Acting director of national intelligence Joseph Maguire has threatened to resign over concerns that the White House may force him to stonewall Congress when testifying on Thursday about a whistleblower complaint on president Trump.
According to Washington Post, this revelation reflects the extraordinary tensions between the White House and the nation’s highest-ranking intelligence official over a matter that has triggered impeachment proceedings against President Trump.
Maguire became the director of national intelligence last month after the resignation of previous director Daniel Coats and Trump’s refusal to allow the deputy director, Sue Gordon, to step into the senior job.
Maguire denied that he had done so. In a statement, he said that “at no time have I considered resigning my position since assuming this role on Aug. 16, 2019. 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 White House too has disputed the story, “This is actually not true,” White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said in a tweet.
According to Washington Post, Maguire has been caught in the middle of a fight between Congress and the executive branch over the contents of the whistleblower report since it reached his office late last month.
He has at times expressed his displeasure to White House counsel Pat Cipollone and others that the White House had put him in the untenable position of denying the material to Congress over a claim that it did not fall within his jurisdiction as leader of the intelligence community.
The contents of Trump’s call were released by the White House on Wednesday, showing that Trump repeatedly pressured Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to pursue investigations that might yield political dirt against Trump’s adversaries, including former vice president Joe Biden, reported Washington Post.
