Moments after an anonymous whistleblower complaint against President Trump was released, acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire sat for public testimony with the House Intelligence Committee - where he was grilled by Congressional Democrats over his handling of the complaint.

Kicking off the session, Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) rattled off completely fabricated account of a July 25 call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in order to analogize the interaction to a scene from a mafia drama.

Schiff was later forced to apologize, calling it a "parody."

Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff (CA) admits that his blatant fabrication of quotes from Trump's Ukraine call was "wrong" after he got called out



Schiff claims it was a "parody"



Impeachment is a politically polarizing event and Schiff thinks it's just a big joke



Absolutely unreal pic.twitter.com/YqcQscCKYt — Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) September 26, 2019

During his testimony, Maguire insisted he is "not partisan" and "not political," saying "I have served and led through turbulent times ... My integrity has never been questioned until now."

The rare open hearing of the intelligence committee commanded Washington's political attention Thursday given the implications for the newly launched impeachment inquiry against Trump, related to the whistleblower complaint. But at one point in the hearing, during a tense exchange with Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., about allegations in the complaint of a potential “cover-up” regarding the Ukraine call, Maguire pushed back by reminding the committee that the complaint was not based on direct knowledge. “This is second-hand information from a whistleblower. I have no knowledge if that is a true and accurate statement,” Maguire said regarding the “cover-up” claim. The complaint said White House officials tried to “lock down” records of the call. In the same document, the whistleblower also acknowledged not being a “direct witness” to most of the events described, instead citing other U.S. officials who are not named. -Fox News

Last year, Biden openly bragged about threatening to hurl Ukraine into bankruptcy as Vice President if they didn't fire their top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin - who was leading a wide-ranging corruption investigation into a natural gas firm whose board Hunter Biden sat on, collecting $50,000 per month.

In his own words, with video cameras rolling, Biden described how he threatened Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in March 2016 that the Obama administration would pull $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees, sending the former Soviet republic toward insolvency, if it didn’t immediately fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin. -The Hill

"I said, ‘ You’re not getting the billion .’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’" bragged Biden, recalling the conversation with Poroshenko.