Trump goes off on sweeping House investigation into Russia, his finances

The chairman responded to Trump calling him a “political hack,” saying that it was understandable that congressional oversight “terrifies” the president.

“Several of his close associates are going to jail, others await trial, and criminal investigations continue,” he added on Twitter. “We’re going to do our job and won’t be distracted or intimidated by threats or attacks.”

The back-and-forth comes after Trump, in Nixon-esque fashion, attacked the ongoing investigations he faces during his State of the Union address.

“If there is going to be peace and legislation, there cannot be war and investigation,” he said. “It just doesn’t work that way!”

In his last State of the Union address, in 1974, President Richard Nixon called for an end to the Watergate probe. He would resign as a result of it later that year.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters after a Democratic Caucus meeting on Wednesday that Trump’s comment “was a threat.”

“The president should not bring threats to the floor of the House,” she said, adding, “He said he wasn’t going to cooperate unless we didn’t exercise our constitutional responsibility to oversight.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told “CBS This Morning” on Wednesday that, to him, the line showed “that the president’s scared.”

“The bottom line is that we are as a country, we’ve always had Congress do oversight over the executive branch,” Schumer said. “That’s how the Founding Fathers set it up.”

On CNN, Schumer compared Trump’s position on congressional oversight of him to the recent partial government shutdown, which was the longest in U.S. history.

“And the president says if you investigate me I’m not going to make progress,” he said. “That’s already doing what he did with the shutdown. Holding the American people hostage. He’s got something to hide. Because if he had nothing to hide, he’d just shrug his shoulders and let these investigations go forward. He’s afraid of them.”