White House adviser Stephen Miller declared President Donald Trump to be the real whistleblower Sunday in the ongoing Ukraine controversy, declaring voters had a choice between "democracy" and the "deep state."
"Do you want a democracy in this country or do you want a deep state?" Miller asked on Fox News Sunday. "It's a binary choice for the American people."
Miller said the whistleblower complaint released this week exhibited clear political bias. He praised Trump for "trying to expose corruption" in his phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in July.
"It's the president's job and sworn duty to safeguard taxpayer dollars and the United States government's foreign policy," Miller said. "If you want to understand why that complainant is so obviously politically biased ... when he says, or she, that the president is hurting national security by trying to get to the bottom of a gigantic scandal that nobody has unearthed—the president is the whistleblower here. The president of the United States is the whistleblower, and this individual is a saboteur trying to undermine a democratically elected government."
"Saboteur—is he a spy?" host Chris Wallace asked. "Is he committing treason? The president said that, you know."
"The president correctly pointed out that the behavior of this individual is close to a spy," Miller replied. "I don't know who the individual is. All I know is at some point, Chris, we have to focus on the real scandal, which is three years of deep state sabotage."
Miller and Wallace clashed repeatedly during the lengthy interview, with Wallace at one point accusing Miller of engaging in an "exercise in obfuscation."
House Democrats opened an impeachment inquiry this week following the release of a reconstructed phone conversation between Trump and Zelensky. Trump asked Zelensky to "look into" Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, over the latter's high-paid role at Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company.
Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani has accused the elder Biden of pushing for the firing of top Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin because he was investigating Burisma. The Bidens have denied any wrongdoing, and officials said the probe into Burisma was dormant when Shokin was pushed out in 2016.
Democrats allege Trump used military aid as leverage to pressure Zelensky into boosting his political fortunes, as Joe Biden is a leading Democratic candidate to face him in 2020. Trump said the call was appropriate and Zelensky told reporters he felt no pressure in the conversation. Trump has also accused the whistleblower of being partisan.
The whistleblower, whose identity is unknown, wrote in the complaint released by Congress that Trump had used "the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election." The whistleblower did not hear the conversation firsthand. According to the complaint, he learned about the call from U.S. officials who listened to it. He also claimed U.S. officials intervened to "lock down" records of the call afterward.