Mulvaney splits from ex-Trump advisers’ lawsuit

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s chief of staff and former national security adviser clashed in court Monday. Two new books describe how top aides to the president secretly plotted to circumvent him. And nearly every day brings more testimony about the deep internal schism over the president’s effort to pressure Ukraine for domestic political help.

In the three years since his election, Trump has never been accused of running a cohesive, unified team. But the revelations of recent days have put on display the fissures tearing at his administration. In the emerging picture, the Trump White House is a toxic stew of personality disputes, policy differences, political rivalries, ethical debates and a fundamental rift over the president himself.

The fault lines were most clearly evident Monday when Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, withdrew his effort to join a lawsuit over impeachment testimony after a sharp collision with his onetime colleague John Bolton, the former national security adviser. Mulvaney retreated hours after a lawyer for Bolton and his former deputy, Charles Kupperman, went to court arguing that his clients wanted nothing to do with the chief of staff because they had vastly different interests.

In withdrawing his motion, Mulvaney indicated that he would press his own lawsuit to determine whether to comply with a subpoena to testify in the House impeachment inquiry. But it left him at odds with the president, who has ordered his team not to cooperate with the House, an order Mulvaney essentially has refused to accept until he receives separate guidance from a judge.

Mulvaney’s lawyers emphasized that he was not trying to oppose Trump, maintaining that he was actually trying to sue House Democrats, and an administration official who insisted on anonymity said there was “no distance” between the president and his chief of staff. Still, Mulvaney hired his own lawyer instead of relying on the White House counsel, and he made clear that he was open to testifying if left to his own devices.

The court fight between Mulvaney and Bolton brought their long-running feud into the open. Mulvaney was among those facilitating the Ukraine effort while Bolton was among those objecting to it. At one point, according to testimony in the impeachment inquiry, Bolton declared that he wanted no part of the “drug deal” Mulvaney was cooking up, as the then national security adviser characterized the pressure campaign.