Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire refused to tell the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday whether he’d discussed an explosive whistleblower complaint with President Donald Trump.
During Maguire’s hearing, Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) asked the acting DNI if he’d spoken to Trump about the whistleblower complaint, which details both Trump’s attempts to get foreign government to interfere with the 2020 elections and the ways in which the White House lawyers attempted to bury information about the infamous call with the president of Ukraine.
“My conversations with the President, because I am the director of national intelligence, are privileged and it would be inappropriate for me, because it would destroy my relationship with the President in intelligence matters, to divulge any of my conversations with the President of the United States,” Maguire said.
“But just so we can be clear for the record, you are not denying that you spoke to the President about this complaint?” Himes asked.
“What I’m saying, congressman, is that I will not divulge privileged conversations that I have as the director of national intelligence with the President,” Maguire responded.
The acting DNI denied that the White House had asked him to assert executive privilege.
Watch Maguire below:
Acting DNI won't say if he spoke to Trump about the whistleblower complaint pic.twitter.com/Y5qcPyik9q
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) September 26, 2019
Let me fix that answer for you.
“Yes.”
We can close the thread now.
(Edit: TIL that TPM will delete quote boxes if the quoted post is immediately above. Not a fan of that choice, since TPM’s forums are not threaded and it now appears as if my comment is in a void when it is a specific reference to rickjones.)
Gosh darn I thought he would spill the beans.
He seems like such an honest bloke.
While I will not deny that I am denying the denial, I deny that this denial will have been going to have been denied, if it were, via the denial of procedural steps undertaken or not via the non-denial.
McGuire is literally breathing a big sigh of relief whenever it’s time for Republicans to question him. It’s clear where his loyalties lie in this. He’s desperately trying to escape culpability and is trying to simultaneously claim that the White House didn’t delay providing the complaint to Congress nor did he.