The House has rejected an attempt to censure Representative Adam B. Schiff and rejected a GOP attempt to fine him for his comments about former President Trump and investigations into his ties to Russia.

Schiff (D-Burbank), the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and the lead prosecutor in Trump’s first impeachment trial, has long been a major Republican political target. Shortly after he regained the majority this year, Republicans blocked him from serving on the intelligence panel.

But Schiff was helped on Wednesday by more than 20 Republicans who either voted with Democrats to stop the censorship resolution or voted present, giving Democrats enough votes to block the measure.

The vote was a rare win for Democrats in the Republican-led House, and they cheered and clapped Schiff on the back after the vote ended and the gavel was downed.

I’m flattered they think I’m effective enough to go after me like this,” Schiff told reporters afterwards, referring to his Republican rivals. “It won’t scare me.

Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a newly elected Republican who sponsored the measure, passed Schiff in the hallway after the vote and told him she would try again.

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Luna later tweeted that she would remove part of the resolution proposing a $16 million fine if the House Ethics Committee found that Schiff lied, made misrepresentations and misused sensitive information. Some Republicans, including Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, had argued that the fine was unconstitutional.

Next week we will file a motion to censor and investigate Schiff, Luna tweeted. We’re removing fine because that seems to make these Republicans uncomfortable. …See you next week, Adam.

The resolution says that Schiff held positions of power during the Trump presidency and abused this trust by saying there was evidence of collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia.

Schiff has been one of the former president’s most outspoken critics as both the Justice Department and the Republican-led House launched investigations into Trump’s ties to Russia in 2017.

By repeatedly stating these untruths, Representative Schiff deliberately misled his committee, Congress and the American people, the resolution said.

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Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who led the Justice Department’s two-year investigation, determined that Russia intervened on behalf of the campaigns and that Trump’s campaign welcomed the help. Mueller’s team did not find that the campaign conspired to influence the election, and the Justice Department recommended no charges.

It did not address the issue of “collusion” directly.

The congressional inquiry, launched by then-majority Republicans, also found that Russia interfered in the election, but there was no evidence of a conspiracy. Schiff was the top Democrat on the panel at the time.

Had the House voted to censor him, Schiff would have stood at the front of the room as the text of the resolution was read.

On Tuesday, Schiff told reporters the censorship resolution was red meat that Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) is throwing at his conference amid bickering over government spending. Republicans are trying to show their allegiance to Trump, Schiff said.

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Schiff, who is running for the Senate seat to be vacated by Dianne Feinstein, noted that he warned the country three years ago during impeachment proceedings that Trump was “going to do worse.”

And of course he did worse in the form of a violent attack on the Capitol, he said.

In the censorship resolution, Luna also cited a report released in May by Special Counsel John Durham that found the FBI rushed its investigation into Trump’s campaign and relied too much on raw and unconfirmed information.

Durham said investigators repeatedly relied on confirmation bias, ignoring or explaining away evidence that undermined their premise of a Trump-Russia conspiracy as they pushed the investigation forward. But he did not claim that political bias or partisanship were leading factors in the FBI’s actions.

Trump had claimed Durham’s report would reveal the crime of the century, exposing a deep state conspiracy by senior government officials to derail his candidacy and later his presidency. But the investigation turned up only one conviction, a guilty plea from a little-known FBI employee, and the only two other cases filed both ended in acquittal at trial.