Clinton calls Trump a ‘clear and present danger’ to US

Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called President Donald Trump a “clear and present danger” to the United States, amid the latest scandal engulfing the White House over a controversial call to Ukraine's leader.

Clinton — Trump’s 2016 Democratic presidential rival — made the remarks on Thursday while speaking at an event in Washington attended by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is behind a congressional push for the impeachment of Trump over his July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

During the phone conversation, Trump allegedly sought Ukraine’s help to smear the former vice president and current front-runner for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, Joe Biden.

“This occupant of the Oval Office poses a clear and present danger to our future, to our democracy. And this is not a political statement. It's a harsh reality… Because it goes to the core of our values, our strength, our freedom, our security, our prosperity," Clinton said in reference to Trump.

“It is fair to say we have known who Donald Trump is for some time now. We knew he was a corrupt businessman who cheated people, we know that his campaign invited foreign adversaries to tamper with our elections,” Clinton added.

“And now we know that in the course of his duties as our President, he has endangered us all by putting his personal and political interests ahead of the interests of the American people. So this is a moment of reckoning.”

Trump chided Clinton during the 2016 election campaign for her use of a private server to store sensitive government emails. After intensive investigations, the FBI concluded there was classified information among the emails Clinton had sent and received but stopped short of charging her with a crime.

Pelosi authorized on Tuesday the beginning of a formal impeachment inquiry, saying Trump "must be held accountable" for his actions.

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Trump reportedly urged Zelensky about eight times during the phone call to work with his lawyer Rudy Giuliani to investigate government corruption involving Biden and his son, Hunter.

The US president dismissed the Ukraine allegations as another witch-hunt attempting to smear his already tarnished reputation and damage his popularity as the Americans get closer to the 2020 presidential election.

Trump aims to 'hijack' 2020 election

Biden has repeatedly lashed out at Trump for the scandal, denouncing it as an “abuse of power” that could lead to impeachment based on the House’s findings.

The 75-year-old veteran politician accused Trump on Thursday of enlisting foreign aid in a bid to “hijack” the 2020 election.

At a private fundraiser in California, Biden told attendees that Trump was trying to “hijack an election” by pushing Ukraine to investigate his son and that, “he’d like to get foreign help to win elections.”

“There’s nothing anybody in my family did wrong... at all,” Biden added.

Biden is the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination for the 2020 election.

300 former US officials espouse impeachment

In a related development on Friday, nearly 300 former US foreign policy and national security officials also signed a letter in support of Democrats' impeachment inquiry into Trump over his conversations with the Ukrainian president.

The officials said Trump's actions concerning his efforts to urge Zelensky to launch a probe into Biden and his son constituted a “profound national security concern” for the United States.

"To be clear, we do not wish to prejudge the totality of the facts or Congress’ deliberative process. At the same time, there is no escaping that what we already know is serious enough to merit impeachment proceedings," the officials wrote.

"President Trump appears to have leveraged the authority and resources of the highest office in the land to invite additional foreign interference into our democratic processes. That would constitute an unconscionable abuse of power," the letter said. "It also would represent an effort to subordinate America’s national interests—and those of our closest allies and partners—to the President’s personal political interest."

PressTV-Support for Trump’s impeachment growing: Poll

Support for the impeachment of US President Donald Trump is increasing, according to a new poll.

Under the US Constitution, the House has the power to impeach a president for “high crimes and misdemeanors” and the Senate then holds a trial on whether to remove the president from office.

No US president has ever been removed from office through impeachment.

A House committee has already launched a formal impeachment probe into Trump over his campaign team’s alleged links to the Russian government in the 2016 US elections, which failed to win support of key party figures.

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