WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Donald Trump on Wednesday lashed out at House Democrats, casting their impeachment inquiry as a political crusade, misrepresenting the facts driving it and again threatening to unmask the unidentified whistleblower.

“He either got it totally wrong, made it up, or the person giving the information to the whistleblower was dishonest,” Trump said. “And this country has to find out who that person was, because that person’s a spy, in my opinion.”

Asked about his rhetoric potentially endangering the whistleblower, Trump brushed off the question. Federal law guarantees whistleblowers anonymity, but Trump said, “I don’t care.

“I think the whistleblower should be protected — if the whistleblower is legitimate,” he said.

Joseph Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence, and Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community’s inspector general, have both said the whistleblower in the current case has followed the law and filed a legitimate complaint.

Trump’s outburst, which occurred during a meeting with the president of Finland in the Oval Office, came amid an intensifying showdown with Capitol Hill as House Democrats said they would issue a subpoena to the White House on Friday if the Trump administration did not voluntarily turn over records.

Among the documents being sought are any communications among administration officials involving Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in which he asked the foreign leader to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden. At the time of the call, Trump had paused military aid to the country, which is fending off Russia-backed separatists.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said Trump’s actions were alarming and that Democrats would move quickly on the issue.

“We are proceeding deliberately,” Schiff said, “but at the same time we feel a real sense of urgency.”

Schiff, D-Calif., said refusal to hand over documents to Congress would create the “adverse inference that those (underlying) allegations are in fact correct,” while Democrats have warned that any attempts by the administration to block the impeachment inquiry could themselves be impeachable offenses.

“We’re not fooling around here, though. We don’t want this to drag on months and months and months,” Schiff said. “Even as they try to undermine our ability to find the facts … they will be strengthening the case on obstruction.”

He also sharply criticized Trump’s attacks on the unidentified whistleblower. Trump had apparently alluded to the execution of past American spies during private remarks last week, saying that “we used to handle it a little differently than we do now.”

“This is a blatant effort to intimidate witnesses,” Schiff said. “It’s an incitement of violence.”

Trump, during the 17 minutes he spoke to reporters in the Oval Office, also lashed out at Schiff. He vehemently asserted that the White House had undermined the Democratic impeachment inquiry by releasing a memo of the phone call with Zelenskiy, claiming that it exculpates him and that Democrats “never thought” he’d make it public.

In fact, Republicans and Democrats alike were surprised last week that he released the call memorandum because it corroborated the whistleblower’s allegation that Trump asked Ukraine’s president to investigate Biden.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., speaking at the news conference with Schiff, sought to send the message that Democrats were not spending all their time on impeachment and instead were working on lowering prescription drug prices and advancing Trump’s proposed North American trade agreement.

Progress is being made on a revised NAFTA trade agreement despite the lack of public comments about it, she said.

“The quiet you hear is progress,” said Pelosi.

Trump had threatened that nothing would get done in Congress as Democrats pursued their impeachment inquiry.

“If the president is saying, ‘If you question my actions, you can’t agree on any subject,’ the ball is in his court on that,” Pelosi said.

Trump rejected Pelosi’s comments on Twitter, even before the news conference ended.