AFP, Washington :
US president Donald Trump on Monday branded Democrats a “disgrace” for holding impeachment proceedings while he attends a NATO summit in Britain and rejected participating in what he called “a hoax.”
House Democrats are due to move forward this week with their case to make the real estate mogul only the third president ever to be impeached.
The House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on Wednesday at which experts will weigh whether Trump’s alleged wrongdoing in pressuring Ukraine to investigate domestic political foe Joe Biden meet the constitutional bar for impeachment.
“The Democrats, the radical-left Democrats, the do-nothing Democrats, decided when I’m going to NATO-this was set up a year ago-that when I’m going to NATO, that was the exact time,” Trump said angrily on departing the White House.
“It’s an absolute disgrace what they’re doing to our country,” he said before his plane touched down in London.
“The whole thing is a hoax. Everybody knows it.”
Trump’s chief White House lawyer, Pat Cipollone, told the Democratic leader of the Judiciary Committee, Jerry Nadler, on Sunday that he was rejecting an invitation to send representatives to the session.
“We cannot fairly be expected to participate… while it remains unclear whether the Judiciary Committee will afford the President a fair process through additional hearings,” Cipollone wrote.
Cipollone did not rule out White House participation in subsequent hearings. Throughout the
drama, however, Trump has opted for stone-walling and flat-out resistance to what his supporters say amounts to a “coup.”
Nadler told the White House on Monday that if “there is nothing to hide,” then Trump should cooperate and “provide any exculpatory information that refutes the overwhelming evidence of his abuse of power.”
Trump got a boost Monday from an interview in which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky insisted he had not come under pressure from Trump.
The US president is accused of brazenly holding up hundreds of millions of dollars of military aid to Ukraine to force Zelensky to announce a politically embarrassing probe into Biden, one of the lead Democrats challenging Trump for the presidency in 2020.
A stream of high-level diplomats and several White House officials have testified in Congress about Trump’s back-channel communications with Zelensky.
But Zelensky said Monday that he’d not been forced into anything. “I did not speak with US President Trump in those terms: ‘you give me this, I give you that,'” Zelensky said in an interview with several publications, including Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine.
US president Donald Trump on Monday branded Democrats a “disgrace” for holding impeachment proceedings while he attends a NATO summit in Britain and rejected participating in what he called “a hoax.”
House Democrats are due to move forward this week with their case to make the real estate mogul only the third president ever to be impeached.
The House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on Wednesday at which experts will weigh whether Trump’s alleged wrongdoing in pressuring Ukraine to investigate domestic political foe Joe Biden meet the constitutional bar for impeachment.
“The Democrats, the radical-left Democrats, the do-nothing Democrats, decided when I’m going to NATO-this was set up a year ago-that when I’m going to NATO, that was the exact time,” Trump said angrily on departing the White House.
“It’s an absolute disgrace what they’re doing to our country,” he said before his plane touched down in London.
“The whole thing is a hoax. Everybody knows it.”
Trump’s chief White House lawyer, Pat Cipollone, told the Democratic leader of the Judiciary Committee, Jerry Nadler, on Sunday that he was rejecting an invitation to send representatives to the session.
“We cannot fairly be expected to participate… while it remains unclear whether the Judiciary Committee will afford the President a fair process through additional hearings,” Cipollone wrote.
Cipollone did not rule out White House participation in subsequent hearings. Throughout the
drama, however, Trump has opted for stone-walling and flat-out resistance to what his supporters say amounts to a “coup.”
Nadler told the White House on Monday that if “there is nothing to hide,” then Trump should cooperate and “provide any exculpatory information that refutes the overwhelming evidence of his abuse of power.”
Trump got a boost Monday from an interview in which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky insisted he had not come under pressure from Trump.
The US president is accused of brazenly holding up hundreds of millions of dollars of military aid to Ukraine to force Zelensky to announce a politically embarrassing probe into Biden, one of the lead Democrats challenging Trump for the presidency in 2020.
A stream of high-level diplomats and several White House officials have testified in Congress about Trump’s back-channel communications with Zelensky.
But Zelensky said Monday that he’d not been forced into anything. “I did not speak with US President Trump in those terms: ‘you give me this, I give you that,'” Zelensky said in an interview with several publications, including Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine.
