Trump news: Angry president cuts short Nato summit trip and rages at Trudeau, as Congress launches next stage of impeachment after damning report
Three Constitutional scholars argued that the president committed 'high crimes and misdemeanours'
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Your support makes all the difference.A trio of scholars agreed that Donald Trump’s alleged abuses of power in his dealings with Ukraine amounted to "high crimes and misdemeanours" as grounds for impeachment, according to the rules outlined in the US Constitution.
Four constitutional scholars testified to the House Judiciary Committee on its first day of public impeachment hearings, which provided expert analysis to determine Constitutional grounds for removing the president from office, a process that will be determined formally by a majority vote of Congress.
Michael Gerhardt, Pamela Karlan and Noah Feldman vehemently agreed that the president had committed impeachable offences, including abuses of power, bribery, the hampering of Congress, and the obstruction of justice.
Ms Karlan invoked the image of America as a "shining city on a hill" that, if unable to investigate foreign influence into its own democracy, would cease to be that example.
Jonathan Turley — who was summoned by Republicans — said the inquiry is "one of the thinnest records ever to go forward on impeachment."
Ms Karlan also apologised — after right-wing outrage, including a tweet from First Lady Melania Trump — for a play on words in which she said that the president could name his son Barron but could not make himself a baron.
In a White House statement, press secretary Stephanie Grisham said that "the only thing the three liberal professors established at Chairman Nadler’s hearing was their political bias against the president."
The hearing followed the release of a damning 300-page report from the House Intelligence Committee, summarising its findings and detailing “overwhelming evidence of misconduct” by Mr Trump and his inner circle over Ukraine, with call records dragging Rudy Giuliani and implicating Congressman Devin Nunes further into the scandal.
Meanwhile, the president suffered fresh humiliation after world leaders Boris Johnson, Justin Trudeau and Emmanuel Macron were filmed apparently laughing behind his back at a Nato reception at Buckingham Palace in London.
The US president slammed the Canadian prime minister as "two-faced" to reporters shortly after, while announcing the abrupt cancellation of a press conference later that day, saying he would instead be returning home.
Follow our coverage as it happened.
"It has not been explained to me why you want to set the record for the fastest impeachment", Jonathan Turley, the Republicans' key witness today, testifies.
Here's a key moment from today's House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearings into Donald Trump:
Republican Doug Collins appears to be focusing all of his questioning almost exclusively on the party's witness, Jonathan Turley, who he has let expound on his position about the impeachment into Donald Trump setting a potentially "dangerous precedent" for future presidents.
Professor Karlan expertly laid out the case for impeachment in this moment below:
A note from The Independent's Andrew Feinberg as he watches the impeachment proceedings from within the room:
"Taylor now appears to be arguing that the impeachment probe is illegitimately political because many Democrats supporting it come from districts that voted for Hillary Clinton. He also notes, apropos of nothing, that most political contributions from lawyers and law professors in 2016 went to Clinton."
Here's the key moment from the Republicans' witness testimony that has already been shared far and right by the right-wing corners of the web -
In case you're wondering who the Republicans hired to question today's witnesses during the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump -
House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler notes the White House would have been provided an opportunity just now to offer their own testimony and give evidence in the impeachment inquiry, but since the administration declined he was beginning with his time for questioning.
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