Trump news: Formal charges of impeachment revealed with president accused of ‘simple and terrible’ abuse of power
Nadler: 'Our next election is at risk... That is why we must act now'
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Your support makes all the difference.House Democrats announced two articles of impeachment against Donald Trump on a historic day on Capitol Hill, accusing the president of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress ahead of a full House vote on his misconduct later this week.
"He endangers our democracy, he endangers our national security," said House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerrold Nadler, announcing the charges before a portrait of George Washington. "Our next election is at risk... That is why we must act now."
Mr Trump began the day pleading on Twitter that his impeachment would be "sheer Political Madness!"
His Attorney General William Barr, however, had accused the Obama Administration of being the "greatest danger to our free system" by using the "apparatus of the state ... both to spy on political opponents but also to use them in a way that could affect the outcome of an election."
Those theories were debunked in the Justice Department's recently released watchdog report but they've been repeated by Republicans in defence of the president as he face impeachment.
But nearly as soon as Democrats announced impeachment articles, they supported the Trump administration's USMCA trade agreement, a revised Nafta plan that the White House called the "biggest and best trade agreement in the history of the world". The White House will "push hard" to enact the deal before the end of 2019, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell already indicated the Senate won't be taking it up until the president's impeachment trial is through, which could be January.
Meanwhile, Mr Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at the White House, where Mr Pompeo and Mr Lavrov clashed during a post-meeting press conference over the perception of reports of interference in US elections.
Mr Lavrov said that reports of interference are "baseless" and that "there are no facts that would support that" though he admitted he read the Mueller report, which he said is not "proof of collusion".
The president ends a historic day on Capitol Hill with his supporters in Pennsylvania, where he's holding an ego-boosting Keep America Great rally.
Follow along as it happened.
Kamala Harris demands firing of senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller over white nationalism concerns
Kamala Harris has led a group of 27 senators in demanding the immediate removal of Stephen Miller from his role as a White House senior adviser to Donald Trump, following accusations he holds white supremacist views.
The California Democrat, who recently quit her bid for the White House in 2020, wrote to the administration in a letter on Monday: “We write to demand the immediate removal of Stephen Miller as your adviser.”
Miller, who serves as one of the president’s top advisers on immigration, came under fire after a trove of his leaked emails were reported on by the Southern Poverty Law Centre’s Hatewatch. The emails from 2015 to 2016 appeared to show Miller - who then-served as an aide to former Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions - promoting xenophobic, anti-immigrant and white nationalist viewpoints to a reporter for the right-wing website Breitbart, seemingly in an attempt to get her to write about those sentiments.
Chris Riotta has the full story.
'Sheer Political Madness!'
Trump has resorted to pleading now, ahead of the Democrats' press conference this morning.
Stephen Colbert: 'Trump just naming an alternate reality he wants to exist'
The Late Show satirist Stephen Colbert roasted Trump last night for precisely the sort of delusional spin we've just seen from him on Twitter, in the wake of his ludicrous "overthrow of government" comment on Monday.
AOC hits out at Trump over 'atrocious antisemitism'
Progressive Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has joined the outcry against Trump over his remarks to the Israeli American Council (IAC) on Saturday night, in which the president deployed an antisemitic trope by suggesting his Jewish audience was primarily concerned with wealth.
"A lot of you are in the real estate business because I know you very well, you’re brutal killers. You’re not nice people at all, but you have to vote for me. You have no choice," the president told the IAC. "You’re not going to vote for Pocahontas, I can tell you that. You’re not going to vote for the wealth tax!"
A number of Jewish groups have already condemned the president's comments.
Clark Mindock has more on Ocasio-Cortez.
California church protests Trump with politically-charged nativity scene
Claremont United Methodist Church in Los Angeles is protesting Trump's brutal anti-immigration policies this Christmas by placing Jesus, Mary and Joseph in chain-link detention centre cages lined with barbed wire in its nativity display.
Democrats set to host press conference on impeachment
We're expecting to hear from Nancy Pelosi this morning as well as the five House committee chairs - Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler, Eliot Engel, Carolyn Maloney and Maxine Waters - as the Democrats give us their latest update on the impeachment inquiry any moment from the Capitol's Rayburn Room.
Stayed tuned.
Jerry Nadler announces two impeachment articles against Trump
Speaker Pelosi kicks things off remarking that this is a "solemn day", pays tribute to late House Oversight Committee chairman Elijah Cummings.
(Andrew Feinberg)
Nadler is now confirmining the two articles of impeachment “charging the president of the Untied States, Donald J Trump, with committing high crime and misdemeanors.”
The first is abuse of power, the second obstruction of Congress - as expected.
Here's Chris Riotta's breaking story.
Adam Schiff: Trump's abuse of power 'simple and terrible'
The House Intelligence Committee chairman is currently reviewing the case against Trump.
And that's it! Short and sweet.
Trump gearing up for latest campaign rally
The president is yet to respond to Nadler's announcement but we can no doubt expect Twitter fireworks shortly.
He did offer this earlier, you will recall:
The president is due in the town of Hershey, Pennsylvania, later today for his latest campaign rally at the Giant Center.
We wish we were as excited about it as this guy:
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