Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) arrives to a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2019. House Democrats on Tuesday released a 300-page impeachment report asserting that President Trump abused his power by trying to enlist Ukraine to help him in the 2020 presidential election.
The New York Times Company
WASHINGTON — House Democrats on Tuesday released a 300-page impeachment report asserting President Donald Trump abused his power by trying to enlist Ukraine to help him in the 2020 presidential election. The report said Trump “placed his own personal and political interests above the national interests of the United States,” seeking to undermine American democracy and endangering national security.
The document, drawn up by the House Intelligence Committee that has led the inquiry into Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, left it to another panel to decide whether to recommend his impeachment and removal. But it laid out what are all but certain to be the grounds on which the Democratic-led House moves to impeach the president.
The document outlined more than two months of public and private testimony from diplomats and other administration officials who described a campaign by the president and his allies to pressure Ukraine for investigations of former Vice President Joe Biden and other Democrats, while withholding nearly $400 million in military assistance and a White House meeting for Ukraine’s president.
“The impeachment inquiry into Donald J. Trump, the 45th President of the United States, uncovered a monthslong effort by President Trump to use the powers of his office to solicit foreign interference on his behalf in the 2020 election,” said the report, released ahead of a vote Tuesday evening by the Intelligence Committee to formally approve it.
The report’s delivery sets in motion the next phase in the impeachment of Trump. Both parties are poised for a debate in the House Judiciary Committee over whether the president should be removed from office.
The Judiciary Committee is scheduled to begin its debate Wednesday with a public hearing that features four constitutional scholars discussing the historical standards for impeachment and their assessment about whether Trump’s actions constitute “high crimes and misdemeanors” that warrant his removal from office.
Trump’s Republican allies on Capitol Hill released their own report Monday, condemning the Democratic impeachment effort as illegitimate and asserting the president was not seeking personal political advantage when he pressed Ukraine’s leaders to investigate his rivals but was instead urging the country to address corruption.
In London for a NATO meeting, Trump accused Democrats of trying to overturn the results of the 2016 elections, saying the impeachment inquiry “turned out to be a hoax.”
