Washington Post claims DNI threatened to resign if he couldn't testify about whistleblower complaint. White House and DNI say it never happened.

The Washington Post reported that acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire threatened to quit if the White House did not allow him to testify before Congress later this week. But within an hour of the article's publication, both the White House and Maguire himself had issued denials.

What did the Post say?

Citing "current and former U.S. officials familiar with the matter," the Post reported Wednesday afternoon that Maguire "warned the White House that he was not willing to withhold information from Congress."

Maguire is supposed to testify before Congress on Thursday regarding a whistleblower complaint that alleged that President Donald Trump withheld U.S. aid in order to urge the president of Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden's son Hunter's dealings with a Ukrainian natural gas firm. Biden so far has consistently been one of the top polling Democratic candidates hoping to run against Trump in 2020.

On Wednesday, Trump released the transcript of the phone call in question which did in fact show that Trump had urged him to investigate, but also that there had been no offer of a quid-pro-quo as a number of Trump's opponents had suggested. Maguire is one of the few people to date who has seen the entire whistleblower complaint.

The Post also reported that Maguire had urged the White House to make an official decision on whether or not it planned to use executive privilege to try to legally withhold information on this matter.

Both Maguire and the White House have denied this

But, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham shot back in a tweet, "This is actually not true. And we would have gone on the record to say that if the @washingtonpost had given us more than 6 minutes (literally) to respond."

Minutes later, Maguire released a statement of his own saying, according to Fox News's Chad Pergram, "At no time have I considered resigning my position since assuming this role..I have never quit anything in my life & 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"

Trump also mentioned this story during a press conference Wednesday afternoon, calling it a "fake article" that "shocked him" because it failed to mesh with the image of Maguire as he knew him.