(L)-Committee chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) delivers opening remarks at a hearing featuring Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire testifying before the House Select Committee on Intelligence in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington on Sept. 26, 2019. (Alex Wong/Getty Images) (R)-President Donald Trump speaks to the media at the United Nations in New York on Sept. 24, 2019. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

President Trump: Adam Schiff ‘Lied to Congress,’ Should Resign

President Donald Trump alleged that Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) “lied to Congress” when the representative fabricated parts of the released transcript of the call between Trump and Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“Rep. Adam Schiff fraudulently read to Congress, with millions of people watching, a version of my conversation with the President of Ukraine that doesn’t exist. He was supposedly reading the exact transcribed version of the call, but he completely changed the words to make it sound horrible [and] me sound guilty,” Trump said in a statement early Sept. 27.

“HE WAS DESPERATE AND HE GOT CAUGHT. Adam Schiff therefore lied to Congress and attempted to defraud the American Public. He has been doing this for two years. I am calling for him to immediately resign from Congress based on this fraud!”

Trump later added: “Rep. Adam Schiff totally made up my conversation with Ukraine President and read it to Congress and Millions. He must resign and be investigated. He has been doing this for two years. He is a sick man!”

Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, added words to the transcript while appearing to read from it during opening remarks at a committee hearing on Thursday. Schiff quoted part of the transcript before mixing in words Trump did not say, later claiming he did it partly in jest.

Rep. Adam Schiff fraudulently read to Congress, with millions of people watching, a version of my conversation with the President of Ukraine that doesn’t exist. He was supposedly reading the exact transcribed version of the call, but he completely changed the words to make it…. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 27, 2019

….sound horrible, an me sound guilty. HE WAS DESPERATE AND HE GOT CAUGHT. Adam Schiff therefore lied to Congress and attempted to defraud the American Public. He has been doing this for two years. I am calling for him to immediately resign from Congress based on this fraud! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 27, 2019

Republicans on the committee castigated Schiff, one of the leading proponents of the Russia-Trump collusion theory, for fabricating portions of the transcript.

“While the chairman was speaking I had someone text me, ‘is he just making this up?’” Rep Mike Turner (R-Ohio) said. “And yes, yes he was. Because sometimes fiction is better than the actual words or the text. But luckily the American public are smart and they have the transcript. They’ve read the conversation, they know when someone’s just making it up.”

Schiff later told those assembled: “My colleague is right … it’s not okay. But also my summary of the president’s call was meant to be, at least part, in parody. The fact that that’s not clear is a separate problem in and of itself. Of course, the president never said ‘if you don’t understand me I’m going to say it seven more times.’ My point is that that was the message that the Ukranian president was receiving in not so many words.”

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) later took a shot at Schiff, before reading from the transcript, saying: “I’m not going to improvise for parody purposes like the chairman of this committee did, I’m going to read from it directly.”