Donald Trump impeachment: Democrats unveil formal charges

US Democrats announced two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump – for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress – pushing toward historic votes over charges he corrupted the election process and endangered national security in his dealings with Ukraine.

US president Donald Trump. Picture: Evan Vucci/AP

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, flanked by the chairmen of the impeachment inquiry committees, announced the move yesterday, describing it as a “solemn act.”

Voting is expected in a matter of days in the judiciary committee, and by Christmas in the full House. Mr Trump insisted he did nothing wrong and his re-election campaign called it “rank partisanship”.

“He endangers our democracy; he endangers our national security,” said the judiciary committee chairman, Jerrold Nadler, a Democratic representative from New York, announcing the charges before a portrait of George Washington. “Our next election is at risk. That is why we must act now.”

Mr Trump tweeted ahead of the announcement that impeaching a president with a record like his would be “sheer Political Madness!”

The outcome, though, appears increasingly set as the House prepares for voting, as it has only three times in history against a US president. Approval of the charges would send them to the Senate in January, where the Republican majority would be unlikely to convict Mr Trump.

Democratic leaders say Mr Trump put his political interests above those of the nation when he asked Ukraine to investigate his rivals, including Democrat Joe Biden, and then withheld $400 million in military aid as the US ally faced an aggressive Russia. They say he then tried obstructed Congress by stonewalling the House investigation.

In drafting the articles of impeachment, Ms Pelosi faced a legal and political challenge of balancing the views of her majority while hitting the Constitution’s bar of “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors”.

Some liberal lawmakers wanted more expansive charges encompassing the findings from former special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Centrist Democrats preferred to keep the impeachment articles more focused on Mr Trump’s actions toward Ukraine. Asked if she had enough votes to impeach the president, Ms Pelosi said she would let House lawmakers vote their conscience.

“On an issue like this, we don’t count the votes. People will just make their voices known on it,” she said. “I haven’t counted votes, nor will I.”

Mr Trump, who has declined to mount a defence in the actual House hearings, tweeted just as the six Democratic House committee chairmen prepared to make their announcement.

“To Impeach a President who has proven through results, including producing perhaps the strongest economy in our country’s history, to have one of the most successful presidencies ever, and most importantly, who has done NOTHING wrong, is sheer Political Madness!” he wrote on Twitter.

The president also spent part of Monday tweeting against the impeachment proceedings. He and his allies have called the process “absurd”.

“I think there’s a lot of agreement,” representative Eliot Engel of New York, the Democratic chairman of the foreign affairs committee, told reporters as he exited Ms Pelosi’s office.

“A lot of us believe that what happened with Ukraine especially is not something we can just close our eyes to.”

At the judiciary hearing, Democrats said Mr Trump’s push to have Ukraine investigate Mr Biden while withholding military aid ran counter to US policy and benefited Russia as well as himself.