House speaker Nancy Pelosi has named her seven impeachment managers to prosecute the case against Donald Trump during his upcoming Senate trial ahead of a House vote to send the articles on to the upper chamber today.
The announcement comes after her side released a trove of damning new evidence detailing the Trump administration’s efforts to extort a political favour from Ukraine obtained from Lev Parnas, a business associate of Rudy Giuliani, which has already prompted ex-US ambassador Marie Yovanovitch to call for a new investigation as it appeared Giuliani cronies had spied on her in Kiev.
Mr Trump meanwhile delivered his latest rally address to fans in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, last night, advocating the looting of Syria’s oilfields (a war crime), suggesting 36th president Lyndon Johnson is in hell and raving about the problem of inadequate water pressure in American dishwashers, sinks and showers on another eccentric night at the podium.
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Team Trump predictably responds to latest impeachment vote
As Donald Trump is to become the third president in history to face their removal from office in a Senate trial, the president's campaign manager Brad Parscale said the delay on a vote to send articles to the Senate is "just a failed attempt to politically damage President Trump leading up to his re-election."
He repeated claims by the president that the investigation is a "sham" and deflected accusations that Russian-backed groups manipulated the run-up to the president's 2016 win by claiming that Democrats are "trying to interfere in an election" in 2020.
On Twitter, Donald Trump Jr defended his dad's trade agreement with China as standing up for "America's working class" and called the impeachment a three-year-long "smear campaign".
House votes to send articles of impeachment, managers to Senate
Congress voted 228-193 to send to the Senate the two articles of impeachment against Donald Trump, who is charged with abuses of power and obstruction of Congress in its investigation of his dealings with Ukraine.
The House also assigned seven Democrats as case managers to act as the prosecution in the president's trial.
The vote was predictably along party lines, with 192 of the "no" votes coming from Republicans, joined by only one Democrat, Collin Peterson of Minnesota.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he anticipates starting a trial on 21 January.
Trump signs 'landmark' first phase of China trade deal amid tariffs war
Donald Trump has signed a “phase one” trade deal with China at the White House as part of an apparent easing of tensions between Washington and Beijing after the two exchanged retaliatory tariffs last year.
The president signed the agreement with China’s Vice Premier Liu He during a ceremony on Wednesday, describing it as a “landmark” deal that would benefit American farmers.
The phase one deal comes as Mr Trump’s administration has reportedly agreed to suspend new tariffs against Beijing in exchange for China purchasing $200bn (£153.5bn) worth of goods and services from the country over the next two years.
Pelosi takes House floor: 'Do me a favour? What is this, do you paint houses, too?'
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, after announcing the prosecutors who will lead Donald Trump's impeachment trial in the Senate, compared congress members' crossing through a "very important threshold in American history" to Paul Revere and repeated her claims that a Senate dismissal of impeachment amounts to a cover-up of the crimes committed by the president.
Of Trump's request to the president of Ukraine to "do me a favour, though" and investigate Joe Biden and his son in exchange for military aid, Ms Pelosi compared the pressure to a mafia hit.
"What is this, do you 'paint houses' too?" she said, invoking the hitman phrase recently used in Martin Scorsese's The Irishman.
She also defended her statement that an impeachment is permanent after Republicans criticised her remarks:
"Once a person is impeached, they are always impeached", she said. "That cannot be erased. I stand by that comment, although you don't like hearing it."
House Republicans debate impeachment before articles head to Senate
Republican opposition to Donald Trump's impeachment is once again tied to Democratic process and the president's own claims that he is innocent and not hundreds of pages of evidence and testimony that say otherwise.
Doug Collins and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy claim impeachment was purely politically motivated and "an exercise in raw, partisan politics," McCarthy said.
He said that if Republicans were to resume control of the House, "the rule of law would come back."
House begins debate to send impeachment articles to Senate
This morning, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the six House managers who will act as prosecutors in Donald Trump's impeachment trial in the Senate.
Now, New York Congressman Jerry Nadler — one of those appointed managers – is leading debate on a resolution to send the impeachment articles and establish rules for the managers.
He said "the Senate is on trial" as it faces the responsibility to lead a fair proceeding with witnesses and documents.
Republican Congressman Doug Collins said the impeachment resembles a "Dr Seuss book".
One of Trump's key targets to lead impeachment trial against him
The IndependentAdam Schiff: Evidence will 'expose' how Mitch McConnell worked 'hand-in-hand' with president to dismiss caseMike Pompeo cancels meeting after US officials demand State Department documents
The House Foreign Affairs committee wants the State Department to turn over provide "documents, information, and a briefing from senior officials" after yesterday's "profoundly alarming dialogue" between Lev Parnas and Trump Donald Robert Hyde including threats to impeachment witness Marie Yovanovtich.
Today, the State Department was set to brief Congress on embassy security following alleged threats to the US ahead of the killing of Iran's top general.
Secretary Mike Pompeo just cancelled the hearing.
US-China trade 'deal' lacks teeth, critics say
Following Nancy Pelosi's announcement of House managers to lead the impeachment trial against him, Donald Trump announced "phase one" of an anticipated and delayed trade deal between the US and China.
The announcement follows years of heated negotiations and billions of dollars in tariffs between the two economic powerhouses, but it stops short of a formal trade agreement that the administration sought in its trade war with China.
Among the agreements in this phase of a deal, the US aims to prevent China from acquiring US technology to build rivals abroad. But the deal doesn't address structural changes and is largely unenforceable, analysts say.
Its biggest sell is getting China to commit to purchasing $200 billion in US goods over two years, including $40 billion in agriculture products, but the significant blow to American farmers since the trade war began will take time to be repaired while China begins making its supposed commitments.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the deal "an extreme disappointment" with the president "conceding our leverage for vague, unenforceable 'promises' China never intends to fulfill."
Trump to sign 'phase one' of new trade deal with China
This is the scene at the White House as the president hosts Chinese vice premier Liu He to sign off on their new trade agreement.
The ceremony appears to have been delayed but guests are currently being treated to some soothing piano as they take their seats.
The Republicans are so excited they're taking selfies.
One of Trump's key targets to lead trial against him
The man regularly mocked by Trump as "pencil-neck" and a "deranged human being" will lead the case against him in the president's impeachment trial in the Senate, House speaker Nancy Pelosi has just announced.
Alex Woodward has this on the redoubtable Adam Schiff.
Who is Robert Hyde?
Last night's Parnas evidence introduced us to a new name in the Ukraine scandal: Robert F Hyde.
The man who appears to have been involved in spying on Marie Yovanovitch is known as a minor Republican donor and Trump fanatic who made his money in landscape gardening. He is currently running an unlikely campaign to unseat Democratic congresswoman Jahana Hayes in Connecticut (despite his own party asking him to step down for posting a sexist tweet about California senator Kamala Harris).
But David Corn of Mother Jones reports a stranger episode from Hyde's past: just last May he had to be taken into police custody at Trump's Miami Doral resort in Florida for his own protection after he claimed he feared for his life because the Secret Service and a hitman were after him.
Very odd.
He's clearly not handling his turn in the media spotlight well either, having tweeted a QAnon conspiracy about House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff today.
His Instagram account is also well worth checking out, providing a who's who of Trump World.
Mike Pence, Ivanka, Don Jr, Eric, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Chris Christie, Mike Huckabee, Ben Carson, Michael Flynn, Matt Gaetz, Jim Jordan, Kevin McCarthy, Charlie Kirk - they're all in there.
Adam Schiff: 'We've always felt a certain urgency about this impeachment as the president was trying to get foreign help in cheating in the next election'
A few highlights from the Q&A session just now, with the likes of Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler explaining where they stand on impeachment in light of last night's Parnas bombshell.
Also here's a handy introduction to the impeachment managers from Pelosi herself:
Trump labels impeachment 'Con Job'
Here we go again indeed.
Here's White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham's statement, which is every bit as unbalanced as you'd expect:
"The only thing Speaker Pelosi has achieved with this sham, illegitimate impeachment process, is to prove she is focused on politics instead of the American people. The Speaker lied when she claimed this was urgent and vital to national security because when the articles passed, she held them for an entire month in an egregious effort to garner political support.
"She failed and the naming of these managers does not change a single thing. President Trump has done nothing wrong. He looks forward to having the due process rights in the Senate that Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats denied to him, and expects to be fully exonerated. In the meantime, after President Trump signs the historic China Trade Deal greatly benefiting the people of this country, he will continue working and winning for all Americans, while the Democrats will continue only working against the president."
Nancy Pelosi names Democratic impeachment managers
House speaker Nancy Pelosi has just announced that the impeachment managers handling the case for the prosecution against the president in the Senate will be:
- Adam Schiff
- Jerrold Nadler
- Zoe Lofgren
- Hakeem Jeffries
- Jason Crow
- Jason Crow
- Val Demings
- Sylvia Garcia
This was the key moment:
"Time has been our friend in all of this because it has yielded incriminating evidence, more truth into the public domain," the speaker said, justifying the decision to withhold the articles since the House voted on them on 18 December.
The House will later hold its vote on resolutions confirming the managers, apportioning funding and sending the articles of impeachment through to the Senate, after which Pelosi will hold a signing ceremony at 5pm EST (10pm GMT) before the impeachment managers take part in the engrossment ceremony, marching across the Capitol to deliver those articles to the upper chamber.
The articles will then be read aloud in the Senate tomorrow.
Did Elizabeth Warren really snub Bernie Sanders' handshake?
This video of the Massachusetts senator appearing to dodge her old friend's handshake at the end of the debate last night is doing the rounds following their recent falling out...
...but was it really a calculated snub?
Indy100 attempts to answer that question.
Tom Steyer accused of owning only one tie
The billionaire Democratic presidential candidate will have been delighted to learn he was a trending search term on Google last night following his debate performance...
...but dismayed to hear the reason: people were wondering why he always wears the same tie.
As my colleague Conrad Duncan points out, even a rudimentary Google Images search will show you this isn't true but Steyer certainly seems oddly partial to red tartan.
The tie even has its own parody account for crying out loud.
Here's Louis Staples for Indy100.
Trump adviser Stephen Miller feared Obama's Dreamers would make US less American
Trump's top immigration adviser Stephen Miller told an editor of the far-right website Breitbart that the arrival of Dreamers - children brought to the US illegally to obtain relief from deportation - would make the US less American.
Emails sent to advocacy group the Southern Poverty Law Center and reviewed by The Independent show Miller fretting over the possibility that the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrrivals (Daca) programme would lead a higher percentage of foreign-born workers.
"[The] Daca amnesty remains in effect, which provides illegal youth (one of the single strongest pull factors for entering and remaining illegally) with both work permits and generous free cash tax credits," Miller wrote to Breitbart editor Katie McHugh in 2015, while he was serving as the communications director for then-senator Jeff Sessions.
Andrew Feinberg has more.
Ex-Trump adviser and ‘lifelong paedophile’ pleads guilty to sex crimes
George Nader, a former aide to Trump who specialised in foreign policy towards the Middle East, has pled guilty to multiple sex crimes involving minors after being found in possession of child pornography and accused of bringing an underage boy to the US for “commercial sex”.
Chris Riotta has this report.
Trump administration to release $8.2bn in disaster relief aid to Puerto Rico after 'shameful' delay
The US Department of Housing and Urban Development is set to lift its hold on $8.2bn (£6.3bn) in congressionally-approved disaster relief aid to Puerto Rico, according to Politico, which is long overdue given that the territory has received just $1.5bn (£1.15bn) of the $20bn (£15.4bn) it was promised after being devastated by hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017.
This comes after Democrats branded the delay "shameful" in the aftermath of the island being struck by an ongoing series of earthquakes since December.
Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Nydia Velazquez were among those writing to Trump demanding answers.
Here's Alex Woodward's report.
Iran rejects Boris Johnson’s ‘strange’ proposal to strike new 'Trump deal' to replace nuclear pact
Richard Hall has the latest from Tehran where the regime has reacted dismissively to the British prime minister's call for a new "Trump deal" to replace the 2015 Obama nuclear pact to rein in its uranium enrichment ambitions.
As we saw, the US president was delighted by the suggestion.
