Tuesday on MSNBC’s “The Beat,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) accused President Donald Trump of “furthering of Russian interests” and of being “antagonist” to American interests.

Schiff said, “I can’t go into what we were initially briefed in terms of the FBI’s interest concern, was it criminal, was it counterintelligence, who were they looking at? I can’t go into the specifics of that. I can tell you from our committee’s point of view, counterintelligence has been at the heart of our concerns. And a concern that a foreign government might have leverage over the president has been at the heart of our concerns, and we’re determined to get to the bottom of it. Something explains the president’s bewildering conduct of Russian policy. When you add to that what The Washington Post has disclosed; that he made an effort not only to excluded people from the room when he met with Putin but might have attempted to make sure the record of that never saw the light of day.”

He added, “It’s hard to be worse than it looks, honestly. Let’s say there was no compromise and this was just the president acting on his own, you could not act in a way that was more furthering of Russian interests and more antagonist to our own interests, than to be degrading NATO, talking about withdrawing from NATO, bashing our democratic allies, praising autocrats, take those actions and others you could not fashion something more destructive of our interests. I used to joke, and maybe I shouldn’t joke about this, but the best case that the president is not an asset of the Russians is the Russians would tell him, ‘Slow down. You’re too obvious. They’re going to be on to you.’ I say that in jest, but the reality is his policies have been so pro-Russian and so destructive of our alliances that, you know, it begs for an explanation, and if that explanation is compromised, it needs to be exposed.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN