Pelosi again relived last week's call with Trump in which the president defended his conversation with Ukraine’s president as “perfect,” just hours before she came out for an impeachment inquiry. She described that as an inflection point in her decision-making.

“This is a very serious challenge that the president has put there. It’s very sad — I don’t see impeachment as a unifying thing for our country,” Pelosi told reporters Wednesday. “I weighed those equities hard and long until I had the president’s admission that he did what he did.”

Trump was unmoved, taking his scorched-earth tirade offline during an Oval Office appearance with the president of Finland on Wednesday afternoon and attacking the still-unidentified person who filed an official complaint to the intelligence community’s inspector general.

The whistleblower "wrote a vicious conversation," Trump said. "In other words, he either got it totally wrong, made it up, or the person giving the information to the whistleblower was dishonest. And this country has to find out who that person was. Because that person is a spy, in my opinion.”

A combative Trump reiterated his demands that Schiff resign and be tried for treason.

“Nancy Pelosi and shifty Schiff, who should resign in disgrace, and Jerry Nadler and all of them — it’s a disgrace what’s going on,” Trump said. “They’ve been trying to impeach me from the day I got elected. I’ve been going through this for three years.”

House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), whose panel has jurisdiction over impeachment, was notably absent from Pelosi’s news conference, as the Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight committees take center stage.

During the news conference, Schiff rebutted Republicans’ defenses of the president and Trump’s relentless attacks on the whistleblower: “The president of the United States asked that leader ‘a favor though.’ No attack on the whistleblower or anyone else is going to change those underlying facts.”

Pelosi and Schiff also rebuked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for his refusal to fully cooperate with the inquiry, which they said could be used as evidence of obstruction of Congress.

“We want to make it abundantly clear that any effort by the secretary, by the president or anyone else to interfere with the Congress’ ability to call before it relevant witnesses will be considered as evidence of obstruction of the lawful functions of Congress,” Schiff said.