Fox News chief national correspondent Ed Henry had some “new information” about President Donald Trump’s call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday night’s edition of Fox News’ “The Story with Martha MacCallum.”
The July 25 call, during which Trump reportedly asked Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, at least eight times, is key to a recent whistleblower complaint against the president.
Speaking with Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum, Henry quoted a senior Trump administration official as saying there is “no there, there” regarding presidential wrongdoing and it would be in the “president’s interest” to release the actual transcript to prove it.
WATCH:
“I’ve got some new information tonight about a July phone call between the president of the United States and his Ukrainian counterpart that’s at the center of this controversy,” Henry said. “Details suggesting Democrats and pundits in the media may be overreaching. A senior administration official familiar with the transcript of that call told me it is way overblown to suggest there was any threat at all to national security. This top official saying ‘The media better be careful with this. There is no there there. It’s in the president’s interest to put the transcript of the call out and show there was no quid pro quo.'”
After going over the event timeline from May to now, Henry played a clip of Trump telling the media they are “going to look really bad when it falls.”
“So here’s the point, that ‘Wall Street journal’ scoop you mentioned – the ‘Washington Post’ also has a report on this tonight – they both say the president did not, basically, mention foreign aid on the phone call in July, there was no quid pro quo that basically, we will give you the money if you open up this Biden investigation, and that may be why this senior official in the Trump administration is telling me today, the White House should simply release the transcript, Martha, because this official believes having reviewed it, is going to be messy, maybe this isn’t the best thing to do but it didn’t break the law and it didn’t threaten national security. I don’t know, I haven’t seen the transcript, but that is what I’m hearing from this administration official.”
Henry speculated that the administration ultimately would release the transcript or it would be leaked, but either way “the law wasn’t broken here.” (RELATED: Trump Calls Intelligence Whistleblower ‘Highly Partisan,’ Denies Wrongdoing)
“But obviously there is a standard,” he concluded. “You could do things that don’t break the law that could still be quite messy. But the bottom line is if there is no quid pro quo here. This might be another case of the Democrats ginning something up for impeachment that turns out to be a whole lot of nothing.”