Ukrainian President Zelensky on phone call with President Trump: Nobody pushed me
President Trump meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky following White House release of unredacted transcript of Ukraine call.
Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire denied a report by The Washington Post Wednesday that he had threatened to resign amid the clamor over President Trump’s July phone call with the Ukrainian president.
“At no time have I considered resigning my position since assuming this role on Aug. 16, 2019,” Maguire said in a statement. “I have never quit anything in my life, and I am not going to start now. I am committed to leading the Intelligence Community to address the diverse and complex threats facing our nation.”
The Post report, which cited "current and former U.S. officials familiar with the matter," said that Maguire had threatened to turn in his resignation over concerns that the White House might try to make him stonewall Congress. He is set to testify Thursday about a whistleblower complaint that has spurred House Democrats to open an impeachment inquiry into Trump.
The White House has also denied that Maguire threatened to resign, with Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham complaining on Twitter that the Post had only given them six minutes to respond to their request for comment.
“This is actually not true,” Grisham said of the newspaper’s story. “And we would have gone on the record to say that if the @washingtonpost had given us more than 6 minutes (literally) to respond.”
The account of Maguire’s resignation threat is another subplot in the furor enveloping Washington in the aftermath of revelations concerning the unnamed whistleblower’s complaint.
Earlier Wednesday, the White House released a transcript of Trump’s July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky showing Trump broached a review of dealings in the Eastern European country involving former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
“There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great,” Trump said in the phone call. “Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it…It sounds horrible to me.”
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Joe Biden has stated that while vice president, he urged Ukraine to fire its top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin. Shokin had been investigating the natural gas firm Burisma Holdings — where Hunter Biden was on the board. Biden has maintained that corruption concerns prompted his intervention.
The transcript, though, did not show Trump explicitly linking the request to $400 million in American aid to Ukraine, which at the time was on hold.
Fox News’ Catherine Herridge contributed to this report.
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