Trump impeachment: President 'brags' about obstructing Congress as Senate hears he used power to 'cheat' election
Trial begins with opening statements from House prosecutors summarising mountain of evidence from Congress
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Your support makes all the difference.House impeachment managers delivered opening remarks during the US Senate trial into Donald Trump and his dealings with Ukraine, as Democrats blasted White House attorneys for presenting Fox News-style “histrionics" at the hearings.
Democratic impeachment manager Adam Schiff argued in his opening remarks the president's "misconduct cannot be decided at the ballot box" and suggested that Americans "cannot be assured that the vote will be fairly won" in 2020 after Mr Trump encouraged Ukraine to launch political investigations into one of his Democratic rivals, Joe Biden.
House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler, another impeachment manager, also accused Republicans of “voting for a cover-up”, observing: “Only guilty people hide the evidence.”
The prosecution's marathon opening statements included clips from witness testimonies and, most damning, from the president himself, including his admission that he would accept politically damaging information on a rival candidate from a foreign country and would ask China to investigate the Bidens.
House impeachment managers, acting as the prosecution, each handled a different aspect of the charges against the president and the players involved, from Rudy Giuliani's influence and direction under the president to pressure Ukraine into an investigation, to the on-the-ground consequences of withholding military aid to Ukraine while it was in the middle of a ground war with Russia.
Looking on from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the president fired out dozens of retweets in support of his cause while insisting he was “making great progress” at the global summit, as a new poll makes bleak reading for his supporters ahead of 2020.
The president appeared to acknowledge his administrations' participation in the obstruction charges against him by telling reporters: "Honestly, we have all the material. They don't have the material."
He also falsely claimed that Democrats leading his impeachment "don't talk about my conversation" with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenksky and that "they don't talk about my transcripts" that the president believes exonerate him.
Follow live coverage as it happened:
House managers of the US Senate impeachment trial against Donald Trump have begun delivering their opening statements, with House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff reading a letter from Alexander Hamilton to George Washington from 1792.
Here's video of House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, the lead Democratic impeachment manager, delivering his opening remarks:
House Impeachment Manager Adam Schiff delivers scathing opening statement
The House Intelligence chairman said Donald Trump's "misconduct cannot be decided at the ballot box" during his opening remarks, adding: "For we cannot be assured that the vote will be fairly won. In corruptly using his office to gain a political advantage ... the president has shown that he believes he is above the law and scornful of constraint."
The White House has tweeted out a statement claiming House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff "lied again" and posted a video that shows the president reading from a piece of paper while denouncing Russia's foreign election interference.
In reality, the president has repeatedly suggested other foreign actors may have been involved in 2016 election interference, undermining the Intelligence Community's findings that said Russia meddled in the election to support Mr Trump's candidacy.
House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff continues with his scathing statement against Donald Trump's Ukraine dealings: "Impeachment was warranted for a president who usurped the power of the Constitution that was not granted to him, such as to deny Congress the right to determine the propriety, the scope, and the nature of an impeachment inquiry into his own misconduct."
Quick fact check: House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff just said Donald Trump made his “Russia, if you’re listening” comments encouraging the country to obtain Hillary Clinton’s missing emails while he was at a “rally in Florida”.
In actuality, the president made those comments when he was at a press conference in Florida. Mr Trump has himself suggested the comments were made during a rally, seemingly to downplay the insanity of asking foreign actors to meddle in an ongoing presidential election.
"The national security staff understood what was in the U.S. national security interests," House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff said in his opening statements. "And that was rooting our corruption ... But as you see from the record of the call — and I join the president in saying read the call — that topic was never addressed."
Ivanka Trump touts American business pledges to advance workers skills in the job market
Donald Trump wasn't the only member of his family to attend the World Economic Forum. Ivanka Trump, a senior White House adviser, spoke at the event in Davos about the administration's work with private businesses in getting their pledges to provide additional job training skills to students and workers.
House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff has suggested that Donald Trump's attorneys don't want Americans to truly know what happened in his dealings with Ukraine:
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