Fiery disagreements as Donald Trump impeachment hearing opens

The House Judiciary Committee’s first impeachment hearing quickly burst into partisan infighting on Wednesday as Democrats charged that US President Donald Trump must be removed from office for enlisting foreign interference in US elections and Republicans angrily retorted there were no grounds for such drastic action.

The panel responsible for drafting articles of impeachment convened as Trump’s team was fanning out across Capitol Hill.

Vice-President Mike Pence met behind closed doors with House Republicans, and Senate Republicans were to huddle with the White House counsel as the party’s lawmakers stand with the president and Democrats charge headlong into what has become a one-party drive to impeach him.

The committee chairman, Representative Jerrold Nadler, a Democrat from New York, gavelled open the hearing saying, “The facts before us are undisputed.”

Nadler said Trump’s phone call with Ukraine’s president in July was not the first time Trump sought a foreign power to influence American elections, after Russian interference in 2016, and if left unchecked he could do again in next year’s campaign.

“We cannot wait for the election to address the present crisis,” Nadler said. “The president has shown us his pattern of conduct. If we do not act to hold him in check, now, President Trump will almost certainly try again to solicit interference in the election for his personal political gain.”

Republicans protested that the proceedings were unfair, describing them as the dredging up of unfounded allegations as part of an effort to undo the 2016 election and remove Trump from office.

Trump on trial: the next steps of the impeachment process

“You just don’t like the guy,” said Representative Doug Collins of Georgia, the top Republican on the panel. He called the proceedings a “disgrace’’ and a “sham”.

Several Republicans immediately objected to the process, interjecting procedural questions, and they planned to spend much of the session interrupting, delaying and questioning the rules.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Democrats “haven’t made a decision” yet on whether there will be a vote on impeachment. If the House votes to impeach, the matter would move to the Senate, where a trial would be conducted.

Pelosi also met privately with the Democratic caucus. But a vote by Christmas appears increasingly likely with the release of a 300-page report by Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee that found “serious misconduct” by Trump.

Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said: “Americans need to understand that this president is putting his personal political interests above theirs. And that it’s endangering the country.”

The Judiciary Committee heard on Wednesday from legal experts, delving particularly into the issue of whether Trump’s actions stemming from the July 25 phone call with Ukraine’s president rose to the constitutional level of “bribery” or “high crimes and misdemeanours” warranting impeachment.

The report laid out evidence that the Democrats say shows Trump’s efforts to seek foreign intervention in the US election and then obstruct the House’s investigation.

Trump told reporters in London, where he was attending a Nato meeting, that he doubted many people would watch the live hearing “because it’s going to be boring”.

Trump did phone in to the House Republicans’ morning meeting with Pence to talk with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. The California Republican said impeachment did not come up. “The unity has been very positive,” he said.

The surprises in the Trump impeachment report

New telephone call records released with the report deepen Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani’s known involvement in what House investigators called the “scheme” to use the president’s office for personal political gain by enlisting a foreign power, Ukraine, to investigate Democrats including Joe Biden, and intervene in the American election process.

Trump told reporters he really does not know why Giuliani was calling the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, which was withholding US$400 million in military aid to the ally confronting an aggressive Russia at its border.

“’You have to ask him,” Trump said. “Sounds like something that’s not so complicated … No big deal.”

At the hearing, the three legal experts called by Democrats backed impeachment. Noah Feldman, a Harvard Law School professor, said he considered it clear that the president’s conduct met the definition of “high crimes and misdemeanours”.

Pamela Karlan, a Stanford Law School professor and former Obama administration Justice Department official, said the president’s action constituted an especially serious abuse of power “because it undermines democracy itself”.

Republican witness Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, said the Democrats were bringing a “slipshod impeachment” case against the president, but he did not excuse the president’s behaviour.

“It is not wrong because President Trump is right,” Turley said. “A case for impeachment could be made, but it cannot be made on this record.”

The political risks are high for all parties as the House presses only the fourth presidential impeachment inquiry in US history.

Trump’s Ukraine quid pro quo is ‘beyond anything Nixon did’, Schiff says

Based on two months of investigation sparked by a still anonymous government whistle-blower’s complaint, the Intelligence Committee’s Trump-Ukraine impeachment inquiry report relies heavily on testimony from current and former US officials who defied White House orders not to appear.

The inquiry found that Trump “solicited the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, to benefit his re-election”, Schiff wrote in the report’s preface.

In doing so, the president “sought to undermine the integrity of the US presidential election process, and endangered US national security,” the report said. When Congress began investigating, it added, Trump obstructed the investigation like no other president in history.

Along with revelations from earlier testimony, the new phone records raised fresh questions about Giuliani’s interactions with the top Republican on the intelligence panel, Representative Devin Nunes of California. Nunes declined to comment. Schiff said his panel would continue its inquiry.

Republicans defended the president in a 123-page rebuttal claiming Trump never intended to pressure Ukraine when he asked for a “favour” – investigations of Democrats and Biden and his son.

They say the military aid the White House was withholding was not being used as leverage, as Democrats claim – and besides, the US$400 million was ultimately released, although only after a congressional outcry.

For Republicans falling in line behind Trump, the inquiry is simply a “hoax”. Trump criticised the House for pushing forward with the proceedings while he was overseas, a breach of political decorum that traditionally leaves partisan differences at the water’s edge.

The White House declined an invitation to participate on Wednesday, with counsel Pat Cipollone denouncing the proceedings as a “baseless and highly partisan inquiry”. Cipollone, who will brief Senate Republicans on Wednesday, left open the question of whether White House officials would participate in additional House hearings.