Trump news: Second staffer claims to have heard previously undisclosed call, as Pelosi says president admitted committing bribery

Hello and welcome to The Independent's rolling coverage of the Donald Trump administration.

President 'doesn't remember' Sondland call raised at impeachment hearing

Donald Trump has said he “doesn’t remember” a compromising call allegedly made by Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the EU, that acting Ukraine ambassador Bill Taylor raised at the House impeachment inquiry on Wednesday, saying a member of his staff overheard Mr Trump asking about “the investigations”.

Trump gave the response during a joint press conference with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the East Room with the House hearings still ongoing in the Longworth House Office Building.

This was the moment Taylor dropped his bombshell revelation about Sondland's call to Trump from a Kiev restaurant, which he said had been brought to his attention since his earlier appearance before the panel behind closed-doors.

After the marathon hearing, House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff stressed the significance of the development.

Here's our report.

Senior diplomats spell out Ukraine irregularities in dramatic day on Capitol Hill

The testimony House investigators heard yesterday from Taylor and bowtied State Department official George Kent saw both men describing the administration’s “irregular” dealings with the Eastern European nation as the president’s personally lawyer Rudy Giuliani and his allies pushed for an anti-corruption probe into Mr Trump’s domestic political rival Joe Biden.

Here are some of the key exchanges with Taylor and Kent, which saw them make the case that Trump cared more about embarrasing Biden than the lives of the Ukrainians whom the American military aid approved by Congress was intended to save. 

This moment - in which Ohio Republican Jim Jordan, especially drafted in for the occasion, was brutally owned by Democrat Peter Welch of Vermont - was truly special.

Taylor and Kent gently making a fool of Republican counsel Steve Castor, having already batted away Trumpland conspiracy theories from raking Republican Devin Nunes, was also a total joy.

Here's Andrew Buncombe with six key takeaways from a dramatic day.

'History in the making'

There were long queues to get into yesterday's hearing - with drag queen Pissi Myles among the throng, brandishing a selfie stick - as well as a press melee inside that left Texas Republican Louie Gohmert grumbling that he couldn't even see Taylor and Kent's faces over the bundle of photographers and journalists.

Our man Andrew Feinberg was there to soak up the chaos.

Trump 'too busy' to follow impeachment hearing, blasts out 30 retweets denouncing proceedings

Trump himself insisted he was not following proceedings yesterday - despite retweeting some 30 attacks from friendly GOP members, his social media director Dan Scavino and the White House denouncing the Democratic-led inquiry.

"It's a witch hunt, it's a hoax, I'm too busy to watch it," Trump told reporters during his presser with Erdogan. "There's nothing there. I see they're using lawyers that are television lawyers. They took some guys off television. You know, I'm not surprised to see it because Schiff can't do his own questions."

The strategy from his inner circle appeared to be to dismiss the inquiry as "boring".

Here's Clark Mindock on the GOP reaction.

George Conway slams Republicans: 'If Barack Obama had done this, they’d be out for blood and they’d be right'

On TV, Kellyanne Conway's anti-Trump husband George was invited on to MSNBC as a pundit to introduce proceedings, making a rare media appearance to criticise the president.

He did not disappoint, slamming Trump personally as well as Republican hypocrisy and desperation in seeking to defend him.

"If he’d just shut up about it and not tweeted 'witch hunt' 600 times there wouldn’t have been a whole volume two of the Mueller investigation," he told Nicolle Wallace.

Court clears Congress to go after eight years of Trump tax returns

Trump must obey a House Oversight and Reform Committee subponea and release eight years' worth of tax returns, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit has ruled. 

Judges on Wednesday again denied the president's bid to stop his accounting firm Mazars LLP from releasing the financial records to House Democrats. Jay Sekulow, Trump's lawyer, said the president would appeal and take the fight to the US Supreme Court. 

The eight-three vote brings the opposition closer to shedding light on Trump's business interests and how he built his fortune.

Here's Tom Embury-Dennis's report.

Trump insists he and Erdogan are 'very good friends' during White House visit

The president was working hard yesterday to insist relations between the US and Turkey are friendly a month on from his having to hastily agree a ceasefire after Ankara reacted to his decision to pull American troops out of northern Syria by bombing their Kurdish allies in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an entirely forseeable outcome given that the Turks are well known to consider the SDF a terror cause.

Trump even went so far as to claim Erdogan "has a great relationship with the Kurds", which is one way of putting it I suppose.

Extraordinarily, he also said the US would be "keeping", rather than safeguarding, Syria's oil assets, which would be a war crime.

Negar Mortazavi has this report.

Erdogan reveals he gave back Trump's 'tough guy' letter

The Turkish president also revealed yesterday that he gave back Trump's letter of 9 October in which the latter implored him not to be a "tough guy" or a "fool" and make enemies for himself on the world stage by pursuing the Kurds.

He was previously reported to have thrown the message in the bin.

Trump did not respond to the declaration. 

Here's Alex Woodward's report.

President up early to resume attack on impeachment inquiry

Trump is out of bed and quoting Texas Republican John Ratcliffe on the impeachment inquiry.

Ratcliffe was forced to withdraw as Trump's pick to replace Dan Coats as director of national intelligence in July after it became clear he would endure a rocky nomination hearing due to his chronic lack of qualifications for the role.