New Delhi:
Eminent legal experts on Wednesday told lawmakers that US President Donald Trump committed impeachment offences, as the opposition Democratic party accelerated the process to oust the elected head of the country. This came a day after a key Congressional committee from the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives has alleged Donald Trump abused his power of office, in a report based on its impeachment hearings against the president. "The evidence is clear that President Trump used the power of his office to pressure Ukraine into announcing investigations into his political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, and a debunked conspiracy theory that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in the 2016 election," said chairs of the three House Committees after the release of a report on Tuesday.
Trump’s July 25 call with Ukraine’s president is at the centre of the House impeachment probe, which is looking into Trump’s pressure on Ukraine to investigate political rivals as he held back nearly USD 400 million.
“On the fact that we have before the House right now, the president solicited assistance from a foreign government in order to assist his own reelection, that is, he used the power of his office that no one else could possibly have used in order to gain personal advantage for himself distorting the election, and that’s precisely what the framers anticipated,” Noah Feldman, a professor from the Harvard Law School, told the House Judiciary Committee.
Chaired by Congressman Jerrold Nadler, the Democratic party-controlled House Judiciary Committee kicked off its series of public hearings to frame charges of impeachment against Trump. He is the third US president to face impeachment.
Trump has described the impeachment proceedings a “hoax” and the White House has refused to participate in it. White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham in a tweet alleged that the judiciary committee’s hearing is biased and one-sided.
Three of the four “experts” in this “sham hearing have known biases against” Trump, she said. Not only is the president given no rights in this process, the Democrats witnesses made up their minds long before today.
During the hearing, Feldman alleged that Trump had committed impeachable high crimes and misdemeanours by corruptly abusing the office of the presidency.
“Specifically, President Trump has abused his office by corruptly soliciting president Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to announce investigations of his political rivals in order to gain personal advantage, including in the 2020 presidential election,” he said.
The White House dismissed the report and slammed the House Democrats.
“At the end of a one-sided sham process, Chairman Schiff and the Democrats utterly failed to produce any evidence of wrongdoing by President Trump,” White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham said.
“This report reflects nothing more than their frustrations. Chairman Schiff’s report reads like the ramblings of a basement blogger straining to prove something when there is evidence of nothing,” Grisham said.
The three lawmakers alleged that evidence is clear that after his scheme to secure foreign help in his reelection was uncovered, Trump engaged in categorical and unprecedented obstruction in order to cover-up his misconduct.
