LONDON — The White House doubled down Friday and said it's not issuing an apology to the British government for claiming the UK's GCHQ intelligence agency spied on Donald Trump for the Obama administration.

“I don’t think we regret anything," press secretary Sean Spicer said Friday afternoon, after a frantic attempt to paper over the controversy on Friday.



Here's how we got to this point.

Spicer repeated the allegation on Thursday from a White House podium. Less than 24 hours later, on Friday morning, British government sources briefed news outlets that the US had apologized. The Telegraph, quoting intelligence sources, even reported the apology came direct from Spicer and National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster.



In an on-the-record statement, a Downing Street spokesperson said the UK government "made clear the allegations were ridiculous and received reassurances that they would not be repeated" following a discussion with US counterparts.

But US officials have been disputed whether the Trump administration had gone as far as an apology. One administration source told BuzzFeed News: "The UK demanded an apology, NSC worked overnight to try and smooth things over."

The White House told reporters on Friday that British ambassador to Washington Kim Darroch and Sir Mark Lyall, the UK national security adviser, had expressed their concerns to Spicer and McMaster, who had explained that Spicer was simply pointing to public reports, not endorsing any specific story.



One senior White House official, however, told the New York Times that Spicer offered no regret or apology.

"He didn’t apologize, no way, no how,” the official was quoted as saying.



The ambiguity over whether there was an apology puts pressure on Trump aides to clarify the exact nature of the conversation. Trump is legendarily opposed to apologizing.

The diplomatic row between the White House and its closest intelligence partner broke out on Thursday when Spicer cited Fox & Friends' Tuesday show while trying to defend the president's allegation of wiretapping. On the program, Fox News' judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano claimed that three intelligence sources had told him Obama had called on the services of GCHQ.

That prompted GCHQ to break years of protocol and make an extremely rare public comment, describing claims it had been asked by the Obama administration to conduct surveillance on then-presidential candidate Donald Trump as "utterly ridiculous."

A British defense official who works with the US at a joint command center told BuzzFeed News that “professionals from both countries were aghast” at the allegations and the way they were handled.