Trump news - live:‘Can you believe this?’ President rages at ‘garbage’ Democrat impeachment investigation
Nancy Pelosi announces that Democrats are starting proceedings to try to force Donald Trump from office
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After having the threat hanging over him for what has felt like almost the whole of his presidency, Donald Trump now finally faces a formal impeachment investigation.
Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives, announced that she was beginning the inquiry in response to allegations that the president was trying to recruit a foreign head of state to fabricate dirt on Joe Biden, the frontrunner to face Mr Trump in next year’s election.
In a statement she said: “The actions of the Trump presidency have revealed the dishonourable fact of the president’s betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security and betrayal of the integrity of our elections.”
It was a dramatic change of tack by Ms Pelosi, who has opposed efforts by her party colleagues to impeach the president.
But the controversy over Mr Trump’s mysterious July phone call to Volodymyr Zelensky, the efforts to keep a whistleblower’s complaint from Congress, and the suspicion that the president was trying to subvert American democracy - perhaps for a second time - served to change her mind.
The president himself punched back in characteristic fashion, unleashing a broadside of tweets that were by turn angry, insulting and boastful.
He reverted to some of his favourite catchphrases - “witch hunt”, “presidential harassment”; implied that efforts to hold him to account were tantamount to an attack on America - “so bad for our country”; and tweeted a re-election campaign video that featured him claiming that impeachment would help his poll numbers.
The impeachment process itself is likely to pass the lower chamber of Congress, the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives, where it needs a simple majority. But the Republican-controlled Senate, where a two-thirds majority is required for a conviction, looks virtually unattainable.
The Democrats will therefore hope that their dramatic gamble, 14 months before the presidential elections, pays off.
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Impeachment is a rare step - only two of the previous 44 presidents have been impeached, and both were eventually acquitted.
Andrew Johnson, who took over from Abraham Lincoln following his assassination in 1865, was impeached three years later for defying a law meant to stop him firing cabinet officials. He avoided conviction by just one vote.
In 1998 Bill Clinton was impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice after lying about his affair with an intern, Monica Lewinsky. He was acquitted the following year. The backlash in his favour, seen in Democratic gains in the 1998 midterms, is thought to have been one of the factors informing Nancy Pelosi-s previous caution in pressing for the impeachment of Donald Trump. A public backlash in his favour in the 2020 presidential election is now a risk the Democrats will have to run.
Richard Nixon was facing the threat of impeachment over his involvement in covering up the Watergate scandal when he resigned office in 1974.
Republicans are out in force seeking to defend Donald Trump and turn the spotlight on to Joe Biden and his son. Not all news broadcasters are having it though.
The impeachment process begins in the lower chamber of Congress, the House of Representatives. It has 435 members and has had a Democratic majority (235 members) since the midterm elections late last year. Impeachment requires a simple majority to pass the House.
The Senate can conduct impeachment trials but convictions require a two-thirds majority. The upper house has a Republican majority - 53 to 45 Democrats with two independents - so it looks highly unlikely that President Trump will be convicted. The Democrats will have calculated that it is still worth pushing ahead with the process, both in the hope of wounding the president with little over a year until the November 2020 election, and of avoiding looking weak themselves.
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