Russell Vought, the acting director for the White House Office of Management and Budget on Monday "absolutely" denied the claim President Donald Trump told him not to testify before House members as part of the ongoing impeachment inquiry.
"This is a sham process," Vought told Fox News' "Outnumbered Overtime." "Trying to influence the next election, there's nothing beyond that. The administration has a very high view of the oversight responsibilities that Congress has to do, in general, as it pertains to legislate. This is not what they say it is."
The impeachment push is an effort to influence the decision Americans made to elect Trump, said Vought, and to keep voters from making that decision again in 2020.
"We had a letter from the... White House counsel about what a fair process would look like," Vought said. "Nothing has changed, and to the extent that there is still reporting that goes on that says that some of us are going to go up and be deposed, we are not."
But Trump did not ask him personally not to testify, Vought said.
"We are thrilled to get this president's back when it comes to the unfair attack that the Democrats [in] Congress have levied against him," Vought said. "I get a lot of sleep at night because we have not done anything wrong. And I wake up every single day with a lot of passion and enthusiasm to accomplish with the president wants to do for the American people."
Vought made his comments after the president's Monday Cabinet meeting, where an update was given on his deregulatory initiatives.
"There has been $50 billion in cost savings to the American people since he took office" explaining, early in the administration, the goal was to have two deregulatory initiatives for every single one or regulator, and it has outperformed that with a 9-1 ratio.
"It is about $221 billion savings to the economy and $3,000 per family," Vought said. "It's a lot to be updating on, and also to move forward on figuring out how we will accelerate the initiative going forward."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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