Daily Beast: Mick Mulvaney Met With Lobbyist Donors While at Trump White House
Mick Mulvaney, Donald Trump’s top budget and financial consumer watchdog, had a hierarchy of access in his former congressional office: first were constituents, then lobbyists who’d donated to his campaign, and then, at the bottom, lobbyists who hadn’t.
Mulvaney no longer has constituents. But according to his internal schedule, he’s continued taking meetings with lobbyists and companies who financed his past political campaigns.
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“It sounds like Mulvaney is importing his pay to play operation from Congress into the administration,” said Brendan Fischer, the director of federal reform programs at the Campaign Legal Center, a watchdog group.
“But the problem of public officials serving the wealthy and well-connected isn’t limited to Mick Mulvaney,” Fischer added in an email. “It’s systemic, and demands systemic solutions. Trump knows this, and ran against it—as a candidate, he criticized a system where ‘when you give, they do whatever the hell you want them to do.’ Mulvaney’s words, and apparently his actions, are just unvarnished examples of how the entire political system is tilted in favor of deep-pocketed special interests.”