Trump impeachment: President 'brags' about obstructing Congress as Senate hears he used power to 'cheat' election

Trial begins with opening statements from House prosecutors summarising mountain of evidence from Congress

'I thought it was terrible' Trump says he doesn't think Bill Clinton should have been impeached

House impeachment managers delivered opening remarks during the US Senate trial into Donald Trump and his dealings with Ukraine, as Democrats blasted White House attorneys for presenting Fox News-style “histrionics" at the hearings.

Democratic impeachment manager Adam Schiff ​argued in his opening remarks the president's "misconduct cannot be decided at the ballot box" and suggested that Americans "cannot be assured that the vote will be fairly won" in 2020 after Mr Trump encouraged Ukraine to launch political investigations into one of his Democratic rivals, Joe Biden.​

House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler, another impeachment manager, also accused Republicans of “voting for a cover-up”, observing: “Only guilty people hide the evidence.”

The prosecution's marathon opening statements included clips from witness testimonies and, most damning, from the president himself, including his admission that he would accept politically damaging information on a rival candidate from a foreign country and would ask China to investigate the Bidens.

House impeachment managers, acting as the prosecution, each handled a different aspect of the charges against the president and the players involved, from Rudy Giuliani's influence and direction under the president to pressure Ukraine into an investigation, to the on-the-ground consequences of withholding military aid to Ukraine while it was in the middle of a ground war with Russia.

Looking on from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the president fired out dozens of retweets in support of his cause while insisting he was “making great progress” at the global summit, as a new poll makes bleak reading for his supporters ahead of 2020.

The president appeared to acknowledge his administrations' participation in the obstruction charges against him by telling reporters: "Honestly, we have all the material. They don't have the material."

He also falsely claimed that Democrats leading his impeachment "don't talk about my conversation" with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenksky and that "they don't talk about my transcripts" that the president believes exonerate him.

Follow live coverage as it happened:

Key Points

• Trump attacks Greta Thunberg, Jerry Nadler and Lev Parnas at Davos
• New poll finds president losing to six Democratic contenders in 2020
• Senate blocks 11 key amendments to rules as trial gets underway
• Democrats complain process 'ass-backwards' and 'a cover-up'
• Budget Office forced to release Ukraine emails two minutes before deadline 

[22 January 2020 12:25 · Joe Sommerlad]

President extending US travel ban to seven more countries

We learned in Davos yesterday that Trump is planning to add seven new countries to his US travel ban, including Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation.

The president told The Wall Street Journal in an interview from Switzerland that he wants to extend the controversial ban but declined to name names. The paper and Politico subsequently speculated that the other countries likely to be targeted are Nigeria, Sudan, Belarus, Myanmar, Tanzania, Kyrgyzstan and Eritrea.

Oliver O'Connell has more on this.

[22 January 2020 12:40 · Joe Sommerlad]

Ivanka Trump blanks reporter asking about impeachment trial

Also in Davos yesterday, Ivanka Trump was involved in an awkward stand-off with CNN reporter Jim Acosta, once booted out of a White House press briefing by her father's administration.

Here's Oliver O'Connell again.

[22 January 2020 13:00 · Joe Sommerlad]

What DC insiders really think of Mitch McConnell's trial rules

For Indy Voices, Andrew Feinberg has the inside track on the impeachment trial from Capitol Hill.

[22 January 2020 13:20 · Joe Sommerlad]

Senate Democrat calls out 'draconian' reporting restrictions at the 

New Mexico Democrat Martin Heinrich has written to the Senate's sergeant-at-arms Michael Stenger to complain about the "draconian" restrictions on the press being observed at the impeachment trial.

Mitch McConnell has been working hard to protect Trump's interests in drawing up his rules for the process and the president's own views on the press are well known.

He said in Davos just now that he hopes the Fourth Estate can be "straightened out", seemingly threatening an ominous new encroachment on a key democratic check on executive power. 

[22 January 2020 13:40 · Joe Sommerlad]

White House Twitter account confuses Iraq with Iran

As discussed, Trump is due to meet up with the president of Iraq later today at the World Economic Forum.

Someone should tell whoever's in charge of the White House YouTube account. His sitting down with Hassan Rouhani of Iran really would be a story...

Here's Andre Griffin's report.

[22 January 2020 14:00 · Joe Sommerlad]

Kellyanne Conway defends Bernie Sanders in bizarre tweet

The beef that erupted between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders yesterday - after it emerged that the beaten 2016 candidate told a Hulu documentary crew that "nobody likes" the Vermont socialist - created such hysteria on Twitter that even Kellyanne Conway found herself defending Trump's possible 2020 challenger.

Rogue rival candidate Tulsi Gabbard summed it all up rather nicely...

...and Bernie has since laughed off the matter with the very Larry David answer: "On a good day my wife likes me."

Sirena Bergman explains all for Indy100.

[22 January 2020 14:15 · Joe Sommerlad]

Trump pushes Bernie conspiracy, calls Tom Steyer 'major loser'

In Davos, Trump has unleashed another deluge of partisan retweets in the last hour from Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, Louis Gohmert, Mark Levin and Dan Bongino and repeated his ludicrous conspiracy theory that the impeachment trial is really about dragging Bernie Sanders off the campaign to serve as a juror to derail his 2020 presidential campaign.

This on Tom Steyer is just mean.

This endorsement of Levin's attack on progressive Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is also pretty noteworthy.

Clark Mindock has more on that latter point.

[22 January 2020 14:30 · Joe Sommerlad]

President praises Elon Musk: 'He does good at rockets'

Trump has been talking to Joe Kernan on CNBC's Squawk Box and praised the eccentric Silicon Valley tech tycoon in gloriously inarticulate fashion.

He also had a kind word for Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, who continues to refuse to police his political advertising.

Trump was also critical of Boeing, again inflated his record on African American unemployment and attacked the Fed and Michael Bloomberg.

He even found time to touch on impeachment and post-Brexit trade with Britain in what was another scattergun media appearance.

Andrew Griffin has more.

[22 January 2020 14:50 · Joe Sommerlad]

Trump moves to allay fears of coronavirus outbreak

The president also used his interview there to reassure the public that the coronavirus is "completely under control" after the first case was discovered in the US earlier this week.

Chris Riotta has the latest on that.

[22 January 2020 15:10 · Joe Sommerlad]

Trump says Obama officials should be punished for investigating him

In addition to CNBC, Trump has also been speaking (nonsense) to Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business since landing in Davos, pledging juicy tax cuts for the middle class, blowing yet more smoke about his impact on the US economy and saying the Obama-era Justice Department should be punished for having the temerity to investigate his campaign in 2016.