President Donald Trump on Tuesday denied a report FBI Director Christopher Wray threatened to resign because of pressure from the White House and Attorney General Jeff Sessions to fire the agency's deputy director.
"No, he didn't at all; he did not even a little bit," the president said when asked by reporters at an Oval Office event, Politico reported. "He's going to do a good job."
In a story posted Monday night, Axios reported Sessions "at the public urging" of Trump had been pressuring Wray to fire Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, but Wray threatened to resign if McCabe was removed.
McCabe had come under fire from conservatives who questioned his impartiality in a probe of Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server because of his wife's acceptance of campaign contributions from a Clinton ally. The FBI has said the donations occurred before McCabe's involvement in the Clinton investigation.
Axios reporter Jonathan Swan wrote Tuesday the outlet "stands by its reporting."
"Trump was not involved in any of the conversations with Wray, and we never reported that he was," Swan wrote. "The conversations were between Wray and Sessions, over several months. Trump applied public pressure and Sessions applied private pressure."
Swan also wrote the FBI and Justice Department were given "full visibility of our story before publishing," and "neither agency took issue with our characterization of the Wray-Sessions conversations or of Wray's threat to resign."
Axios reporter Caitlin Owens, in remarks Tuesday to Fox News' Shepard Smith, also defended the report.
"Axios never said that Trump himself was directly involved in private conversations with Wray," she said, adding: "Whether or not they were relayed to him, I don't know. That's not what the reporting is. But then more importantly . . . the FBI and the Justice Department were given full disclosure of what our reporting was . . . [and] still now have not denied the reporting . . ."
"The only person that has publicly done so is the president himself saying that Wray did not threaten to resign," she added.
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