House releases impeachment report against Trump

The US House of Representatives released a sweeping impeachment report Tuesday outlining evidence of what it calls President Donald Trump's wrongdoing toward Ukraine, findings that will serve as the foundation for debate over whether the 45th president should be removed from office.

The 300-page report from Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee says that Trump misused the power of his office and, in the course of their investigation, obstructed Congress by stonewalling the proceedings. Based on two months of investigation, the report contains evidence and testimony from current and former US officials.

The report also alleged that Trump "engaged in categorical and unprecedented obstruction in order to cover up his misconduct''.

The report marks the next stage in the impeachment inquiry against the president. The House Intelligence Committee plans to vote on approval of the report Tuesday evening. By doing so, it will formally pass the impeachment proceedings to the House Judiciary Committee, which will begin its own set of impeachment hearings Wednesday.

The document, drawn up by the committee that has led the inquiry into Trump's dealings with Ukraine, laid out what are all but certain to be the grounds on which the Democratic-led House moves to impeach the president.

"The impeachment inquiry has found that President Trump, personally and acting through agents within and outside of the US government, solicited the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, to benefit his reelection," the report said.

"The President engaged in this course of conduct for the benefit of his own presidential reelection, to harm the election prospects of a political rival, and to influence our nation's upcoming presidential election to his advantage," it said. In doing so, "the President placed his own personal and political interests above the national interests of the United States, sought to undermine the integrity of the US presidential election process, and endangered U.S. national security".

"It will be up to the Congress to determine whether these acts rise to the level of an impeachable offense," Rep. Adam Schiff, chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said in a joint statement with the chairmen of the Oversight and Foreign Affairs Committee, who drafted the report.

In a statement, White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham said "Chairman Schiff and the Democrats utterly failed to produce any evidence of wrongdoing by President Trump." She said the report "reads like the ramblings of a basement blogger straining to prove something when there is evidence of nothing".

Ahead of the release, Republicans defended the president in a rebuttal claiming Trump never intended to pressure Ukraine when he asked for a "favor" — investigations of Democrats and former vice-president Joe Biden. They say the military aid the White House was withholding was not being used as leverage, as Democrats claim, and the $400 million was ultimately released, although only after a congressional outcry.

Trump at the opening of a NATO leaders' meeting in London on Tuesday criticized the impeachment push as "unpatriotic" and "a bad thing for our country".

The findings in The Trump-Ukraine Impeachment Inquiry Report draw deeply from history, citing Alexander Hamilton and other Founding Fathers, to explain grounds for impeachment.

"Rather than a mechanism to overturn an election, impeachment was explicitly contemplated as a remedy of last resort for a president who fails to faithfully execute his oath of office 'to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States," the report said.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS