Donald Trump contradicts grieving widow's phone call account and claims he 'spoke his name from beginning'

Donald Trump has claimed he spoke the name of Sgt. La David Johnson “from the beginning” of a conversation with the serviceman's widow – contradicting the wife's account of the President's condolence call after her husband was killed during an ambush in Niger.

Myeshia Johnson took the call from Mr Trump last week, saying it “made me cry even worse”. She said what hurt her the most was that the President struggled “to remember my husband's name”.

“I heard him stumbling on trying to remember my husband's name, and that’s what hurt me the most because if my husband is out here fighting for our country and he risked his life for our country why can’t you remember his name,” Ms Johnson told ABC's Good Morning America.

“That’s what made me upset and cry even more because my husband was an awesome soldier,” she added. Ms Johnson had known her husband since they were six years old.

Disputing Ms Johnson's description of what happened, Mr Trump wrote on Twitter: “I had a very respectful conversation with the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, and spoke his name from beginning, without hesitation!”

The accounts of Mr Trump's call with Ms Johnson have placed the grieving widow at the centre of a national controversy.

Democratic Congresswoman Frederica Wilson, who had listened in on the call on speakerphone, said last week that Mr Trump told Ms Johnson that her husband “must have known what he signed up for,” an account later corroborated by Ms Johnson’s aunt and custodial mother, Cowanda Jones-Johnson.

Mr Trump vehemently denied Ms Wilson’s account, stating that it was “totally fabricated.” But White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, a retired military general, later appeared to confirm Ms Wilson's report of the President said.

In an emotional statement during a White House briefing, Mr Kelly said he was “stunned” that Ms Wilson had listened in on the call and then spoke to the press about it.

Ms Johnson on Monday said that the congresswoman's version of events was “100 percent correct.”

“Why would we fabricate something like that?” she said.

Mr Johnson was killed along with three other soldiers during an attack that appears to have been carried out by 40 to 50 Isis militants.

Nearly, three weeks after the incident, questions continue to swril about what happened.

In the ensuing rescue operation to get the US soldiers out of the area during a firefight with the militants, it appears Mr Johnson’s body was left behind.

His body was only recovered 48 hours later – found by Nigerian nationals – and returned the US.

“I want to know why it took them 48 hours to find my husband. . . . When they came to my house, they just told me it was a massive gunfire and that my husband, as of October 4, was missing,” Ms Johnson said on Monday. “They didn’t know his whereabouts.”

She continued: “He went from missing to killed in action...I don’t know how he got killed, where he got killed or anything.”

Mr Johnson's body was flown back to the US last Tuesday. A photo shows his widow kissing his casket just before he was buried.

But Ms Johhson told Good Morning America that she still doesn't know if her husband was inside it.

“Why couldn’t I see my husband? Every time I asked to see my husband, they wouldn’t let me,” she said. “They won’t show me a finger, a hand. I know my husband’s body from head to toe. They won’t show me anything.”

“I don’t know what’s in that box,” she added. “It could be empty for all I know.”

Both the FBI and the US Defence Department are investigating the incident, and Congress is also demanding more clarification on what happened.

On Thursday, Defence Secretary James Mattis said that the Pentagon does not “have all the accurate information yet” regarding the ambush.