After a disastrous press conference performance in which acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney agreed that the White House had held up U.S. military aid in a "quid pro quo" exchange requesting a Ukrainian investigation of a bizarre Trump-Giuliani conspiracy theory suggesting Democratic "corruption" in the country—an admission that destroyed weeks of Republican defenses of Trump and his team—Mulvaney is finally attempting to walk that admission back.
In a brief statement, Mulvaney is now claiming that "the media has decided to misconstrue my comments to advance a biased and political witch hunt" and that "there was absolutely no quid pro quo."
We can go right to the tape for this one, and to the transcript: Mulvaney referred to "the corruption related to the DNC server" and that "that's why we held up the money." So he's lying.
But it's not a surprise that Mulvaney was forced to issue such a statement. Pundits and legal experts alike immediately noted the catastrophic nature of what Mulvaney had just admitted to: Trump's team was indeed illegally withholding U.S. military aid in an attempt to extract a political favor from the Ukrainian president.