The House impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump is beginning its first public hearings with Bill Taylor, acting US ambassador to Ukraine, and State Department official George Kent. Both witnesses delivered joint-testimony to Congress as the president derides the process as a “partisan sham”.
Mr Trump has meanwhile reportedly been threatening to fire his acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney over his recent blunders. He also previously considered axing Michael Atkinson, the inspector general of the US intelligence community, over his handling of the whistle-blower complaint about his call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, according to The Washington Post.
Meanwhile, as senior Republicans insist they will not be watching the hearings and Mr Trump hosts his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the White House on Wednesday, progressive Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is calling for the resignation of senior Trump aide Stephen Miller over racist emails he sent to the right-wing news site Breitbart, in which he advocated white nationalist ideologies.
Following a meeting between the two leaders, Mr Trump repeated to reporters at a press conference that the day's public impeachment hearings are a "witch hunt" and a "joke".
"I haven't watched, I haven't watched for one minute because I've been with the president which is much more important as far as I'm concerned," Mr Trump said.
But the leaders were at odds following their controversial summit, to which five Senators were invited, discussing Turkey's cease-fire against Kurdish forces in Syria, as well as a two-day $100b trade deal and Turkey's acquisition of Russian anti-aircraft weapons.
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So far, the narrative is splitting Americans, mostly along the same lines as Trump's unusual presidency. The Constitution sets a dramatic, but vague, bar for impeachment, and there's no consensus yet that Trump's actions at the heart of the inquiry meet the threshold of "high crimes and misdemeanors." Whether Wednesday's proceedings begin to end a presidency or help secure Trump's position, it's certain that his chaotic term has finally arrived at a place he cannot control and a force, the constitutional system of checks and balances, that he cannot ignore. The country has been here just three times before, and never against the backdrop of social media and real-time commentary, including from the president himself.
"These hearings will address subjects of profound consequence for the nation and the functioning of our government under the Constitution," Schiff said in a memo to lawmakers. He has called it a "solemn undertaking" and counseled colleagues to "approach these proceedings with the seriousness of purpose and love of country that they demand".
"Total impeachment scam," tweeted the president, as he does virtually every day.
Impeachments are rare, historians say, because they amount to nothing short of the nullification of an election. Starting down this road poses risks for both Democrats and Republicans as proceedings push into the 2020 campaign.
Unlike the Watergate hearings and Richard Nixon, there is not yet a "cancer on the presidency" moment galvanising public opinion. Nor is there the national shrug, as happened when Bill Clinton's impeachment ultimately didn't result in his removal from office. It's perhaps most like the partisanship-infused impeachment of Andrew Johnson after the Civil War.
Trump calls the whole thing a "witch hunt," a retort that echoes Nixon's own defence. Republicans say Democrats have been trying to get rid of this president since he first took office, starting with former special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference to help Trump in the 2016 election.
Trump has insisted the call was "perfect." The White House released a rough transcript. Pelosi, given the nod from her most centrist freshman lawmakers, opened the inquiry. On Tuesday, she laid out the message she wants people to hear Wednesday: "The truth." "It's a calm day, it's a prayerful day, it's a solemn day for our country," Pelosi told reporters. "It's a sad day which I wish we never had to face."
It was all part of what Taylor, the long-serving top diplomat in Ukraine, called the "irregular" foreign policy being led by Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, outside of traditional channels. Taylor said it was "crazy" that the Trump administration was withholding US military assistance to the East European ally over the political investigations, with Russian forces on Ukraine's border on watch for a moment of weakness. Kent, the bowtie-wearing State Department official, told investigators there were three things Trump wanted of Ukraine: "Investigations, Biden, Clinton."
The framers of the Constitution provided few details about how the impeachment proceedings should be run, leaving much for Congress to decide. Democrats say the White House's refusal to provide witnesses or produce documents is obstruction and itself impeachable.
Hearings are expected to continue and will shift, likely by Thanksgiving, to the Judiciary Committee to consider actual articles of impeachment. The House, controlled by Democrats, is expected to vote by Christmas. That would launch a trial in the Senate, where Republicans have the majority, in the new year.
Ankara has rebuffed Washington and has warmed its ties with Russia - even buying a Russian air defence system - despite being a member of Nato. Turkey also is facing a backlash over attacks on Kurdish civilians during its incursion into Syria last month.
Some in Congress denounce Erdogan's repressive tactics at home and say he should never have been invited to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But Trump says Turkey has been a critical US ally for decades, cites the strong economic upside to the relationship and maintains that the two countries have enough in common to overcome their differences.
Testifying on 20 November will be US ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland, deputy assistant secretary of defence Laura Cooper and undersecretary of state David Hale.
Of eight Senate Republicans questioned by the AP on Tuesday evening, seven said they wouldn't be tuning in. "Tomorrow I'm going to be paying attention to what we're doing in the Senate," said majority leader Mitch McConnell.
"I'll be doing something else," said Lindsey Graham, an ardent Trump ally, who argued he didn't want to legitimise a process he has twice called "bulls***" because it was an unfair effort by Democrats aimed at weakening Trump.
Among other Republican senators, Texas's John Cornyn said he didn't need to "waste time going through all the drama over there" while his fellow Lone Star State representative Ted Cruz doubted he'd view the "partisan circus."
The Pentagon has diverted $6.1bn (£4.7bn) to pay for construction since Trump declared a national emergency on the border in February. Trump says he plans to have about 500 miles built by the end of his first term in 2020. As of 1 November about 78 miles were completed to replace existing barriers.
In its review of statistics collected from more than 16,000 law enforcement agencies, the FBI said there had been 7,120 hate crimes reported last year. The figure was 55 fewer than 2017, a year in the same bureau data recorded a 17 per cent increase in hate crimes from 2016. Reports of hate-motivated attacks on people account for 61 per cent of all hate crimes reported in 2018, a rise of 11.7 per cent. There were 24 murders, up from 15 in 2017.
Dr Richard Strauss, who took his own life in 2005, was accused of masturbating in front of a college wrestling referee in a locker room shower when Jordan himself worked at the facility as an assistant coach. When the referree came foreward to report the incident, Jordan and a superior, head wrestling coach Russ Hellickson, allegedly dismissed the story with the words: "Yeah, that's Strauss".
“The Democrats are so united in this,” he told CBS news. “I disagree with her ideologically, but I think Nancy Pelosi is a master of political warfare and I think strategically what she’s done here is, from their perspective, quite brilliant.”