twenty one with Nero Tieten, who was nominated for omb by the Biden administration, even though a lot of Democrats thought she was too progressively left to get confirmed, and indeed she wasn't. They took that name down. Was Matt Gates that sacrificial lamb? Or was he sort of a different thing entirely. I think if you look at the if you look at the names you just gave, I gotta think Kennedy's got the toughest road.

Just because he's such a weird guy.

I mean, I hate to use the word that you know that were meant something before Tim Wall start using on the campaign. But he's he's he's an unusual human being, and it should make for an interesting confirmation process. Haig Seth will get the attention because of the post. Obviously, HHS, which Kennedy's nominated for, is not as critical, is not as perceived as being you know, as high rankings as the Secretary of defense is But every time people ask about Hegseth, I say, look, if he wasn't on TV, and he was just somebody with degrees from Princeton and Harvard who had written a couple of books on the topic, had two Bronze stars, served overseas two different times, I don't think you'd be getting the negative attention that you were.

So I think Hegseth is fine. I think tool Ce is fine.

I think if anybody is going to have the biggest challenge, it's going to be Kennedy.

Well and finally Mick.

As we consider here the notion of future challenges around all of these things, I do wonder, assuming that these people can't even get confirmed, what challenges they may face upon actually stepping into the job if this transition is delayed because of a lack of signing of ethics and transparency pledges in order to get access to the classified or at least not public information they need to do their roles.

What do you make of the slow walking here?

Listen, that's slow walking. It works both ways. There's a net.

You're seeing a natural tension now between the administrative of the executive branch and the legislative branch. It has very little to do with part and everything to do with structure. The incomeing administration doesn't want to sort of give everything to the Senate all at one time, and the Senate doesn't want to move very quickly. Keep in mind, I've often said that, you know, advise and consent has in large part become extort and delay. I can't tell you the number of Republican centers who called me when I said, OHMB trying to get stuff out of me in exchange for lower level confirmations moving forward.

And so forth. So there's that natural tension.

I think it's important that the Treasury Secretary go early, Secretary of State Defense go early, and that the OMB go early, just because you do have to write that budget very quickly.

My guess is those.

Will be the first ones confirmed, and then the other ones may drag out over the course of the next couple of months.

Well, of course, he used to be director of the UMB himself. Mick Malvaney also former acting chief of Staff in the first Trump White House. Joining us here on balance of power. Thank you so much.

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