Trump lashes out at rising impeachment storm
Washington, Oct 3 (AFP/APP):A bellicose Donald Trump unleashed furious attacks Wednesday on the impeachment inquiry launched against him by Democrats, amid an intensifying standoff between the president and Congress.
Trump — accused of leaning on Ukraine’s president to dig up dirt on one of his main 2020 election rivals — resorted to coarse language in his broadsides against the investigation and his adversaries conducting it.
Democrats should be “focused on building up our Country, not wasting everyone’s time and energy on BULLSHIT, which is what they have been doing ever since I got overwhelmingly elected in 2016,” Trump tweeted.
Adam Schiff, the impeachment probe’s Democratic point man in the House of Representatives, told reporters there is a “real sense of urgency” to press forward.
Trump has fought back in terms once inconceivable for a president, including his claim late Tuesday that this is “not an impeachment, it is a COUP.”
He amplified the message Wednesday standing alongside Finnish President Sauli Niinisto in the White House, branding the impeachment process — announced by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last week — as a “hoax.”
Trump assailed Schiff, declaring the House Intelligence Committee chairman “a low life” who should be arrested for “treason.”
But at the same time Trump acknowledged he may yet cooperate with the latest move by Democrats, who threatened to subpoena the White House for documents related to the president’s efforts to get Ukraine to probe a political rival.
“We’ll work together with ‘shifty’ Schiff and Pelosi and all of them and we’ll see what happens,” he said.
Trump insists he did nothing wrong in a July phone call with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky and on Wednesday got support from Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, who said he saw “nothing compromising” in the conversation.
Given Trump’s controversial history with Putin, it was unlikely that the Kremlin leader’s backing would do much to calm waters in Washington.
READ MORE: White House accused of cover-up over Trump-Ukraine call
