On Tuesday, President Donald Trump took to Twitter to renew his attacks on Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California. The president has recently targeted Schiff, following reports last week that Trump inappropriately asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate a potential 2020 political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden.
“Why isn’t Congressman Adam Schiff being brought up on charges for fraudulently making up a statement and reading it to Congress as if this statement, which was very dishonest and bad for me, was directly made by the President of the United States?,” Trump tweeted on Tuesday. “This should never be allowed!”
The tweet sent Tuesday wasn’t the first time the president has targeted Schiff but was the latest in a string of tweets that have targeted the West Coast lawmaker. Notably, on Monday, the president accused Schiff of treason in a morning tweet, The Inquisitr previously reported.
Schiff, who is the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, will be responsible for a large part of the House’s impeachment process. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced last week that the House has begun an official impeachment inquiry following the reports about the president’s call with the Ukrainian president. Reports were made by a whistleblower who had secondhand knowledge of the call.
As CNN analyst Chris Cillizza noted Monday, the president’s many attacks on Schiff don’t necessarily add up. The president has seemed to take issue with a statement Schiff made before Congress last week.
In a line-for-line breakdown of Schiff’s characterization and the transcript released last week by the White House, Cillizza argued that there aren’t actually all that many discrepancies between what Trump said and how Schiff characterized it before Congress. Cillizza does, however, say that Schiff embellished certain details of the conversation between Trump and Zelensky. Schiff has since admitted that his retelling of the conversation was “parody,” and not meant to be a verbatim representation of the conversation between the leaders.
Rudy Giuliani Subpoenaed By House Democrats As Part Of Impeachment Probe Into President Trump. #PresidentTrump #USPolitics https://t.co/XHFNpuFUZd
— The Inquisitr (@theinquisitr) September 30, 2019
Particularly, Schiff said that Trump had asked Zelensky to “make up dirt” on a political opponent, which isn’t how a summarized transcript that the White House released last week portrays the interaction. The president did, however, ask the Ukrainian president to investigate a conspiracy involving the former vice president in Ukraine, as Cillizza notes.
Cillizza has argued that Trump has chosen to focus on Schiff because of his desire to find a target following the whistleblower allegations against him. The president has also taken to Twitter to target the whistleblower, whose identity has yet to be revealed. In several tweets, the president has insisted that he should be able to question the whistleblower over the allegations he or she leveled against the president on a call Trump has continued to insist was “perfect.”
Cillizza also argued that the president picked up on attacks on Schiff from hosts on FOX News and echoed them on Twitter in hopes that his supporters will take his word that Schiff mischaracterized his interaction with the Ukrainian president.