THE U.S. House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday released a report documenting the impeachment case against President Donald Trump, laying out the conclusions of its inquiry into allegations that he abused his power by pressuring Ukraine to help him in the 2020 presidential election.

The report is the result of a fast-moving investigation based on interviews with 17 current and former Trump administration officials who offered their narratives of the White House’s handling of its Ukraine policy.

“The impeachment inquiry has found that President Trump, personally and acting through agents within and outside of the U.S. Government, solicited the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, to benefit his re-election” next year, the report said.

The report spells out two key areas of wrongdoing by Trump.

In the first instance, it alleges, Trump conditioned military aid and a face-to-face meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky on Kiev opening several politically-motivated investigations, including into former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic frontrunner in the 2020 election race.

Secondly, the report says, Trump actively sought to obstruct the congressional probe, refusing to provide documents to investigators, preventing witnesses from appearing, and threatening some of those who did appear.

Trump, who is in London for a NATO summit, repeated accusations that Democrats are using the impeachment process to engage in a politically-motivated attack seeking to undo the results of the 2016 presidential election by removing him from office.

If the full House eventually votes to approve formal impeachment charges, a trial would be held in the Republican-led U.S. Senate, where a two-thirds majority of those present would be required to convict Trump and remove him from office.

Vice President Mike Pence is among the top officials culpable in Trump’s efforts to bend U.S. foreign policy for personal gain, the report says. It also faults Pence for not producing “a single document” requested by the panels and for blocking release of part of a transcript of his Sept. 18 call with Zelensky.

Democrats highlighted testimony from Jennifer Williams, a national security adviser to Pence, that corroborates one of the concerns raised in the whistleblower complaint that sparked the impeachment inquiry. Williams said Pence’s office was in the preliminary planning stages to send the vice president to Zelensky’s May inauguration when she was told by an assistant to Pence’s chief of staff that Trump didn’t want Pence to go.

None of the witnesses said they knew the reason behind that direction. Democrats say the timing is suspicious because it happened shortly after Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, claimed people around Zelensky were antagonistic to Trump.

(SD-Agencies)