Tensions regarding more violence erupting days before President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration, Acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Chad Wolf said he will resign on 11 January (in America).
The department that Wolf heads is responsible for the security at Biden’s inauguration. The long-term and close ally of incumbent President Donald Trump had criticised the attack on the Capitol as “tragic and sickening”, Agenda France Presse reported.
"While I have consistently condemned political violence on both sides of the aisle, specifically violence directed at law enforcement, we now see some supporters of the President using violence as a means to achieve political ends," he said, according to AFP.
Incidentally, it was after his criticism of pro-Trump protests that the White house announced that they had withdrawn Wolf’s nomination to Congress as the secretary of the DHS. It remains unclear why this happened.
This makes him the third person to resign from Trump’s Cabinet in the aftermath of the unprecedented attack at the Capitol Hill.
The other two Cabinet-level minister to resign are Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao.
DeVos, who was one of Trump’s longest serving and most loyal Cabinet ministers, cited Trump’s role in the riot at the Capitol Hill. In her resignation letter to President Trump on Thursday, she said, “We should be highlighting and celebrating your administration’s many accomplishments on behalf of the American people. Instead, we are left to clean up the mess caused by violent protesters overrunning the US Capitol in an attempt to undermine the people’s business.”
“That behaviour was unconscionable for our country. There is no mistaking the impact your rhetoric had on the situation, and it is the inflection point for me,” she wrote, according to PTI.
Meanwhile, in an email to her staffers on Thursday afternoon, Chao said, “Yesterday, our country experienced a traumatic and entirely avoidable event as supporters of the President stormed the Capitol building following a rally he addressed. As I’m sure is the case with many of you, it has deeply troubled me in a way that I simply cannot set aside.”
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)