Fox News host Chris Wallace confronted acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney on Sunday over his role in pushing Ukraine to investigate President Donald Trump’s political rivals.
During an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” Mulvaney doubled down on his denial that he had admitted on Thursday that Trump had asked him to withhold military aid to Ukraine in order to get the Ukrainian government to investigate Trump’s baseless conspiracy theory about the DNC server and the cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike.
“I recognize that folks-that I didn’t speak clearly, maybe, on Thursday,” Mulvaney said on Sunday. “Folks misinterpreted what I said.”
That’s when Wallace pulled up White House aide Fiona Hill’s comments during her testimony to House impeachment investigators this week, during which she said that ex-National Security Adviser John Bolton had expressed alarm over Trump’s pressure campaign and told her that he was “not part of whatever drug deal” Ambassador Gordon Sondland and Mulvaney “are cooking up” in the scheme.
“No question you were following the President’s orders, but your fingerprints are all over linking aid to Ukraine with investigating the Bidens,” Wallace told Mulvaney after reading Bolton’s quote out loud.
The acting chief of staff said he was “surprised” by the testimony because Bolton “never complained to me about it.”
Mulvaney also seemed cast doubt on Bolton’s attempt to distance himself from the pressure campaign.
“John Bolton didn’t go say anything to anybody,” he said. “Doesn’t that raise a red flag with him?”
Watch Mulvaney and Wallace below:
Chris Wallace to Mulvaney: "Your fingerprints are all over" the Ukraine-Biden scandal pic.twitter.com/lbkLBk4uJk
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) October 20, 2019
