House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff on Sunday questioned whether special counsel Robert Mueller has adequately investigated President Trump’s financial dealings with a German bank, thus reinforcing his case for a new Democrat-led House to begin its own inquiries into the president’s finances.

During an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” the Democratic California congressman said his concerns stem from a New York Times report in April that said Trump tried to get Mueller fired after it was reported the special counsel had subpoenaed Deutsche Bank. That same report said Trump backed down only after Mueller's office told his advisers and lawyers that the reports were untrue.

The president has warned that Mueller’s investigators would be crossing a “red line” if they sought to investigate his personal finances and business dealings. Deutsche Bank provided loans to Trump in the 1990s after U.S. lenders opted against it following a flurry of bankruptcies.

“If the special counsel hasn’t subpoenaed Deutsche Bank, he can’t be doing much of a money laundering investigation,” Schiff said. “So that’s what concerns me, that that red line has been enforced, whether by the deputy attorney general [Rod Rosenstein] or by some other party at the Justice Department. But that leaves the country exposed.”

Schiff announced last week the House Intelligence Committee, now with him at the helm, would embark on a sweeping probe into Trump’s financial transactions and Russia.

Included in that investigative effort is a look at Trump’s financial ties to Deutsche Bank, which received an “inquiry” from the House Intelligence Committee and the House Financial Services Committee, led by Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif.

Schiff’s talk of investigations has prompted sharp rebukes from Trump, who last week called him a “political hack” who is engaging in “presidential harassment.”

Schiff defended the Intelligence Committee’s probe of Trump’s finances. “In terms of the president's business, we are not interested in our committee in whether he’s a tax cheat or not worth what he says he is,” Schiff said. “What we are interested in is, does the president have business dealings with Russia such that it compromises the United States?”

He also said the committee had no choice but to conduct another investigation parallel to Mueller’s rather than waiting for the special counsel’s office to finish its work.

“If we had waited to do any of our investigative work for the Mueller investigation, we would have been waiting a year and a half,” Schiff said. “And we have a separate and independent and important responsibility, and that is to tell the country what happened.”

[Read more: Adam Schiff aims to make House Intel transcripts 'fully available' to Mueller]