Top US Democratic lawmaker tells House to draft impeachment articles against Trump

The Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, the highest ranking Democrat in Congress, has instructed the House Judiciary Committee to draft articles of impeachment against Republican President Donald Trump.

"Sadly, but with confidence and humility, with allegiance to our founders and a heart full of love for America, today I am asking our chairman to proceed with articles of impeachment," Pelosi said Thursday in a short, somber televised statement.

Trump "has engaged in abuse of power, undermined our national security and jeopardized the integrity of our elections," she said. "The president abused his power for his own political benefit."

Pelosi did not announce the charges, but Trump could face impeachment for abuse of power, obstruction of Congress and obstruction of justice.

"If we allow a president to be above the law, we do so surely at the peril of our republic," added the speaker, Trump's chief nemesis in Congress.

By asking the House Judiciary Committee chairman to draw up the charges, Pelosi, assured that a formal impeachment process against the US president will proceed.

Three House committees are writing a report detailing their findings in Trump’s impeachment inquiry, which is expected to serve as the basis for an impeachment resolution, or “articles of impeachment”.  

Impeachment begins in the House. If the lower chamber of Congress approves articles of impeachment, a trial is then held in the Senate. House members act as the prosecutors; the senators as jurors; the chief justice of the Supreme Court presides.

Trump is likely to become just the third president in US history to be impeached by the House of Representatives.

Only two American presidents have been impeached by the House, Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998. Neither Johnson nor Clinton was convicted by the Senate.

In 1974, then US President Richard Nixon resigned in the face of certain impeachment and removal from office over the Watergate scandal.

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A majority of members in the House, which is controlled by Democrats, have expressed their intention to back the deeply divisive impeachment procedure.

House Democrats launched an impeachment inquiry against Trump in September after the unknown whistle-blower alleged the Republican president pressured his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who had served as a director for Ukrainian energy company Burisma.

Democrats are looking into whether Trump abused his power by withholding $391 million in US security aid to Ukraine as leverage to pressure Kiev to conduct an investigation that would benefit him politically.

Trump has repeatedly denounced the impeachment inquiry against him as “a hoax”.

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