White House Miffed At Axios For Story Based On Dubious Ukraine Letter

The White House spent much of Friday frustrated by an Axios report that it believes was based on a fabricated letter purportedly written by Ukraine's top national security official, Oliver Darcy reported for CNN Business.

Photo Insert: White House and CIA officials told Axios off the record on Thursday that they had no record of receiving Danilov's supposed letter and that they could not confirm its authenticity.

The Axios story, written by reporter Zachary Basu, said that Oleksiy Danilov had asked the US earlier this month "to go beyond traditional military aid and provide the country with the funding, training and weaponry to support a long-term resistance movement."

But Ukrainian Ambassador Oksana Markarova later told Axios that she believed the letter was "falsified." And officials at the National Security Council (NSC) also told Axios they have no record of receiving such a letter from Danilov.

“Here's what I have gathered after talking to a senior administration official familiar with the matter: White House and CIA officials told Axios off the record on Thursday that they had no record of receiving Danilov's supposed letter and that they could not confirm its authenticity. In other words, they tried to wave Basu away from it. When Basu published his report anyway, the White House connected the outlet with Markarova so that she could relay that she believed it to be inauthentic. Markarova did so on Friday. Meanwhile, the White House repeatedly asked Axios to retract its story — all to no avail,” Darcy wrote.

"We were appalled that Axios apparently did not have time to verify with Ukrainian officials whether or not this letter was a fake, but made sure to reach out to a former Trump official with no knowledge of the situation for a 'gotcha' quote," the senior admin official told me.

"And then we were even more appalled it stayed up all day despite our repeated asks to take the story down when became obvious the letter was a fake — which Axios should have dug up before publishing in the first place."

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