The US House of Representatives will launch a formal impeachment inquiry into US President Donald Trump over reports he sought foreign help to smear a political rival, setting up a dramatic clash between Congress and the White House that has spilled into the 2020 presidential campaign.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the inquiry on Tuesday after a closed-door meeting with Democratic lawmakers, saying Trump’s actions appeared to have undermined national security and violated the US Constitution.
“The president must be held accountable. No one is above the law,” said Pelosi, who for months had been reluctant to embrace an impeachment effort.
Trump fired back quickly on Twitter, calling the inquiry “Witch Hunt garbage”.
Pelosi’s change of heart followed reports that Trump had pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a July 25 phone call to investigate Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden and his son.
Trump promised on Tuesday to release a transcript of his phone call. He has acknowledged he discussed Biden in the call, but denied he withheld nearly $US400 million ($A588 million) in US aid to Ukraine as leverage to get Zelenskiy to launch a probe that would damage Biden, who leads opinion polls in the Democratic race to face Trump in the November 2020 election.
Watch: If Trump worked in your office. Post continues after video.
Pelosi said the six congressional committees currently investigating Trump would continue with their probes as part of the inquiry.
“The actions of the Trump presidency revealed a dishonourable fact of the president’s betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security and betrayal of the integrity of our elections,” Pelosi said.
The impeachment inquiry could eventually lead to Trump’s removal from office. But even if the Democratic-controlled House voted to impeach Trump, the Republican-controlled Senate would have to take the next step of removing him from office after a trial.
It will be the first impeachment inquiry in Congress since the 1998 probe of President Bill Clinton for perjury and obstruction of justice in relation to his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
The House voted to impeach Clinton in December 1998, but the Democratic president was acquitted two months later by the Senate and remained in office.
Biden said he would back impeachment if the president did not fully comply with congressional investigations.
“If we allow a president to get away with shredding the Constitution, that will last forever,” Biden told reporters in Wilmington, in his home state of Delaware.
“The House must impeach,” Senator Elizabeth Warren, the first major contender to call for impeachment following former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report into Russian interference in the 2016 election, wrote on Twitter on Tuesday.
Trump, who has withstood repeated scandals since taking office in January 2017, said a “complete, fully declassified and unredacted” transcript of the July 25 call would be released on Wednesday.
Democrats are also seeking the original complaint about Trump’s call, filed by a whistleblower within the US intelligence community, as well as information on deliberations over the Ukrainian aid.
The US Senate approved a resolution on Tuesday calling on the Ukraine whistleblower complaint to be submitted to the Senate and House Intelligence committees.
Trump administration officials so far have refused to let the complaint be submitted.
Top Comments
A week later and we now have -
1) Public admission from Trump.
2) Public admission from Giuliani.
3) Still waiting on the full transcript from the White House, as they've only released a distorted 5 page transcript from the 30 minute phone call lol.
Omg! Buy the popcorn, this is going to be hilarious. So they Democrat’s want to impeach Trump based on a phone call they haven’t seen the transcript of, based off a whistleblower complaint that the DOJ has determined came from a Democrat supporter who actually has no first hand knowledge of the call, nor learned of it in the course of their duties. In other words, a Democrat hack heard a rumour. Both sides of the call say there was no pressure and no quid pro quo, in other words no issue. Trump is perfectly right to ask other world leaders for assistance in criminal investigations, which is exactly what the Dems did when they wrote to the Ukraine Govt in 2018 asking for information to help with the Mueller probe. Lol they did what they are accusing Trump of. Ha, impeach yourselves whilst you’re at it.
Lol, but wait, you have Biden as VP on tape in a presser saying he would with hold a billion of US aid to the Ukraine if they didn’t fire the prosecutor looking into his sons dodgy dealings, lol ON TAPE boasting about it to the media. This is what Trump asked for further information on.
ROFL! Stand by for the biggest self own ever, EVER from the Dems.