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As it happenedended1575408411
Trump impeachment news: Democrats release damning report accusing president of obstruction, as he has tense exchanges with world leaders at Nato summit
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Donald Trump sparred with Emmanuel Macron during a televised bilateral meeting at the two-day Nato summit in London, as House investigators released an explosive report on the impeachment inquiry back home in Washington.
It was a whirlwind news cycle during the president’s visit to the UK: as Mr Trump met with world leaders overseas, House investigators released their report finding “a months-long effort by President Trump to use the powers of his office to solicit foreign interference on his behalf in the 2020 election”.
House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff said the House had "overwhelming evidence of the president’s misconduct" and suggested the president's actions posed "a threat to the integrity of the upcoming election" as Mr Triump meanwhile denounced the timing of the next phase of the process, arguing it has been scheduled to embarrass him.
Mr Trump, who arrived in London on late Monday for two days of meetings, called the trip “one of the most important journeys that we make as president” before departing Washington and noted Democrats had long known about the meeting.
The president lashed out at Democrats again soon after arriving in the UK. He said on Twitter that he had read the Republican report designed to counter Democrats’ impeachment case on his flight. The report called Mr Trump’s hesitation to provide military aid to Ukraine “entirely prudent.”
Trump impeachment: Who's who in the Ukraine scandal
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“Prior to landing I read the Republicans Report on the Impeachment Hoax. Great job! Radical Left has NO CASE. Read the Transcripts", Mr Trump wrote on Twitter. “Shouldn’t even be allowed. Can we go to Supreme Court to stop?”
It was not immediately clear under what legal grounds the president was calling for the high court’s involvement.
Mr Trump’s trip comes amid ongoing quarrels over defence spending by NATO allies and widespread anxiety over the president’s commitment to the alliance.
The president said his trip would be focused on “fighting for the American people".
But in the more than two months that the impeachment inquiry has been underway, he has constantly drifted back to what he frames as the Democrats’ unfair effort to overturn the results of his 2016 election.
The House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing Wednesday on the constitutional grounds for impeachment before Mr Trump wraps up at the NATO meeting.
Additional reporting by AP. Please allow a moment for our live blog to load
It should be noted that Donald Trump said this about the House Intelligence Committee chairman earlier today, as he was meeting with world leaders during a two-day Nato summit:
"I think he's a maniac. I think Adam Schiff is a deranged human being. I think he grew up with a complex for lots of reasons that are obvious. I think he's a very sick man. And he lies."
"This report chronicles a scheme by the president of the United States to coerce an ally, Ukraine, that is at war with an adversary, Russia, into doing the president's political dirty work", House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said.
Adam Schiff sums up how Donald Trump attempted to obstruct justice throughout the impeachment inquiry against him:
"The president informed every department for which we sought records — the State Dept. the Office of Management and Budget ... the Defense Department, his own White House personnel — to refuse to turn over a single document."
Adam Schiff suggests House investigators are also keen to learn exactly when the president began the "scheme" involving his dealings with Ukraine:
"There is more investigative work to be done. One of the issues that we are looking into is, did this scheme begin far earlier than we first understood? Was this scheme, in fact, put in place to try to pressure the last president of Ukraine?"
Asked by Devin Nunes, a Republican who played a key role in defending the president during the public impeachment hearings, Adam Schiff responds:
"It is, I think, deeply concerning that at a time when the president of the U.S. was using the power of his office to dig up dirt on a political rival that there may be evidence that there were members of Congress complicit in that activity."
The phone records show Republican Devin Nunes was in frequent contact with the president's personal attorney and his now-indicted associate as the events unfolded that led to Donald Trump's impeachment:
Melania Trump suspects Roger Stone, her husband’s longtime ally and former adviser, of leaking nude photos from her modelling past, a new book will claim.
But the first lady “still refuses to believe” the US president had any involvement in the release of the pictures, according to Free, Melania, written by CNN correspondent Kate Bennett.
The images, taken during a 1996 photoshoot and published the next year in a French men’s magazine, resurfaced in the New York Post during the 2016 US presidential election campaign. At the time, Mr Trump was embroiled in a high-profile row with the family of Humayun Khan, a US soldier killed in Iraq.
“The theory goes … that Trump was trying to head off a bad week on the campaign,” Ms Bennett writes in the book, seen in advance of publication by The Guardian.
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