Trump replaces Mick Mulvaney with Republican Rep. Mark Meadows as acting White House chief of staff

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Trump replaces Mick Mulvaney with Republican Rep. Mark Meadows as acting White House chief of staff
mark meadows
  • President Donald Trump announced on Friday that he will replace acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney with Republican Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina.
  • Mulvaney will now serve as the US's special envoy to Northern Ireland, Trump said.
  • Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

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President Donald Trump announced on Friday that Republican Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina will replace Mick Mulvaney as the acting white House chief of staff.

Trump added that Mulvaney will now serve as the US's special envoy to Northern Ireland.

Mulvaney served as acting chief of staff for more than a year while also running the White House's Office of Management and Budget.

A former member of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, Mulvaney is a hardcore loyalist and has a long record of going to bat for the president, even on fiscal issues where their views may not have traditionally aligned.

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Mulvaney was a fixture in the national news over the last several months because of his deep involvement in Trump's efforts to strongarm the Ukrainian government into investigating former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, over bogus allegations of corruption.

Trump's actions - and Mulvaney's role in facilitating them - later became the focus of a congressional impeachment inquiry.

The former acting chief of staff sparked a public firestorm in mid-October when he admitted Trump held up nearly $400 million of taxpayer-funded military aid to Ukraine in part because he wanted the Ukrainian government to launch a politically motivated investigation into a baseless conspiracy theory targeting the Democratic Party.

The acknowledgment sent shockwaves through the White House and among the president's allies on Capitol Hill, who for weeks had said Trump did nothing wrong by pressing for the investigation because there was no quid pro quo involved.

Mulvaney's acknowledgment explicitly tying the aid to Trump's demand for investigations - and his defiant command that the public "get over it" - threw a wrench into every defense that had been trotted out in the wake of the controversy.

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It resulted in a hasty walk back from Mulvaney during the Sunday talk shows, and it also prompted the Justice Department and Trump's lawyer to release rare statements distancing themselves from Mulvaney's claims.

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