Trump news: House votes to send articles of impeachment against president for Senate hearing

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Donald Trump renews attack on lightbulbs and goes after toilets and showers

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has named her seven impeachment managers to prosecute the case against Donald Trump during his upcoming Senate trial.

Congress voted 228-193 to send the two articles of impeachment against the president to the Senate with Ms Pelosi's chosen House prosecutors.

The vote was predictably along party lines, with 192 of the "no" votes coming from Republicans, joined by only one Democrat.

Ms Pelosi's appointment of the case managers followed the release a trove of damning new evidence detailing the Trump administration’s efforts to extort a political favour from Ukraine obtained from Lev Parnas, a business associate of Rudy Giuliani, which has already prompted ex-US ambassador Marie Yovanovitch to call for a new investigation as it appeared Mr Giuliani's cronies had spied on her in Kiev.

Democratic Congressman Jerry Nadler, who joins Adam Schiff and five other Democrats as part of the prosecution team headed to the Senate, said that if the Senate doesn't permit the introduction of all relevant witnesses and of all documents the House wants to introduce, "then the Senate is engaging in an unconstitutional and disgusting cover-up."

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says a trial will likely begin on 21 January.

The Senate might consider witnesses after opening statements are made, Mr McConnell has said.

As the House debated before a vote, the president signed a "phase one" trade deal with China as part of an apparent easing of tensions between Washington and Beijing after the two exchanged retaliatory tariffs last year.

His "landmark" deal followed last night's address to fans in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he advocated the looting of Syria’s oilfields (a war crime), suggested 36th president Lyndon Johnson is in hell and raved about the problem of inadequate water pressure in American dishwashers, sinks and showers on another eccentric night at the podium.

Follow live coverage as it happened:

Key Points

• Nancy Pelosi names Democratic impeachment managers
• House Democrats release damning new Lev Parnas Ukraine evidence
• Ex-Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch calls for new investigation
• Trump raves about unsatisfactory dishwashers at Milwaukee rally
• Bernie Sanders flatly denies Elizabeth Warren accusation at latest 2020 debate

[15 January 2020 12:55 · Joe Sommerlad]

Vladimir Putin, Bashar al-Assad caught on camera mocking Trump

Trump won't like this footage of the Russian and Syrian leaders laughing at him one bit.

Putin and Assad were recorded joking during a recent meeting at a Greek Orthodox church in the Middle East that if god struck Trump on the road to Damascus, as he did the Biblical apostle Saul, "it would fix him".

You will recall the president storming home from the Nato summit in London back in December when Justin Trudeau, Emmanuel Macron and Boris Johnson were similarly filmed mocking his overlong press conferences during a champagne reception at Buckingham Palace.

It will be interesting to see if he responds so dramatically this time.

Jon Sharman and Ollie Carroll have the details.

[15 January 2020 13:15 · Joe Sommerlad]

Iran rejects Boris Johnson’s ‘strange’ proposal to strike new 'Trump deal' to replace nuclear pact

Richard Hall has the latest from Tehran where the regime has reacted dismissively to the British prime minister's call for a new "Trump deal" to replace the 2015 Obama nuclear pact to rein in its uranium enrichment ambitions.

As we saw, the US president was delighted by the suggestion.

[15 January 2020 13:35 · Joe Sommerlad]

Trump administration to release $8.2bn in disaster relief aid to Puerto Rico after 'shameful' delay

The US Department of Housing and Urban Development is set to lift its hold on $8.2bn (£6.3bn) in congressionally-approved disaster relief aid to Puerto Rico, according to Politico, which is long overdue given that the territory has received just $1.5bn (£1.15bn) of the $20bn (£15.4bn) it was promised after being devastated by hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017.

This comes after Democrats branded the delay "shameful" in the aftermath of the island being struck by an ongoing series of earthquakes since December.

Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Nydia Velazquez were among those writing to Trump demanding answers.

Here's Alex Woodward's report.

[15 January 2020 13:55 · Joe Sommerlad]

Ex-Trump adviser and ‘lifelong paedophile’ pleads guilty to sex crimes

George Nader, a former aide to Trump who specialised in foreign policy towards the Middle East, has pled guilty to multiple sex crimes involving minors after being found in possession of child pornography and accused of bringing an underage boy to the US for “commercial sex”.

Chris Riotta has this report.

[15 January 2020 14:15 · Joe Sommerlad]

Trump adviser Stephen Miller feared Obama's Dreamers would make US less American

Trump's top immigration adviser Stephen Miller told an editor of the far-right website Breitbart that the arrival of Dreamers - children brought to the US illegally to obtain relief from deportation - would make the US less American.

Emails sent to advocacy group the Southern Poverty Law Center and reviewed by The Independent show Miller fretting over the possibility that the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrrivals (Daca) programme would lead a higher percentage of foreign-born workers.

"[The] Daca amnesty remains in effect, which provides illegal youth (one of the single strongest pull factors for entering and remaining illegally) with both work permits and generous free cash tax credits," Miller wrote to Breitbart editor Katie McHugh in 2015, while he was serving as the communications director for then-senator Jeff Sessions. 

Andrew Feinberg has more.

[15 January 2020 14:35 · Joe Sommerlad]

Tom Steyer accused of owning only one tie

The billionaire Democratic presidential candidate will have been delighted to learn he was a trending search term on Google last night following his debate performance...

...but dismayed to hear the reason: people were wondering why he always wears the same tie.

As my colleague Conrad Duncan points out, even a rudimentary Google Images search will show you this isn't true but Steyer certainly seems oddly partial to red tartan.

The tie even has its own parody account for crying out loud.

Here's Louis Staples for Indy100.

[15 January 2020 14:55 · Joe Sommerlad]

Did Elizabeth Warren really snub Bernie Sanders' handshake?

This video of the Massachusetts senator appearing to dodge her old friend's handshake at the end of the debate last night is doing the rounds following their recent falling out...

...but was it really a calculated snub?

Indy100 attempts to answer that question.

[15 January 2020 15:15 · Joe Sommerlad]

Nancy Pelosi names Democratic impeachment managers

House speaker Nancy Pelosi has just announced that the impeachment managers handling the case for the prosecution against the president in the Senate will be:

- Adam Schiff

- Jerrold Nadler

- Zoe Lofgren

- Hakeem Jeffries

- Jason Crow

- Val Demings

- Sylvia Garcia

This was the key moment:

"Time has been our friend in all of this because it has yielded incriminating evidence, more truth into the public domain," the speaker said, justifying the decision to withhold the articles since the House voted on them on 18 December.

The House will later hold its vote on resolutions confirming the managers, apportioning funding and sending the articles of impeachment through to the Senate, after which Pelosi will hold a signing ceremony at 5pm EST (10pm GMT) before the impeachment managers take part in the engrossment ceremony, marching across the Capitol to deliver those articles to the upper chamber.

The articles will then be read aloud in the Senate tomorrow.

[15 January 2020 15:35 · Joe Sommerlad]

Trump labels impeachment 'Con Job'

Here we go again indeed.

Here's White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham's statement, which is every bit as unbalanced as you'd expect:

"The only thing Speaker Pelosi has achieved with this sham, illegitimate impeachment process, is to prove she is focused on politics instead of the American people. The Speaker lied when she claimed this was urgent and vital to national security because when the articles passed, she held them for an entire month in an egregious effort to garner political support.

"She failed and the naming of these managers does not change a single thing. President Trump has done nothing wrong. He looks forward to having the due process rights in the Senate that Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats denied to him, and expects to be fully exonerated. In the meantime, after President Trump signs the historic China Trade Deal greatly benefiting the people of this country, he will continue working and winning for all Americans, while the Democrats will continue only working against the president."

[15 January 2020 15:55 · Joe Sommerlad]

Adam Schiff: 'We've always felt a certain urgency about this impeachment as the president was trying to get foreign help in cheating in the next election'

A few highlights from the Q&A session just now, with the likes of Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler explaining where they stand on impeachment in light of last night's Parnas bombshell. 

Also here's a handy introduction to the impeachment managers from Pelosi herself: