President Trump spent Saturday morning on Twitter attacking the impeachment inquiry he faces on Capitol Hill, calling it a “coup” and slamming one of the top Democrats in charge as a “fraud” who deserves to be formally reprimanded by his House colleagues.
Mr. Trump took aim at the proceedings as fellow Republicans aim to censure Rep. Adam B. Schiff, California Democrat, over his handling of the impeachment probe.
“There has never been a greater fraud on Congress. Shifty Schiff is Corrupt,” Mr. Trump tweeted.
The president’s remark was made in response to a tweet from Rep. Andy Harris, Maryland Republican, who said that his motion to censure Mr. Schiff is slated to be considered Monday night.
“Go Andy!” Mr. Trump tweeted.
“#StopTheCoup,” Mr. Trump said in a separate tweet Saturday morning. It was shared by other users, or retweeted, more than 20,000 times within five hours of being first posted by the president.
Democrats launched impeachment proceedings last month after the Trump administration tried to block Congress from seeing a whistleblower complaint filed by a member of the U.S. intelligence community. The White House later released a rough transcript of a July 25 telephone call that sparked the complaint, and it showed that Mr. Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joseph R. Biden, Mr. Trump’s potential challenger in the 2020 presidential race, while the U.S. withheld critical military aid from Kyiv.
Mr. Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee leading the inquiry, has come under fire from Mr. Trump and his defenders over how he characterized the phone call during a congressional hearing last month. Mr. Schiff had said that the transcript “reads like a classic organized crime shakedown” prior to proceeding to paraphrase its contents.
Republicans led by Mr. Harris allege Mr. Schiff should be censured for his comments about the phone call, as well as for not disclosing that the whistleblower had contacted his committee’s staff prior to filing the complaint with the intelligence community’s inspector general.
Mr. Trump has attacked Mr. Schiff regularly over his interpretation of the phone call and has demanded his resignation and arrest for “treason.”
Mr. Schiff’s office did not immediately respond to a message requesting comment.
The California Democrat previously said that his reading of the transcript was meant to be a parody and that it “would be funny if it wasn’t such a graphic betrayal of the president’s oath of office.”
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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