President Donald Trump on Thursday called the oversight investigations into his administration “a continuation” of a “witch hunt.” | Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images White House Trump lashes out at incoming House investigations

President Donald Trump responded Thursday to the first waves of oversight investigations into his administration launched by the new Democratic majority in the House, alleging that he is being unfairly subjected to “unlimited presidential harassment” that no previous president has faced.

“So now Congressman Adam Schiff announces, after having found zero Russian Collusion, that he is going to be looking at every aspect of my life, both financial and personal, even though there is no reason to be doing so,” the president tweeted. “Never happened before! Unlimited Presidential Harassment.


"PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT! It should never be allowed to happen again!"

On Wednesday, House Intelligence Chairman Schiff (D-Calif.) announced the parameters of his committee’s revived Russia investigation, which he said would “go beyond” Russian interference in the 2016 election and include whether Trump or his associates “have sought to influence U.S. government policy in service of foreign interests” and “whether any foreign actor has sought to compromise or holds leverage, financial or otherwise, over Donald Trump, his family, his business, or his associates.”

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A spokesman for Schiff's office did not immediately return a request for comment on the president's complaint.

Schiff’s announcement came one day after the president called for unity between Republicans and Democrats in his State of the Union address and said “if there is going to be peace and legislation, there cannot be war and investigation,” an apparent dig at Democrats' plans to conduct rigorous oversight in the second half of Trump’s first term.

Trump responded to Schiff on Wednesday, calling him a “partisan hack” and arguing that there was “no basis” for an investigation of his finances, which he has called a red line in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

The investigation by Schiff’s committee is one of a slew that the president will face in a newly divided government that is now getting up to full steam after a monthlong government shutdown. House Democrats are gearing up to investigate everything from the president’s tax returns and immigration policies to the conduct of his scandal-ridden Cabinet members and his administration's security clearance practices as they wield subpoena power in the House for the first time in nearly a decade.

In another tweet on Thursday, the president wrote that “the Dems and their committees are going ‘nuts.’” He said “Republicans never did this to President Obama, there would be no time left to run government,” though Republicans did launch investigations into the Obama administration that Democrats similarly denounced as hyperpartisan.

Trump alluded to the prospect of facing more investigations, writing, “I hear other committee heads will do the same thing.”

And he appeared to complain that the bevy of investigations into his administration was diverting resources, writing that the probes are “even stealing people who work at White House!” and calling the investigations “a continuation” of a “witch hunt.”