Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump's former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski called a Democratic lawmaker's questioning "just a rant" in a contentious back and forth during the House Judiciary Committee's first official hearing on possible impeachment.

During her questioning Tuesday, Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee asked Lewandowski about an alleged interaction between him and Trump outlined in the Mueller report . Former special counsel Robert Mueller wrote that in June 2017, Trump instructed Lewandowski to tell then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to curtail the Mueller investigation, and Lewandowski did not follow through.

"Let me just say that you knew -- did you know that the President was putting you at risk when he asked you to deliver a message to the attorney general?" Jackson Lee asked.

"I want to be very clear. The President knew what he was doing was wrong because everyone else had already said no. He called his White House counsel to fire the special counsel. McGahn said no," Jackson Lee continued. "He called the attorney general to ask him to unrecuse himself from the special counsel's investigation. Sessions said no. His White House counsel said that there should be no contact with Sessions because of his recusal."

She added, "So what does the President do? He calls you in to do what everyone else wouldn't do. He called you in to do his dirty work in secret because he knew it was wrong."

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