Democrats poised to unveil 2 impeachment articles vs. Trump

WASHINGTON -- House Democrats are poised to unveil two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump over his actions in the Ukraine matter, with an announcement expected early today.

Democratic leaders are expected to announce the formal charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress against the president, according to multiple people familiar with the discussions but unauthorized to discuss the proceedings and granted anonymity.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi convened the House chairmen leading the impeachment inquiry in her office late Monday after a daylong Judiciary Committee hearing where Democrats laid out the case against Trump, warning of the risk his actions toward Ukraine now pose to U.S. elections and national security.

Pelosi declined to discuss the articles or the coming announcement during an evening event, but when asked whether she has enough votes to impeach the president, the Democratic leader said she is letting House lawmakers vote their conscience.

"On an issue like this, we don't count the votes. People will just make their voices known on it," Pelosi said at the Wall Street Journal CEO Council. "I haven't counted votes, nor will I."

House Judiciary Committee ranking member Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., speaks as the House Judiciary Committee hears investigative findings in the impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump on Monday on Capitol Hill in Washington.Jonathan Ernst ~ pool via AP

The House chairmen involved in the impeachment inquiry left her office at the Capitol as the articles were being prepared, with some saying an announcement would come in the morning.

"I think there's a lot of agreement," Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, the Democratic chairman of the Foreign Affairs committee, told reporters. "You'll hear about some of it tomorrow."

Rep. Jerrold Nadler of the Judiciary Committee and others have not disclosed how many articles of impeachment are being prepared, but Democrats had been expected to put forward at least two formal charges against the president.

What remained uncertain was whether Pelosi would reach beyond the Ukraine probe to former special counsel Robert Mueller's findings of Trump's actions in the report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. That now seems unlikely.

"A lot of us believe that what happened with Ukraine especially is not something we can just close our eyes to," Engel said. "This is not a happy day. I don't get any glee at this. But I think we're doing what we have to do. We're doing what the Constitution mandates that we do."

The decisions were being aired following an acrimonious, nearly 10-hour hearing at the Judiciary Committee. Democrats say Trump's push to have Ukraine investigate rival Joe Biden while withholding U.S. military aid ran counter to U.S. policy and benefited Russia as well as himself.

Trump and his allies railed against the "absurd" proceedings, with Republicans defending the president as having done nothing wrong ahead of the 2020 election.

The outcome, though, appears increasingly set. A Judiciary committee vote could come as soon as this week.

"President Trump's persistent and continuing effort to coerce a foreign country to help him cheat to win an election is a clear and present danger to our free and fair elections and to our national security," said Dan Goldman, the director of investigations at the House Intelligence Committee.

Republicans rejected not just Goldman's conclusion as he presented the Intelligence Committee's 300-page report on the Ukraine matter; they also questioned his very appearance before the Judiciary panel. In a series of heated exchanges, they said Rep. Adam Schiff, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, should appear rather than send his lawyer.

"Where's Adam?" thundered Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee. "We want Schiff," echoed Trump ally Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla.

From the White House, Trump tweeted repeatedly, assailing the "Witch Hunt!" and "Do Nothing Democrats."

The hearing set off a pivotal week as Democrats march toward a full House vote expected by Christmas.

In drafting the articles of impeachment, Pelosi is facing a legal and political challenge of balancing the views of her majority while hitting the Constitution's bar of "treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors."

Nadler, D-N.Y., was blunt as he opened Monday's hearing, saying, "President Trump put himself before country."

He said the case against Trump is clear after "multiple officials testified that the president's demand for an investigation into his rivals was a part of his personal, political agenda, and not related to the foreign policy objectives of the United States."

Trump's conduct, Nadler said at the end of the daylong hearing, "is clearly impeachable."

Collins said Democrats are racing to jam impeachment through on a "clock and a calendar" ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

"They can't get over the fact that Donald Trump is the president of the United States, and they don't have a candidate that can beat him," Collins said.

In one testy exchange, Republican attorney Stephen Castor dismissed the transcript of Trump's crucial call with Ukraine as "eight ambiguous lines" that did not amount to the president seeking a personal political favor.

Democrats argued vigorously that Trump's meaning could not have been clearer in seeking political dirt on Biden, his possible opponent in the 2020 election.

Asked for his view, Goldman testified, "I don't think there's any other way to read the words on the page."

Republicans also revived criticism of Schiff's decision to expose phone records of members of Congress. The inquiry showed Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani was in frequent contact with California Rep. Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee.

Collins accused Democrats of engaging in a "smear" campaign against lawmakers by disclosing phone records. But Goldman said investigators did not subpoena lawmaker accounts but simply matched them up once they appeared in the records.

The Republicans tried numerous times to halt or slow the proceedings, and the hearing was briefly interrupted early on by a protester shouting, "We voted for Donald Trump!" The protester was escorted from the House hearing room by Capitol Police.

The White House is refusing to participate in the impeachment process, and Trump appears to be focused elsewhere -- on Giuliani's own probe and the president's upcoming campaign rallies.

Trump spent the morning tweeting against the proceedings. He and his allies acknowledge he likely will be impeached in the Democratic-controlled House, but they also expect acquittal next year in the Senate, where Republicans have the majority.

The president was focused instead on Monday's long-awaited release of the Justice Department report into the 2016 Russia investigation. The inspector general found the FBI was justified in opening its investigation into ties between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia and that the FBI did not act with political bias, despite "serious performance failures" up the bureau's chain of command.

Those findings undercut Trump's claim he was the target of a "witch hunt," rejecting theories and criticism spread by Trump and his supporters. Yet it found errors and misjudgments likely to be exploited by Republican allies as the president faces probable impeachment.

As the House pushes ahead toward votes, Giuliani said Monday he'll soon be releasing findings from his own recent visit to Ukraine.

Many Republicans in Congress are distancing themselves from Giuliani, but Trump's top ally found an audience in former Trump administration chief strategist Steve Bannon's "War Room 2020" podcast to discuss his findings, which he promised to reveal in more detail later this week.

Democrats say Trump abused his power in a July 25 phone call when he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for a favor in investigating Democrats. That was bribery, they say, since Trump was withholding nearly $400 million in military aid Ukraine depended on to counter Russian aggression.

Pelosi and Democrats point to what they call a pattern of misconduct by Trump in seeking foreign interference in elections from Mueller's inquiry of the Russia probe to Ukraine.

In his report, Mueller said he could not determine Trump's campaign conspired or coordinated with Russia in the 2016 election. But Mueller said he could not exonerate Trump of obstructing justice in the probe and left it for Congress to determine.

Associated Press writers Laurie Kellman, Matthew Daly, Eric Tucker, and Darlene Superville contributed to this report.