WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Monday escalated his attacks against the lawmaker leading the impeachment inquiry against him, suggesting that Representative Adam Schiff be arrested for “treason.”
The comment is likely to inflame criticism of Trump’s handling of the scandal engulfing his presidency, stemming from a telephone call in which Trump asked Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate Democratic rival Joe Biden and his son.
The telephone call was included in an intelligence officer’s whistleblower complaint that raised concerns about whether the president sought to leverage US aid to Ukraine for a political favor.
“Rep Adam Schiff illegally made up a FAKE & terrible statement, pretended it to be mine as the most important part of my call to the Ukrainian President, and read it aloud to Congress and the American people. It bore NO relationship to what I said on the call. Arrest for Treason?” Trump wrote in a post on Twitter.
Trump appeared to reference statements made by Schiff during a hearing held by the House Intelligence Committee, of which Schiff is the chairman. Schiff said his remarks parodied Trump’s comments on the call with Zelenskiy.
The Republican president has increasingly lashed out at political opponents since House Democrats announced on Tuesday they would pursue an impeachment inquiry.
He likened the whistleblower and White House officials who gave information to the whistleblower to spies and suggested they committed treason.
The inspector general for the director of national intelligence deemed the whistleblower complaint credible and urgent, while the top US intelligence officer said the whistleblower acted in good faith.
Trump-Putin phone call
In another development, the Kremlin said on Monday that Washington would need Russian consent to publish transcripts of phone calls between US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
Congress is determined to get access to Trump’s calls with Putin and other world leaders, the US House Intelligence Committee’s chairman said, citing concerns that the Republican president may have jeopardised national security.
Asked about those comments, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Russia would be prepared to discuss the issue with Washington if it sent Moscow a signal, but that such disclosures were not normal diplomatic practice.
“Of course their publication is to some extent only possible by mutual agreement of the parties. This is a certain diplomatic practice,” Peskov said. — Reuters
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