The US House of Representatives is set to take a momentous and deeply polarizing vote on Wednesday when it is likely to impeach President Donald Trump on charges of abusing his office and obstructing a congressional probe.

The vote in the Democratic-controlled House is expected to fall almost entirely along party lines, underscoring the deep divide in Congress over Trump’s conduct – and the larger political schism within the nation itself.

Trump would become only the third US president to be impeached, an extraordinary check on presidential power spelled out in the US Constitution for executives who commit “high crimes and misdemeanors.” No president has ever been removed from office under its terms.

The vote, expected in the afternoon or early evening, would result in a trial next month in the US Senate in which House members would act as prosecutors. That chamber is controlled by Republicans, who have shown little interest in removing Trump from office.

House Democrats accuse Trump of abusing his power by asking Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden, a former US vice president and a leading Democratic contender in the 2020 election. Trump is also accused of obstructing the congressional investigation into the matter.

Trump has insisted he has done nothing wrong, and on Tuesday called the process “a total sham.” He sent House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a lengthy letter in which he accused her of engaging in a “perversion of justice.”

(Source: Reuters)

US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi has blasted President Donald Trump’s insult-laden letter urging her to halt the impeachment proceedings, describing the letter’s content as “ridiculous” and “really sick.”

Pelosi, the highest ranking Democrat in Congress, told reporters on Tuesday that she had not gotten the opportunity to read the Republican president’s whole letter, which accused Democrats of waging an “unconstitutional abuse of power” by moving forward with an impeachment vote.

“It’s ridiculous,” she said. “I mean, I haven’t really fully read it, we’ve been working. I’ve seen the essence of it though and it’s really sick.”

The president’s letter accused Pelosi of putting on a “false display of solemnity” throughout the inquiry and declared that “no intelligent person believes what you are saying.”

In Trump’s letter to Pelosi earlier on Tuesday, he issued a stark warning to congressional Democrats, saying that if they pursue impeachment against him, they will be “declaring war on American democracy.”

Trump also called any impeachment effort an “illegal partisan coup.” He issued the charges one day before a possible House debate on approving articles of impeachment against Trump.

Trump is this week likely to become the third US president to be impeached.

The House is likely to take up impeachment on Wednesday, setting the stage for a vote this week on whether to approve charges stemming from his effort to pressure Ukraine to investigate political rival Joe Biden.

The House Judiciary Committee voted 23-17 on Friday along party lines to approve the two charges against Trump and to send the matter to the full chamber.

If the charges are approved in the House, the matter would be sent to the Republican-led Senate to hold a trial on whether to remove Trump from office.

Democrats, who enjoy a 36-seat majority in the House, are expected to win an impeachment vote, which requires a simple majority.

Republicans hold 53 of the 100 seats in the Senate, where they appear likely to prevail in any trial against Trump, which would require a two-thirds majority of those present to remove him from office.

No US president has been removed as a direct result of impeachment.

Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 before he could be removed, while Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were impeached by the House, respectively in 1868 and 1998, but not convicted by the Senate.

Democrats have accused Trump of endangering the US Constitution, jeopardizing national security and undermining the integrity of next year’s US presidential election by asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a July phone call to investigate Biden and his son Hunter Biden, who was on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.

Republicans have defended Trump and accused Democrats of a partisan effort aimed at overturning his upset 2016 victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton. Trump has branded the entire impeachment drive a sham.

Source: Presstv

US House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler has defended the impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump, calling the US president a “threat” to national security.

Nadler said in an interview with ABC News on Sunday that the “integrity” of US elections was at risk since Trump had solicited foreign interference in the previous vote.

“This president conspired, sought foreign interference in the 2016 election,” the House Judiciary Committee chairman said. “He is openly seeking interference in the 2020 election and he poses a continuing threat to our national security and to the integrity of our elections to our democratic system itself. We cannot permit that to continue.”

Trump’s election campaign is accused of having colluded with the Russian government to try to influence the 2016 presidential election.

US intelligence agencies claim Moscow meddled in the election with a campaign of email hacking and online propaganda aimed at sowing discord in the United States, hurting Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and helping Trump.

Both Trump and Russia have repeatedly denied the accusations.

Schiff backs impeachment case

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff was the other leading Democrat that defended the the impeachment case against Trump and described obstruction of Congress as the “most serious of the articles” of impeachment against the US president.

Schiff also slammed his Republican colleagues for allowing the White House to ignore congressional subpoenas.

“Going to court is not an impeachable offense but stonewalling completely, refusing to comply with the oversight of Congress, particularly during an impeachment inquiry is,” Schiff said.

Schiff cautioned that if the Republican party is “prepared to say a president of the US can simply say no to any Congressional subpoena and tie up Congress for years in litigation, it is going to have to accept corruption, malfeasance, negligence, misconduct, in any future president, Democrat or Republican.”

“In many respects, I think this is the most serious of the articles because it would fundamentally alter the balance of power and allow for much greater misconduct in the chief executive of the country,” he said.

The US president is facing an impeachment inquiry in the US House over pressuring Ukraine to find dirt on his political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, who is running to beat him in the 2020 election.

‘I’d impeach Obama if he did the same as Trump’

Elsewhere in his remarks, the House Intelligence Committee chairman said that he would even support impeaching former President Barack Obama if he had committed the same alleged offense that led to approving articles of impeachment against Trump.

“I don’t think any of us have any question that had Barack Obama engaged in the activity, the conduct which is the subject these articles of impeachment, every one of these Republicans would be voting to impeach him,” Schiff said. “And you know something, I have to hope to hell, George, if it were Barack Obama, I would vote to impeach him.”

Source: Presstv

Former US Vice President and leading 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden says he is “running to restore the soul of America.”

In a statement issued on the seventh anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting on Saturday, Biden said he will prioritize efforts to combat the rise of gun violence in the United States should he win the presidency.

“I said when I got into this race that I’m running to restore the soul of America,” he said in a statement. “Few things make the need for that more clear than school shootings – what kind of nation are we if we simply accept that kids learn active shooter drills with their ABCs?”

“I know that we can defeat the NRA,” he continued. “I’m the only candidate in the race who has done it before – twice, when I was in the Senate. As president I’ll do it again.”

Biden has proposed to repeal the federal law that protects gun manufacturers from civil liability claims, and ban on the manufacturing and sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, and implementation of background checks for all gun sales.

He had called for a reinstatement of an assault weapons ban in the wake of two mass in August that killed 31 people.

The 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban bill was signed into law by former President Bill Clinton. It expired in September 2004. Since then an assault weapons ban hasn’t been in place in the US.

Biden claimed that along with Senator Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) he got the bill passed in 1994, and said he “fought hard to extend” the ban in 2004, but failed to do so.  

Biden said that data about mass shootings showed that from 1994 to 2004 there were fewer mass shootings in the country.

On Saturday, the former vice president claimed that gun control could be a galvanizing issue heading into the 2020 race.

“There’s a straight line from the brave parents of Newtown, many of whom have organized at the grassroots level and in the courts, to the activism of the Parkland students, to the millions of others who’ve said ‘enough’ in the long years between and since then,” he said, referring to other school shootings.

“This call for change is growing louder and louder, and is using every tool of our democracy, in the streets, voting booths, and courts,” he added.

Many have called for measures such as an assault weapon ban, universal background checks and other gun control reforms long stymied by partisan fighting in Washington.

Democrats have criticized Republican President Donald Trump’s mixed messaging on possible support for some gun control measures.

Several 2020 Democratic presidential contenders have also said that they would use the executive powers of the presidency to pursue gun-control measures if Congress again fails to act.

Trump meanwhile has suggested that he could sway the nation’s powerful pro-gun lobby, the National Rifle Association (NRA), to drop its opposition to gun restrictions.

Firearms regulation advocates state that restricting and tracking gun access would result in safer communities, while gun rights advocates state that increased firearm ownership by citizens reduces crime and assert that criminals have always had easy access to firearms.

The firearms industry in the US is tempting children at very low ages to take up shooting by selling brightly colored guns.

On December 14, 2012, twenty children and six adults were fatally shot by Adam Lanza, the gunman who later killed himself at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in the town of Newtown in the US state of Connecticut.

Following the shooting, a task force funded by the NRA recommended more armed guards and teachers in schools. Now President Trump is voicing support for that recommendation.

Source: Presstv

A badly divided House Judiciary Committee voted 23-17 along party lines to approve articles of impeachment charging President Donald Trump with both abusing the power of his office over the Ukraine scandal and obstructing House Democrats’ attempts to investigate him for it.

Trump is expected to become the third US president to be impeached when the full Democratic-led House votes on the charges, likely next week, setting up a trial in the Republican-controlled Senate. The Republicans have shown no signs of wanting to remove Trump from office.

In congressional hearings that have gripped Washington, Democrats have accused the president of endangering the US Constitution, jeopardizing national security and undermining the integrity of the 2020 election by asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a July phone call to investigate former US vice president Joe Biden, Trump’s potential Democratic opponent on voting day next November.

“Today is a solemn and sad day,” said Representative Jerrold Nadler, the committee’s Democratic chairman. “For the third time in a little over a century and a half, the House Judiciary Committee has voted articles of impeachment against the president.”

Republicans have defended Trump and accused Democrats of a politically motivated farce aimed at overturning his surprise 2016 presidential election victory.

“Impeachment is a hoax. It’s a sham,” Trump told reporters at the White House after the committee’s vote. “There was nothing done wrong. To use the power of impeachment for this nonsense is an embarrassment to this country.”

If impeached, Trump will go on trial in the Senate in January, just as the 2020 presidential campaign begins to pickup speed.

Trump has alleged that Biden, a leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for president, was involved in corruption in Ukraine and should be investigated by authorities there, but the president has offered no evidence. Biden has denied any wrongdoing.

Abuse and obstruction charges

The abuse of power charge against Trump also accuses him of freezing nearly $400 million in US security aid to Ukraine and offering a possible White House meeting to Zelenskiy to get him to publicly announce investigations of Biden and his son Hunter, who was on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.

Trump also asked Ukraine to investigate a debunked theory that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 US election.

The obstruction charge against Trump is based on his directives to current and former administration officials such as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo not to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry, even if that meant defying subpoenas.

A senior Democratic aide said the House tentatively plans to hold an impeachment debate next Wednesday ahead of a vote on whether to impeach Trump and send him for trial.

Republicans say the president did nothing improper in his call with Zelenskiy, and that there is no direct evidence he withheld aid or a White House meeting in exchange for a favor. Democrats say Trump stopped top aides from testifying.

Signaling investors’ lack of concern at the political upheaval, US stocks hit fresh record highs on Friday on optimism over a possible trade deal between China and the United States before paring gains.

As the Judiciary Committee was voting, China announced progress and said Beijing would cancel tariffs scheduled to take effect. Trump followed up by tweeting that a trade deal had been reached.

Trump is running for re-election in 2020 in what is expected to be a bitter contest with the Democratic nominee.

Senate trial would follow House vote for impeachment

No US president has been removed as a direct result of impeachment. Republican Richard Nixon resigned before he could be impeached for the Watergate scandal, and Democrats Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were impeached by the House but not convicted by the Senate.

Twenty Republican senators would have to join all 45 Democrats and two independents who caucus with the Democrats to vote to oust Trump from office.

The trial would be presided over by US Chief Justice John Roberts. The length of the proceedings would depend on whether witnesses were called, a decision that is up to a majority vote in the chamber.

Trump has signaled an interest in calling many witnesses, including Biden and Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, believing a big trial would be good for Republicans.

A lengthy trial would eat up weeks of time shortly before the first Democratic presidential nominating contests in Iowa and New Hampshire.

But influential Republican senators have said they want to keep any trial as short as possible.

“This needs to come to a quick end,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, a Republican who has become a staunch defender of Trump, wrote on Twitter.

Trump said on Friday he was open to either a short or long process in the Senate.

“I’ll do whatever I want … So I’ll do long or short,” he said.

“I wouldn’t mind a long process, because I’d like to see the whistleblower, who’s a fraud,” Trump said, referring to the anonymous intelligence official who set off the House impeachment investigation by raising a flag about Trump’s call with Zelenskiy in a whistleblower complaint.

Source: FRANCE 24 with AP

US lawmakers clashed Thursday ahead of a committee vote to approve charges of presidential abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, a fateful step toward the impeachment of Donald Trump.

The House Judiciary Committee began a second day of historic debate with the parties holding diametrically opposed views on the move to oust the president from office for misconduct.

If, as predicted, the full House votes next week against Trump, he will become only the third US commander in chief ever to be impeached and placed on trial in the Senate.

The president stands accused of leveraging critical military aide to Ukraine and a White House meeting to pressure Kiev to open an investigation into Trump’s political rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, and a debunked theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help Democrats.

Wednesday saw hours of impassioned debate, including an appeal to Republicans by the committee’s Democratic chairman, Jerry Nadler, not to “justify behavior that we know in our heart is wrong.”

Lawmakers were to focus on the procedural nitty gritty of amending the articles of impeachment on Thursday, but rancorous clashes punctuated the session.

“The president committed the highest crime against the constitution by abusing his office,” Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell said.

“Cheating in an election,” he went on. “Inviting foreign interference for a purely personal gain while jeopardizing our national security and the integrity of our elections.”

The outcome in the House Judiciary Committee is essentially a fait accompli, with the majority-Democratic panel expected to reject all Republican efforts to change the articles and approve the charges, sending them to the entire House of Representatives for passage next week.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who announced the impeachment inquiry in September, would not identify a specific day next week for an impeachment vote.

When pressed, she also dismissed concerns that a handful of moderate House Democrats, including some representing districts that voted for Trump, would likely defect and oppose impeachment.

“People will vote the way they vote,” Pelosi said.

– ‘Not the facts’ –

Republicans repeatedly asserted that the president has committed no crime, and they quickly moved to dismiss the first charge in the nine-page resolution, abuse of power.

“Article one ignores the truth,” Republican Jim Jordan declared. “Those are not the facts.”

The White House has refused to participate in the House inquiry, ordering key figures swept up in the Ukraine saga not to testify, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney.

That historic stonewalling has prevented several key firsthand witnesses from presenting potentially vital evidence, leading Democrats to file their second charge — obstruction of Congress — against the president.

Trump himself has lashed out online repeatedly at his Democratic rivals in recent days.

On Thursday, he retweeted dozens of people who have rushed to his defense, including his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, who stands accused of orchestrating a pressure campaign against Ukraine outside of regular diplomatic channels.

Most indications are that the Republican majority in the Senate will ultimately protect Trump from conviction and removal.

But impeachment would mar his record as president and could affect his reelection chances in November 2020.

At a political rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania on Tuesday, he ridiculed the charges.

“Everybody said, this is impeachment light,” Trump said, adding “there are no crimes” and Democrats are just trying to win the next election.

As the back-and-forth began in committee, the panel’s top Republican Doug Collins branded the proceedings a “farce of substance,” and seized on Nadler’s legalistic effort to tweak the resolution so that the names Donald J. Trump and Donald John Trump would be the same.

Seeking that change “simply shows the, frankly, absurdity of where we’re at,” Collins said.

Source: AFP

Israel heads to hold an unprecedented third round of general elections within 12 months, after a deadline to form a cabinet passed with no politician able to build a coalition with disparate parties.

The new round of elections is to be held on March 2, 2020, some six months after the previous elections held in September, which itself came five months after an earlier round of votes.

Israel’s parliament voted on Wednesday to dissolve itself in a fresh bid to break political deadlock. By a vote of 94 in favor to none opposed, lawmakers approved a motion dissolving parliament and setting the new election date.

The Knesset had until midnight Wednesday to agree on someone who could command the support of 61 out of the 120 members of the Israeli parliament. When no one was able to win the minimum support, an election in March 2020 was automatically triggered.

The decision came after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his main rival Benny Gantz failed to parlay the previous two ballots into a new coalition.

Neither of the two was willing to compromise on their core demands for a power-sharing agreement.

In the two previous rounds of election in September and April, Netanyahu’s conservative Likud party deadlocked with ex-general Gantz’s centrist Blue and White. Neither managed to muster enough support in the Knesset for a stable coalition.

The 2020 votes are to be held in the shadow of a corruption indictment handed down against Netanyahu last month.

Netanyahu will now remain Israel’s prime minister, even though he has presided over a transition government for nearly a year and failed to assemble a functioning coalition after the two previous elections.

As prime minister, Netanyahu is under no legal obligation to resign as a result of the indictment, and while in office he can ask the legislature to grant him immunity from prosecution.

Source: Presstv

The head of a US congressional committee leading the impeachment probe against President Donald Trump has accused the US leader of putting himself before his country and violating his oath of office.

In a statement on Monday beginning a hearing in the US House of Representatives to examine evidence against Trump, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, a Democratic from New York, said there was extensive proof that the Republican president has committed wrongdoing.

“The evidence shows that Donald J. Trump, the president of the United States, has put himself before his country. He has violated his most basic responsibilities to the people. He has broken his oath,” Nadler said.

The hearing on Monday is a key step before voting on an impeachment resolution, or articles of impeachment. The full House, which is controlled by Democrats, is likely to vote on whether to impeach the president before Christmas.

The House Judiciary panel is expected to vote by the end of the week on whether to send formal charges to the full House.

The Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, the highest ranking Democrat in Congress, instructed the House Judiciary Committee Thursday to draft articles of impeachment against Trump.

Impeachment begins in the House. If the lower chamber of Congress approves articles of impeachment, a vote is then held in the Senate. A two-thirds majority vote would be needed in the Senate to remove the president from office.

Trump’s conviction is considered unlikely in the Republican-controlled Senate.

Only two American presidents have been impeached by the House, Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998. Neither Johnson nor Clinton was convicted by the Senate.

In 1974, then US President Richard Nixon resigned during his second term after it became certain he would be impeached and removed from office over the Watergate scandal.

House Democrats launched an impeachment inquiry against Trump in September after the unknown whistle-blower alleged the Republican president pressured his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who had served as a director for Ukrainian energy company Burisma.

Democrats are looking into whether Trump abused his power by withholding $391 million in US security aid to Ukraine as leverage to pressure Kiev to conduct an investigation that would benefit him politically.

Trump has repeatedly denounced the impeachment inquiry against him as “a hoax”.

Source: Presstv

North Korea’s ambassador to the United Nations said on Saturday that denuclearization is off the negotiating table with the United States and lengthy talks with Washington are not needed, the starkest statement yet emphasizing the gulf between the two sides ahead of a year-end deadline set by Pyongyang.

US President Donald Trump sought to play down a recent surge in tensions with North Korea, stressing what he said was his good relationship with its leader Kim Jong Un and saying he thought Kim wanted a deal, not to interfere in next year’s US presidential election.

“We’ll see about North Korea. I’d be surprised if North Korea acted hostilely,” Trump told reporters at the White House before leaving for Florida.

“He knows I have an election coming up. I don’t think he wants to interfere with that, but we’ll have to see … I think he’d like to see something happen. The relationship is very good, but you know, there is certain hostility, there’s no question about it.”

Trump has invested considerable time trying to persuade North Korea to give up a nuclear weapons program that has grown to threaten the United States, but progress has been scant in spite of his three meetings with Kim Jong Un.

Tensions have risen ahead of a year-end deadline set by North Korea, which has called on the United States to change its policy of insisting on Pyongyang’s unilateral denuclearization and demanded relief from punishing sanctions.

Kim Jong Un has warned of an unspecified “new path” next year, raising fears this could mean an end to a suspension in nuclear bomb and long-range missile testing in place since 2017 that Trump has held up as a key win from his engagement efforts.

U.N. Ambassador Kim Song said in a statement the “sustained and substantial dialogue” sought by the United States was a “time-saving trick” to suit its domestic political agenda, a reference to Trump’s 2020 reelection bid.

“We do not need to have lengthy talks with the US now and denuclearization is already gone out of the negotiating table,” he said.

Kim Song’s comments appeared to go further than North Korea’s earlier warning that discussions related to its nuclear weapons program might have to be taken off the table given Washington’s refusal to offer concessions.

On Tuesday, North Korea’s Foreign Ministry repeated a call for Washington to change its “hostile policies” and said it was up to Washington to decide what “Christmas gift” came at the end of the year.

Kim Song also hit out at a statement this week from EU members of the UN Security Council criticizing recent short range launches by North Korea, calling it a “serious provocation” and saying they were playing the role of “pet dog” of the United States.

Summits, but little progress

Recent days have seen a return to the highly charged rhetoric that raised fears of war two years ago.

In 2017, Trump and Kim Jung Un famously engaged in a war of words, with Trump calling Kim Jong Un “Rocket Man” and North Korea calling Trump, now 73, a “dotard.”

On Tuesday, Trump once again called Kim “Rocket Man” and said the United States reserved the right to use military force against North Korea. Pyongyang said any repeat of such language would represent “the relapse of the dotage of a dotard.”

In spite of Trump’s reprise of the Rocket Man meme, he has still expressed hope that Kim Jong Un would denuclearize. On Friday the US ambassador to the United Nations said the United States had not yet decided whether to have a U.N. Security Council meeting to discuss North Korean human rights abuses that has angered Pyongyang.

On Friday, South Korea said Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in held a half-hour phone discussion on ways to maintain diplomacy with North Korea.

It said the two leaders agreed the situation has become “severe” and “dialogue momentum should be maintained to achieve prompt results from denuclearization negotiations.”

Many diplomats, analysts and US officials have long doubted North Korea’s willingness to negotiate away a nuclear program it has invested decades and a large proportion of limited national resources in creating.

Even so, Jenny Town of 38 North, a Washington-based North Korea project, said it was unclear how literally Kim Song’s words should be taken.

“It’s an interesting choice of spokesperson. Kim Song is not directly involved in the negotiation process,” she said. “These kinds of hardline messages are increasing in frequency as the deadline approaches, perhaps to try to compel a last-minute offer. Although the more they push like this, the less likely they are to get what they want.”

Town said North Korea has previously indicated a willingness to give up parts of its nuclear program as a first-phase deal, but not to discuss complete denuclearization up front.

“The North Koreans have always preferred a step by step approach rather than negotiating everything all at once,” Town said. “It is possible this is what Kim Song means, since we haven’t heard anything quite so stark from those involved in the negotiations.”
(REUTERS)

US President Donald Trump has called himself the “greatest of all presidents” as Democrats are meeting this weekend to prepare impeachment charges against him.

On Saturday, the US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee’s Democratic lawmakers released a 55-page report detailing offenses that could warrant impeachment against the Republican president.

The report covers the “constitutional grounds for presidential impeachment,” including bribery, abuse of power, betrayal of America’s national interest and corruption.

Trump, who has dismissed all the allegations ever since the impeachment inquiry was launched, took to Twitter Saturday afternoon, saying the American voters do not want him to be impeached.

Donald J. Trump✔@realDonaldTrump

“Not only have the Democrats not advanced key pieces of legislation that would help the economy, but the polls, especially in early states, are showing that voters are tuning out.” @PeteHegseth They don’t want our greatest of all presidents impeached!

Trump also said that Democrats’ “case” against him is not strong because they have been shifting from the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US election to Ukraine and now back to Russia.

Donald J. Trump✔@realDonaldTrump

“Why re-elect Democrats when you know that this is what they are doing with their majority. Their case is not strong because first it was Russian Collusion, then it was obstruction, then it was Ukraine, now their pivoting back to Russia. Why would they be doing that?”

On Friday, the White House told Chairman of the Judiciary Committee Jerrold Nadler it would not participate in the hearings and called the impeachment inquiry “completely baseless” and said that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had ordered Democrats to draft articles of impeachment “before your committee has heard a single shred of evidence.”

“House Democrats have wasted enough of America’s time with this charade,” White House counsel Pat Cipollone’s letter to Nadler said. “You should end this inquiry now and not waste even more time with additional hearings.”

Nadler said in a statement: “The American people deserve answers from President Trump.”

Pelosi on Thursday instructed the House Judiciary Committee to draft articles of impeachment against the president, assuring that a formal impeachment process against the president will proceed.

The committee could draft and recommend the articles by next Thursday and the House could vote on them by Christmas.

Source: Presstv