House Democrats announced two articles of impeachment against Donald Trump on a historic day on Capitol Hill, accusing the president of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress ahead of a full House vote on his misconduct later this week.
"He endangers our democracy, he endangers our national security," said House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerrold Nadler, announcing the charges before a portrait of George Washington. "Our next election is at risk... That is why we must act now."
Mr Trump began the day pleading on Twitter that his impeachment would be "sheer Political Madness!"
His Attorney General William Barr, however, had accused the Obama Administration of being the "greatest danger to our free system" by using the "apparatus of the state ... both to spy on political opponents but also to use them in a way that could affect the outcome of an election."
Those theories were debunked in the Justice Department's recently released watchdog report but they've been repeated by Republicans in defence of the president as he face impeachment.
But nearly as soon as Democrats announced impeachment articles, they supported the Trump administration's USMCA trade agreement, a revised Nafta plan that the White House called the "biggest and best trade agreement in the history of the world". The White House will "push hard" to enact the deal before the end of 2019, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell already indicated the Senate won't be taking it up until the president's impeachment trial is through, which could be January.
Meanwhile, Mr Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at the White House, where Mr Pompeo and Mr Lavrov clashed during a post-meeting press conference over the perception of reports of interference in US elections.
Mr Lavrov said that reports of interference are "baseless" and that "there are no facts that would support that" though he admitted he read the Mueller report, which he said is not "proof of collusion".
The president ends a historic day on Capitol Hill with his supporters in Pennsylvania, where he's holding an ego-boosting Keep America Great rally.
Follow along as it happened.
Hello and welcome to The Independent's rolling coverage of the Donald Trump administration.
Democrats to accuse Trump of abuse of power, obstruction of Congress
House Democrats are expected to announce two articles of impeachment against Donald Trump on Tuesday, charging him with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress ahead of a possible full House vote this week.
Democratic committee leaders met with House speaker Nancy Pelosi after the last scheduled impeachment hearing concluded on Monday evening, before three unidentified officials tipped the nod to The Washington Post. Pelosi's office announced later that the House Committee officials will hold a press conference at 9am EST (2pm GMT) on Tuesday morning to announce the next steps in the impeachment inquiry.
Trump (as if you'd forgotten) is accused of pressuring Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to initiate an embarrassing anti-corruption probe into his domestic political rival Joe Biden in exchange for the release of $391m (£302m) in congressionally-approved military aid and a White House meeting before obstructing Congress's efforts to investigate his actions.
House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Eliot Engel said Democratic lawmakers planned to make an announcement on articles of impeachment on Tuesday morning but would not elaborate as he left Pelosi's office.
Vincent Wood reports.
President poses 'clear and present danger to national security'
The development follows the House Judiciary Committee’s final inquiry hearing, in which Democrats and Republicans poured over the evidence against the president in a lengthy and ill-tempered session and called upon their leading counsels to make their best case for and against Trump's impeachment.
While Democrats hoped to relay to the American people their argument that the president had misused his position of considerable power to force Ukraine to meddle in a US election - an argument they have bolstered with strong witness testimony - Republicans sought to defend Trump by casting the inquiry as a chaotic process revealing little but a political bias.
“The evidence is overwhelming,” said Barry Berke, Democratic counsel on the Judiciary Committee.
“President Trump’s persistent and continuing effort to coerce a foreign country to help him cheat to win an election is a clear and present danger to our free and fair elections and to our national security,” added his colleague Daniel Goldman.
Republicans repeatedly interrupted the hearings with calls for parliamentary inquiries, forcing repeated conflict between themselves and Judiciary chairman Jerry Nadler. In doing so, the strategy hinged less on refuting the facts before the House and more about driving a narrative that Democrats were engaged in a politically motivated smear campaign.
The president, for his part, responded to the hearing on Twitter, where he called Democrats a “disgrace”, implored his supporters to “Read the Transcripts!”, and agreed with conservative talk show host Buck Sexton, who called Democrats “total psychos”.
“This unfair process reflects the degree to which Democrats are obsessed with impeaching President Trump by any means necessary,” said Stephen Castor, the counsel hired by Republicans.
Clark Mindock and Andrew Feinberg have a full report.
Pro-Trump Infowars host who called for Obama to be lynched thrown out of inquiry
Yesterday's inquiry was never short of drama, with InfoWars presenter and conspiracy theorist Owen Shroyer - who recently called for Barack Obama to be lynched - kicked out after haranguing Chairman Nadler within moments of the session opening.
"Americans are sick of your impeachment scam! Trump is innocent!" said Shroyer, livestreaming the stunt for his fans on Periscope.
The assembled Republican members of the committee had a few tricks of their own up there sleeves, not least a milk carton sign proclaiming House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff "missing", a protest about the fact that neither the impeachment inquiry's chief investigator nor the anonymous CIA whistleblower had been called to give testimony.
Even that wasn't the most ridiculous prop of the day though. Republican lawyer Castor arrived with a bag for life instead of a briefcase, prompting ridicule online from the grocery store benefitting from his free advertising.
Castor's performance, reminding some of Simpsons lawyer Lionel Hutz, wasn't much more intimidating.
Here's Clark Mindock on Shroyer.
Republicans' false narratives on impeachment are easily debunked
For Indy Voices, Ahmed Baba assesses the weak opposition response to the overwhelming evidence for the impeachment of Donald Trump put forward by the Democrats, seeing a Republican Party struggling to convince the electorate that their president is not a crook.
FBI was justified in investigating Trump-Russia, Justice Department inspector general concludes
The FBI's investigation into contacts between Donald Trump's election campaign and Russia was justified and not politically biased, a report by the Justice Department's watchdog has found. The findings refute Trump's repeated claims of a deep state "witch hunt" to undermine his presidency and his assertion that the FBI illegally spied on his campaign.
The 434-page report, by the department's inspector general Michael Horowitz, says the so-called Crossfire Hurricane investigation was justified in eavesdropping on Carter Page, a former Trump campaign aide who had made several visits to Russia.
The investigation began in July 2016 after the FBI learned that another ex-Trump campaign staffer, George Papadopoulos, had been claiming Russia had dirt on Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in the form of stolen emails. Those emails, which had been hacked from Democratic email accounts by Russian intelligence agents, were released by Wikileaks in the weeks before the election in what US officials say was an attempt to harm Clinton and help Trump.
William Barr, the attorney general and a loyal ally of Trump, has started a separate investigation into the origins of the Russia probe, headed by prosecutor John Durham. Barr himself rejected the inspector general's conclusion that there was sufficient evidence to open the investigation.
"The inspector general's report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a US presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken," he said.
Here's Phil Thomas with a full account.
President falsely claims IG report reveals plot to 'overthrow government'
Trump, naturally, had a rather different take on Horowitz's conclusions, claiming the case was actually "far worse" than he had expected and that the report recounted nothing less than "an attempt to overthrow the government".
This spin is neither true to the inspector general's words nor accurate - he was not president at the time the investigation was commenced.
Interestingly, the increasingly rebellious Chris Wallace picked him up on the lie on Fox News last night.
Here's Clark Mindock's report.
British spy not biased against Trump because he was 'friendly' with Ivanka
One of the most interesting nuggets contained in Michael Horowitz's report is the revelation that ex-MI6 agent Christopher Steele - who compiled the notorious Steele Dossier alleging ties between Trump and Russia - claims to be a personal friend of Ivanka Trump and says he is “favourably disposed” towards the Trump family.
Steele told investigators he had visited Ivanka at Trump Tower in New York and had gifted her a family tartan from Scotland.
Extraordinary, especially given that the dossier carrying his name contains once of the most notorious allegations against Ivanka's father: that he once paid to watch Russian prostitutes urinate on a hotel bed in Moscow that had once been slept in by Barack and Michelle Obama.
Putin, Zelensky hold inaugural meeting in Paris
Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky met in France yesterday for bilateral talks and their first meeting in person in the wake of the latter's May election victory. The name "Donald J Trump" surely cropped up in conversation as the nations of the Normandy quartet convened.
Oliver Carroll has this report.
Trump taunts FBI having apparently completely misunderstood Justice Department watchdog's report
The president is up and trolling the FBI over Michael Horowitz's report exonerating it of wrongdoing in 2016 by quoting partisan Fox pundits, following up on his entirely bogus spin on its conclusions yesterday afternoon.
Also, "Fown the chain of command"? This is barely literate.
Look at him trying to have his cake and eat it here.
Kamala Harris demands firing of senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller over white nationalism concerns
Kamala Harris has led a group of 27 senators in demanding the immediate removal of Stephen Miller from his role as a White House senior adviser to Donald Trump, following accusations he holds white supremacist views.
The California Democrat, who recently quit her bid for the White House in 2020, wrote to the administration in a letter on Monday: “We write to demand the immediate removal of Stephen Miller as your adviser.”
Miller, who serves as one of the president’s top advisers on immigration, came under fire after a trove of his leaked emails were reported on by the Southern Poverty Law Centre’s Hatewatch. The emails from 2015 to 2016 appeared to show Miller - who then-served as an aide to former Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions - promoting xenophobic, anti-immigrant and white nationalist viewpoints to a reporter for the right-wing website Breitbart, seemingly in an attempt to get her to write about those sentiments.
Chris Riotta has the full story.
'Sheer Political Madness!'
Trump has resorted to pleading now, ahead of the Democrats' press conference this morning.
Stephen Colbert: 'Trump just naming an alternate reality he wants to exist'
The Late Show satirist Stephen Colbert roasted Trump last night for precisely the sort of delusional spin we've just seen from him on Twitter, in the wake of his ludicrous "overthrow of government" comment on Monday.
AOC hits out at Trump over 'atrocious antisemitism'
Progressive Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has joined the outcry against Trump over his remarks to the Israeli American Council (IAC) on Saturday night, in which the president deployed an antisemitic trope by suggesting his Jewish audience was primarily concerned with wealth.
"A lot of you are in the real estate business because I know you very well, you’re brutal killers. You’re not nice people at all, but you have to vote for me. You have no choice," the president told the IAC. "You’re not going to vote for Pocahontas, I can tell you that. You’re not going to vote for the wealth tax!"
A number of Jewish groups have already condemned the president's comments.
Clark Mindock has more on Ocasio-Cortez.
California church protests Trump with politically-charged nativity scene
Claremont United Methodist Church in Los Angeles is protesting Trump's brutal anti-immigration policies this Christmas by placing Jesus, Mary and Joseph in chain-link detention centre cages lined with barbed wire in its nativity display.
Democrats set to host press conference on impeachment
We're expecting to hear from Nancy Pelosi this morning as well as the five House committee chairs - Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler, Eliot Engel, Carolyn Maloney and Maxine Waters - as the Democrats give us their latest update on the impeachment inquiry any moment from the Capitol's Rayburn Room.
Stayed tuned.
Jerry Nadler announces two impeachment articles against Trump
Speaker Pelosi kicks things off remarking that this is a "solemn day", pays tribute to late House Oversight Committee chairman Elijah Cummings.
(Andrew Feinberg)
Nadler is now confirmining the two articles of impeachment “charging the president of the Untied States, Donald J Trump, with committing high crime and misdemeanors.”
The first is abuse of power, the second obstruction of Congress - as expected.
Here's Chris Riotta's breaking story.
Adam Schiff: Trump's abuse of power 'simple and terrible'
The House Intelligence Committee chairman is currently reviewing the case against Trump.
And that's it! Short and sweet.
Trump gearing up for latest campaign rally
The president is yet to respond to Nadler's announcement but we can no doubt expect Twitter fireworks shortly.
He did offer this earlier, you will recall:
The president is due in the town of Hershey, Pennsylvania, later today for his latest campaign rally at the Giant Center.
We wish we were as excited about it as this guy:
Trump talking trade but silent on impeachment
In a suprise move, Trump has just tweeted but - shock horror - it's not about impeachment!
He's attempting to look businesslike by giving an update on the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (more on which shortly).
