Trump impeachment news: President given deadline to offer evidence, as White House ‘engaged in unprecedented obstruction’
President returns from surprise visit to Afghanistan as House committees set deadline for president to give evidence in impeachment inquiry
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Your support makes all the difference.Donald Trump’s White House has “engaged in unprecedented obstruction”, former acting solicitor general Neal Katyal has declared in a damning interview with MSNBC, as the White House admits it has no record of a key call between the president and EU ambassador Gordon Sondland that Republicans had hoped would exonerate him.
Mr Trump made a surprise Thanksgiving visit to Afghanistan on Thursday, serving turkey to American troops at the Bagram Air Field and pledging to resume peace talks with the Taliban just three months after declaring the process “dead”.
His inner circle had gone to some lengths to conceal the trip from the media, sending out Mr Trump’s motorcade to his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, as a red herring after the president tweeted a picture of his head Photoshopped onto a shot of Sylvester Stallone in character as underdog boxer Rocky Balboa to serve as a distraction.
The House Judiciary Committee meanwhile gave Mr Trump a deadline in one week to say whether his legal counsel intends to introduce evidence and call witnesses in upcoming impeachment proceedings that could lead to formal charges of misconduct.
The Democratic-led committee is due to begin weighing possible articles of impeachment against Mr Trump next week.
House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler sent a two-page letter to the president setting a deadline of 5 pm on 6 December for the president's counsel to specify intended actions under the committee's impeachment procedures.
The procedures set out rules by which the president can call witnesses, introduce evidence and make presentations.
Mr Nadler set the same deadline for Republican lawmakers on the committee to notify him about intended witnesses and evidence and scheduled a 9 December meeting to consider the matter.
The Judiciary panel is expected to hold a series of impeachment proceedings, including an initial hearing on Wednesday at which legal experts are due to testify about the constitutional grounds for impeachment.
The committee invited Mr Trump to participate in the hearing and gave him until 6 pm on Sunday to say whether he or his legal team would attend.
The impeachment probe is looking into whether Mr Trump abused his power to pressure Ukraine to launch investigations of political rival Joe Biden and a discredited conspiracy theory promoted by Trump that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 presidential election.
After weeks of closed-door witness depositions and televised hearings, three investigating panels led by the House Intelligence Committee are due to release a formal report soon after lawmakers return to Congress on Tuesday from a Thanksgiving recess. The report will outline evidence gathered by lawmakers on the panel, along with those on the Foreign Affairs and Oversight committees.
After Wednesday, the Judiciary panel, which could recommend a full House impeachment vote before Christmas, is expected to hold a hearing to examine the evidence report and further proceedings to consider formal articles of impeachment.
Reuters contributed to this report. Please allow a moment for our live blog to load
The House Judiciary Committee has set a deadline of 6 December for Donald Trump to offer any witnesses or evidence in the Democrat-led impeachment hearings, the Associated Press has reported. The White House has failed to comply with the impeachment inquiry and ordered key witnesses not to comply with congressional subpoenas.
The White House has tweeted out more photos from Donald Trump's surprise trip to Afghanistan during the Thanksgiving holiday -
Here's my story on Charlie Dent, a former-GOP congressman and prominent critic of Donald Trump, and his latest thoughts surrounding the impeachment inquiry against the president:
The Independent's Alex Woodward has the latest on what comes next in the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump:
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