Mike Pence’s chief of staff resigns as Trump-Russia scandal heightens

| 3:21 am EDT June 30, 2017
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Mike Pence wants you to think there’s nothing to the fact that he’s already replacing his chief of staff after barely 160 days on the job. He’s playing it up as if it were all smiles, as if this were somehow always the plan. But while chiefs of staff rarely last a full term, they don’t just up and resign this early in term. Even the mentally unstable Donald Trump has managed to keep his own chief of staff in place for this long. No, this is about something else.

Pence is officially replacing Josh Pitcock with Nick Ayers, according to CNN (link) – two people whose names you’ve never heard to begin with. This points to just how obscure the Vice President’s office can be. But while Pence wants us to believe that this move is some kind of healthy natural progression, it’s coming far too soon to be a sign of anything remotely healthy. In fact what stands out is what it’s coming directly after.

Just two weeks ago, Mike Pence hired an attorney to personally represent him in the Trump-Russia scandal. That points to Pence expecting to end up being knee-deep in the investigation. His time in office will now become defined entirely based on what his role was, or was not, in the scandal. And that won’t be determined until after he’s been poked and prodded as long and hard as anyone in this investigation. Now that Pence has acknowledged as much by hiring an attorney, his chief of staff is suddenly racing out the door.

This one isn’t all that difficult to figure out: Mike Pence’s chief of staff didn’t sign up to run a Vice President’s office that will be defined and consumed by an ongoing criminal investigation into the President’s campaign. And so after less than six months on the job, he’s already out the door. Who’s next?