In 300 pages, House lays out evidence for Trump impeachment

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House 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 makes the case 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 U.S. officials.

“The impeachment inquiry has found that President Trump, personally and acting through agents within and outside of the U.S. government, solicited the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, to benefit his reelection," said Chairman Adam Schiff in the report's preface.

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 U.S. presidential election process, and endangered U.S. national security,” the report said.

The report does not render a judgment on whether Trump’s actions stemming from a July 25 phone call with Ukraine president rise to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanors” warranting impeachment, leaving that to Congress to decide.

Instead, “The Trump-Ukraine Impeachment inquiry Report” provides a detailed, if stunning, account of a shadow diplomacy run by Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, resulting in layers of allegations, which can be distilled into specific acts like bribery, extortion or obstruction, and the more amorphous allegation that Trump abused his power by putting his interests above the nation.

The House intelligence panel will vote later Tuesday, in what is expected to be a party-line tally, to send the document to the Judiciary Committee ahead of a landmark impeachment hearing Wednesday.

“With the release of our report, the American people can review for themselves the evidence detailing President Trump’s betrayal of the public trust,'' Schiff 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 Joe Biden. They say the military aid the White House was withholding was not being used as leverage, as Democrats claim, and besides 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."

In prefacing the report, Schiff draws deeply from history, citing George Washington, 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,'” he wrote.

The report will lay the foundation for the House Judiciary Committee to assess potential articles of impeachment starting Wednesday, presenting a history-making test of political judgment with a case that is dividing Congress and the country.

Trump said he will not watch the judiciary panel's hearing, saying it's “all nonsense, they’re just wasting their time.”

The report also accuses Trump of obstructing the House constitutional authority to conduct the impeachment inquiry, becoming the “first and only'' president in U.S. history to "openly and indiscriminately” defy the proceedings by instructing officials not to comply with subpoenas for documents and testimony.

The next step comes when the Judiciary Committee gavels open its own hearing with legal experts to assess the findings and consider potential articles of impeachment ahead of a possible vote by the full House by Christmas. That would presumably send it to the Senate for a trial in January.