Trump loyalist Betsey DeVos joins administration exodus as senior figures turn their backs on president

File photo: Betsy DeVos was one of Trump's longest serving officials

Credit: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

Betsy DeVos, the Education Secretary, has become the latest senior figure to resign as fears mount in Washington DC over what action President Trump will take during his remaining days in office.

Ms DeVos’s resignation follows that of Elaine Chao, the Transportation secretary and wife of the leader of the Senate Republicans Mitch McConnell. Ms DeVos has been a loyal supporter of Mr Trump and is his second-longest-serving Cabinet member, after Ms Chao. 

"Impressionable children are watching all of this, and they are learning from us," she wrote in her resignation letter, saying also that: “There is no mistaking the impact your rhetoric had on the situation, and it is the inflection point for me.”

The two Cabinet resignations come amid a number of other sudden departures from Mr Trump’s administration after Wednesday’s chaos. 

Among the resignations were: Mick Mulvaney, the special envoy to Northern Ireland and former acting chief of staff to Mr Trump; Matthew Pottinger, deputy national security adviser; John Costello, one of the US’s most senior cybersecurity official; Tyler Goodspeed, the acting chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers; and Sarah Matthews, a deputy press secretary at the White House.

Such is the stream of resignations that senior officials that Cabinet officials and senators from both parties have been urging key national security personnel not to quit, reports Axios, for the sake of national security and continuity of government.

According to US media, officials are now focused on trying to prevent Mr Trump from causing further damage to American interests in his twelve remaining days as president.

Fiona Hill, a former adviser on Russia to Mr Trump, alleged that the president was “trying to stage a coup” ahead of the election ratification. She told The Daily Beast: “This could have turned into a full-blown coup had he had any of those key institutions following him. Just because it failed or didn’t succeed doesn’t mean it wasn’t real.”

Ms Hill cited a letter, published in The Washington Post on Sunday, from all ten living former defence secretaries warning that the US military does not get involved in election disputes, as preventing the military from backing Mr Trump.

Separately, the chief of the US Capitol police, Steve Sund, handed in his resignation amid intense criticism of his force’s handling of the mob given that there were repeated warnings of possible violence. The sergeants-at-arms of the House and Senate also resigned.

Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, had called for Mr Sund’s resignation in the aftermath of the storming, saying “there was a failure of leadership at the top of the Capitol police.”