A president should not brazenly lie and make shit up.

At the Maguire hearing, the acting DNI was asked about the whistleblower—whose identity remained a secret. Is the whistleblower a “political hack,” Rep. Adam Schiff followed up: “You don’t have any reason to accuse them of disloyalty to our country?” Maguire provided an unequivocal response: “Absolutely not…I think the whistleblower did the right thing.”

In other words, there was no basis for Trump’s denunciations of the whistleblower.

Later, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) returned to this subject. She asked Maguire, “Do you believe the whistleblower was spying…on the president?” Maguire answered, “I believe the whistleblower complied with the law and did everything they thought, he or she thought was responsible under the Intelligence Community Whistleblowers Protection Act.”

Speier then asked Maguire if Trump had asked him to share the identity of the whistleblower. “I can tell you emphatically no,” he said. And had anyone else in the White House or Justice Department done so? “No,” he said.

So if Trump and the White House did not know the whistleblower’s identity, how could Trump question this person’s loyalty, blast him or her as a partisan plotter, and accuse the whistleblower of spying?

via Trump’s Intelligence Chief Offers a Timely Reminder: Trump Is a Liar – Mother Jones