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WASHINGTON House Democrats pressed forward on Monday with the next phase of their impeachment inquiry, putting the final touches on an Intelligence Committee report expected to form the basis of their case that President Trumps effort to pressure Ukraine to announce investigations of his political rivals was an abuse of power that warrants his removal from office.

Lawmakers from the panel reviewed the staff-written report for the first time on Monday evening, ahead of its public release and a scheduled Tuesday evening vote to transmit it to the Judiciary Committee. It will conclude that Mr. Trump, working with allies inside and outside his administration, used the power of his office to pressure Ukraine to do his bidding in order to gain an advantage in the 2020 presidential race.

Though the factual conclusions are likely to closely track public witness testimony in recent weeks, key elements of the majority report remained shrouded in mystery on Monday night. It was not yet clear, for instance, whether Democrats would use the document to call for specific impeachment charges against Mr. Trump, or whether it would simply outline evidence of presidential wrongdoing and leave it to the Judiciary Committee, the arbiter of impeachment proceedings past, to make that judgment.

Either way, the vote on Tuesday will largely bring to a close more than two months of investigation by the intelligence panel and shift the case against Mr. Trump into the judiciary panel, which will oversee the drafting and debate of articles of impeachment in what is likely to be a messy public spectacle suffused with partisan rancor.

You get to a point in an investigation where you can tell it is going to be a long time before you get the next valuable increment of information, and youre at a decision point, Representative Adam B. Schiff, the California Democrat who leads the Intelligence Committee, said on MSNBC. Mr. Schiff added that his committee would continue to investigate and could file supplemental information to the Judiciary Committee if appropriate.

As the Democrats prepared their case, House Republicans moved to seize the narrative and spin it in the presidents favor, releasing their own report arguing against impeachment based on the facts both parties have reviewed.

In a 123-page document that echoed the defiant messaging that Mr. Trump has employed in his own defense, the Republicans did not concede a single point of wrongdoing or hint of misbehavior by the president. Instead, they concluded that Mr. Trump was acting on genuine and reasonable skepticism of Ukraine and valid concerns about possible corruption involving Americans, not political self-interest, when he pressed the country for investigations of his Democratic rivals.

Mr. Trump, who spent much of the day traveling to Britain to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, appeared to be preoccupied with the coming fight. He posted on Twitter from Air Force One about the weakness of the Democrats case and the strength of Republican unity. Not long after landing in London, the president lavished praise on the Republicans report, which he said he had read, and raised the prospect of unilaterally asking the Supreme Court to stop the House impeachment proceedings, a process enshrined in the Constitution, in its tracks.

Great job! Mr. Trump tweeted of Republicans. Radical Left has NO CASE. Read the Transcripts. Shouldnt even be allowed. Can we go to Supreme Court to stop?

The Constitution puts the chief justice of the Supreme Court in charge of overseeing any impeachment trial in the Senate, but empowers the House and the Senate to carry out the proceedings as they see fit. The Supreme Court has no purview over the process.

As Washington re-engaged in the impeachment drama after Thanksgiving, the timetable for the process remained unclear. House leaders announced they would remain in session until Dec. 20, more than a week longer than initially planned, leaving open the possibility of a vote to impeach Mr. Trump days before Christmas. But with the Judiciary Committee scheduling only one hearing for this week, Democrats were facing a calendar squeeze that could make it difficult for them to complete the intricate impeachment process before years end.

The Judiciary Committee unveiled the list of constitutional scholars its members plan to question on Wednesday, when they convene their first formal impeachment session to help inform the debate over whether Mr. Trumps conduct was impeachable.

The witnesses are Noah Feldman of Harvard Law School, Pamela S. Karlan of Stanford Law School, Michael J. Gerhardt of the University of North Carolina Law School and Jonathan Turley of the George Washington University Law School. Mr. Turley was invited by Republicans on the panel.

The Justice Department filed a brief before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, seeking to block impeachment investigators from gaining access to secret grand jury evidence gathered by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel who investigated Russias 2016 election interference and the Trump campaign.

Lawyers for the House have argued that they need to see that material in part because it could further illuminate the question of whether Mr. Trump lied to Mr. Mueller, a matter they have said is part of their impeachment inquiry. But the House is likely moving too quickly for the courts to settle the case before an impeachment vote.

In the Republicans dissenting views, they argued that after two months of investigation, the evidence does not support that Mr. Trump withheld a coveted White House meeting for Ukraines president or nearly $400 million in security assistance for the country as leverage for securing the investigations.

The conclusion is at odds with sworn testimony from senior American diplomats and White House officials who said they believed Mr. Trump sought to use American influence over Ukraine to suit his domestic political purposes, repeatedly pressing President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to announce investigations into former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and an unproven claim that Ukraine conspired with Democrats to interfere in the 2016 election.

Rather than take those assertions at face value, the Republicans charged that they came from civil servants who dislike Mr. Trumps agenda and style and are therefore allowing themselves to be part of a push by Democrats to undo the results of the 2016 election and thwart Mr. Trumps re-election chances in 2020.

The Democrats impeachment inquiry is not the organic outgrowth of serious misconduct; it is an orchestrated campaign to upend our political system, the Republicans wrote. The Democrats are trying to impeach a duly elected president based on the accusations and assumptions of unelected bureaucrats who disagreed with President Trumps policy initiatives and processes.

The argument mirrored one made at the White House on Monday by Kellyanne Conway, Mr. Trumps counselor, who sought to portray Democrats case as flimsy.

One out of 12 people had ever talked to the president of the United States and met him or discussed Ukraine with him that is just mind-boggling to me, Ms. Conway said, referring to the number of current and former government officials who testified publicly in the inquiry. And we are supposed to impeach the president for high crimes and misdemeanors for that reason?

Ms. Conway also dared Mr. Schiff to testify publicly during the Judiciary Committees proceedings about his handling of the case. If he did, she promised to show up on behalf of the White House, which on Sunday declined to participate in the hearing scheduled for Wednesday.

Democrats are expected to argue the virtual opposite of the Republican report.

The Democrats case centers on a July phone call in which Mr. Trump pressed Mr. Zelensky to investigate Mr. Biden and the claim that Ukraine worked with Democrats to subvert the 2016 election. It is also likely to charge that Mr. Trump conditioned the White House meeting and military assistance money on a public commitment to the investigations.

Mr. Schiff indicated as much Monday when he said that the Republican report ignores voluminous evidence that the president used the power of his office to pressure Ukraine into investigating his political rival by withholding military aid and a White House meeting the president of Ukraine desperately sought.

He added, In so doing, the president undermined our national security and the integrity of our elections.

The minority report was compiled by committee staff for the top three Republicans on the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight and Reform Committees.

It essentially formalized a range of defenses Republicans road-tested last month during two weeks of public impeachment hearings in the Intelligence Committee. For members of the Judiciary Committee and the larger Republican conference in the House, it provided several alternative tacks for defending Mr. Trump or at least arguing against impeachment.

If the Democrats case hinges on linking actions by Mr. Trump and his agents to a unified pressure campaign, the Republican defense is staked on pulling those pieces apart and offering an alternate explanation for each.

Many of the actions in question, Republicans argue, stem from Mr. Trumps longstanding, deep-seated skepticism of Ukraine due to its history of pervasive corruption.

Understood in this proper context, the presidents initial hesitation to meet with President Zelensky or to provide U.S. taxpayer-funded security assistance to Ukraine without thoughtful review is entirely prudent, the Republicans wrote.

Likewise, they argued, there was nothing wrong with asking serious questions about Mr. Biden and his younger son, Hunter Biden, who served on the board of a Ukrainian energy firm when his father was vice president, or about Ukraines attempts to influence the 2016 presidential election.

Though some officials who testified before the inquiry said that Hunter Bidens role had prompted concerns about the appearance of a conflict of interest, no evidence had emerged to support any accusations of wrongdoing. And Mr. Trumps own former national security advisers testified that the concerns he raised to Mr. Zelensky about 2016 were conspiracies promulgated by Russia to absolve its own interference campaign in 2016 and harm American democracy. They said the president had repeatedly been told as much.

Republicans also argued there was nothing inherently improper with Mr. Trump empowering Rudolph W. Giuliani, his private lawyer who led the push for investigations, to help steer Ukraine matters, despite testimony that there was widespread alarm at Mr. Giulianis involvement.

The report also repeated familiar Republican grievances about the denial of fundamental fairness in the investigative process put forward by Democrats. Mr. Trumps decision to discourage participation in the inquiry, they wrote, was a legitimate response to an unfair, abusive, and partisan process, and does not constitute obstruction of a legitimate impeachment inquiry.

Democrats do not see it that way, and have prepared a catalog of all of the ways that Mr. Trump has obstructed their inquiry that could form the basis for its own article of impeachment.

Michael D. Shear and Charlie Savage contributed reporting.

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Democrats Ready Impeachment Report as Republicans Argue Trump Did Nothing Wrong - The New York Times

The House Judiciary Committee began debating articles of impeachment against President Richard Milhous Nixon on the evening of July 24, 1974. In his introductory remarks, the committee chairman, Peter Rodino, a New Jersey congressman who had become a national figure during seven months of impeachment proceedings, said he had been guided throughout by the principle that the law must deal fairly with every man. Rodino called this the oldest principle of democracy and implored each member of the committee to act with the wisdom that compels us in the end to be but decent men who seek only the truth. Shortly afterward, Harold Donohue, a Massachusetts Democrat, moved that the committee report to the House a resolution together with articles of impeachment, impeaching Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States.

By this point, the members had sat through eleven weeks of closed hearings. The committees staff had summarized the evidence against the President in several dozen thick black notebooks. The Presidents approval ratings had sagged to about twenty-five per cent, and a majority of Americans supported impeachment. Nevertheless, most Republicans on the committee refused to abandon the President. The closer President Nixon comes to impeachment, the louder his supporters proclaim his innocence, James Reston wrote, in the Times. If you say he is innocent often enough, maybe you can make people believe it.

At the time, these members defense of Nixon seemed desperate and futile. Decades later, and long after many of their congressional careers had ended, their support for Nixon would continue to linger over their legacies, an inalterable epitaph. It was the leading item in almost all of their obituaries, if not in the headline. From the Times, on August 27, 1985: Ex-Rep. Charles Sandman, Nixon Supporter, Dies. From the Times, on May 22, 1991: Former Rep. Joseph Maraziti, 78, Defender of Nixon on Watergate. From the Times, on March 8, 2000: Charles Wiggins, 72, Dies; Led Nixons Defense in Hearings. From the Los Angeles Times, on June 6, 2007: Wiley Mayne, 90; House GOP Member Who Voted Not to Impeach Nixon.

This week, as the current Judiciary Committee begins impeachment hearings on President Donald Trump, these obituaries might serve as a reminder to the committees Republican members that the consequences of their decisions in the coming days will likely extend far beyond the next election. The Judiciary Committee debate on articles of impeachment against Nixon lasted six days. The tone of the hearings was at times soaring and at other moments opaquealternately invoking the nations highest ideals, the fine-grained details of the accusations against the President, and the arcana of legal standards and legislative proceedings. But the significance was clear throughout. This is no ordinary set of speeches, Elizabeth Drew wrote, for The New Yorker. It is the most extraordinary political debate I have ever heardperhaps the most extraordinary since the Constitutional Convention. And perhaps the most important political debate since that one. These people are drawing on history, attaching themselves to it, and becoming part of it.

Charles Wiggins, who represented a region in Southern California that overlapped with Nixons former congressional district, would emerge as the most articulate and forceful defender of the President during the hearings. He dismissed the notebooks of evidence accumulated by the committees staff. My guess, he said, you can put all of the admissible evidence in half of one book. Most of this is just material. It is not evidence, and it may never surface in the Senate because it is not admissible evidence. Simple theories, of course, are inadequate. That is not evidence. A supposition, however persuasive, is not evidence. A bare possibility that something might have happened is not evidence.

Narrowing the evidence as much as possible against the President became a central strategy for Nixon stalwarts. If we bring this case and carry it through the House and into the Senate, we will have to prove it, David Dennis, an Indiana Republican, said. We will have to prove it by competent evidence. The managers on the part of the House will have to make the case. At that point, hearsay will not do, inference upon inference will not do. Ex parte affidavits will not do. Memoranda will not do. Prior recorded testimony and other legal proceedings to which the President was not a party will not serve. Charles Sandman, who would be a regular, caustic presence on behalf of Nixon throughout the hearings, said that the Founders had meant for a President to be impeached only for something extremely serious, which affects his capability to conduct the affairs of the Nation. Sandman declared that he was not a nitpicker and that there were lots of crimes committed by lots of people, but were they placed at the door of the President? Sandman did not think so.

When Rodino finally adjourned the hearings, after 11 p.m. on Tuesday, July 30th, the committee had approved three articles of impeachment against the President: for obstructing the investigation into the Watergate break-in, for repeatedly violating the rights of citizens and impairing the due and proper administration of justice, and for defying congressional subpoenas. Twenty-one Democrats supported the first two articles. All but two Democrats also voted for the third. Ten out of seventeen Republicans opposed all three articles.

The day before the hearings began, a bipartisan group of moderate lawmakersfour Republicans and three Southern Democratshad met in secret and resolved to back impeachment. All of them ultimately supported at least one article from the Judiciary Committee, as did three other Republicans. In the years after Watergate, many of these lawmakers would be lionized for their role in the hearings, prioritizing constitutional duty over politics. Only after the release of the so-called smoking-gun tape, which made clear that Nixon had ordered the Watergate coverup, did the ten Republicans on the Judiciary Committee who had voted against impeachment reverse their decisions. The President resigned three days later.

The makeup of the current Judiciary Committee differs markedly from that of the Nixon era. The Republican minority is now dominated by members of the House Freedom Caucus, the influential conservative faction that has been uncompromising in its defense of Trump. Its most prominent figures include Jim Jordan, the Ohio congressman who relentlessly undermined witnesses during the Intelligence Committee hearings; Floridas Matt Gaetz, who, in October, led a brief G.O.P. occupation of the secure room where the Intelligence Committee was conducting its depositions; and Louie Gohmert, of Texas, who has compared impeachment to a coup and warned of civil war.

Even Republican House members who had been seen as candidates to turn on Trump have thus far sounded more like Nixons defenders during Watergate. Will Hurd, the Texas congressman and the only African-American member of the G.O.P. caucus, has often been cited as a possible defector, because of his typically moderate positions and his decision not to seek relection next year. But, during the Intelligence Committee hearings last month, he asserted that an impeachable offense should be compelling, overwhelmingly clear, and unambiguous, and that he had not yet heard such evidence. Francis Rooney, of Florida, another retiring congressman who is being closely watched, told Tim Alberta, of Politico, last month, the whole thing is one step removed from the President.

In the Senate, it seems at least plausible that frequent Trump dissenters, such as Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski, and Susan Collins, could form an initial bloc against the President. Could they then be joined by establishment figures, such as the Tennessee senator Lamar Alexander, who is retiring, or Rob Portman, of Ohio? What about the senators Cory Gardner and Martha McSally, who are facing tough relection fights, in Colorado and Arizona, respectively? These scenarios seem far-fetched, given their statements so far on impeachment, but at least its imaginable. What might happen then? Perhaps other Republicans sensitive to historys long arc will find safety in numbers. Trump would, in all likelihood, still be safe, but he would be tarnished. In American history, the Trump Presidency will inevitably be studied for the ways that democratic norms and institutions have been subverted. Republicans must consider how they wish to be remembered in the narrative of these events. History will have its judgment, too. Legacies exist in the future, but they are forged in the here and now.

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Republicans Defending Trump on Impeachment Should Fear the Judgment of History - The New Yorker

Earlier this year, the actor Jon Voight tweeted a video calling Donald Trump the greatest president since Abraham Lincoln.

The latest Economist/YouGov poll finds many Republicans agree with Voight. But there is one GOP President since Lincoln whom Republicans rate higher than Trump: A majority (59%) of Republicans believe Ronald Reagan was a better president than the current incumbent.

The public overall overwhelmingly agrees that Reagan was a better President.

Americans in general arent anywhere near as enthusiastic as Republicans are about Donald Trump: his overall approval rating of 41% is less than half his 87% approval rating among Republicans, and fewer than half the public chooses President Trump when asked to choose between him and each of the GOP Presidents since the 1950s. When comparing Trump with Richard Nixon the only President to have resigned from office a majority of Americans, 56%, call Nixon the better President of the two. Even more say that about Dwight Eisenhower (69%), Gerald Ford (59%), George H.W.Bush (63%), and George W. Bush (62%).

But 86% of Republicans rank Trump higher than Nixon. And majorities of Republicans rank the current President above Eisenhower (65%), Ford (82%) and both Bushes (71% for each).

Asked to rank all six GOP post-war Presidents (along with Abraham Lincoln), half the public puts the current incumbent dead last. One in three Republicans rank him first, though a majority of them choose either Reagan or Lincoln as the best.

However, among Republicans the Great Emancipator isnt necessarily thought of as the better president. Half of Republicans go even further than Jon Voight, saying that President Trump is a better President than Lincoln. Most of the overall public disagrees.

Which Republicans rank Trump as better than Lincoln? There isnt much difference by gender. 60% of Republicans who call themselves very conservative say Trump is the better President. Nearly the same percentage of Republicans without a college degree agree.

However, there is a clear regional difference: 62% of Republicans in the South say Trump is the better President; 38% pick Lincoln. Those in all other regions are more likely to give credit to Lincoln. 54% of Republicans outside the South say Lincoln was better. Perhaps for some, Abraham Lincolns leadership during the Civil War, against the southern Confederacy, is still remembered, and perhaps resented.

Related: Americans have followed the impeachment hearings but few minds have changed

See the full survey results and toplines from The Economist/YouGov poll

Image: Getty

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Who is the greatest Republican president? - YouGov US

By all accounts, including their own, the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday are going to engage a strategy of pure Stupid, no chaser. On Wednesday, the committee will hear from a series of constitutional experts in what I believe is the vain hope of convincing our slugabed republic that the president* is worthy of being turfed out back to his Florida redoubt. What could be a very valuable civics lesson for the country is going to be conducted with a claque of Republicans determined to turn the whole exercise into a monkeyhouse.

Consider that the Republicans on the HJC include Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, and Louie Gohmert. The ranking Republican, Chris Collins of Georgia, no shrinking violet his own self, plans to torture Robertss Rules in several horrible ways to gum up the proceedings, thereby giving his more lunatic colleagues more time to screech and fling poo. And, if this account from The New York Times is to be believed, the committee warfare well may be sadly asymmetrical.

So Nadler is going to try and restrain his more enthusiastic colleagues while Collins frees up his pack of crazoids to let their freak flags fly. Gravitas, because thats worked so well in a country that elected a vulgar talking yam to its highest office. I am already dreading this.

Tom WilliamsGetty Images

Meanwhile, back at the House Intelligence Committee, in an attempt to pre-empt the majority report expected to be released on Tuesday, the Republicans issued their own collection of fairy tales late Monday afternoon. As you might have expected, the Republican report represents an El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago fanzine unlike any other. From CBS News:

Here, for example, are the further adventures of the president* as international crime-buster.

And off to the zoo, we go.

They got nothing. But they can put on a show. And they will.

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The Republicans Will Let Their Freak Flags Fly. The Democrats Will Do 'Gravitas.' - Esquire.com

Eric Swalwell, Opinion contributor Published 4:00 a.m. ET Dec. 2, 2019 | Updated 2:34 p.m. ET Dec. 2, 2019

U.S. and Ukraine relations go further back than the now infamous phone call between Trump and Zelensky. We explain their relationship. Just the FAQs, USA TODAY

Ive mostly given up hope of Trump behaving presidentially, but some Republicans are privately disturbed and I hope they will behave congressionally.

The evidence is in, and its overwhelming: Donald J. Trump abused the power of the presidency and your taxpayer dollars $391 million in military aid to pressure a desperate ally to manufacture dirt on his political opponent.

And now we must decide what to do about it.

The Founding Fathers did not leave us helpless to a lawless chief executive; they drafted a Constitution providing that a president could be impeached for treason, briberyor other high crimes and misdemeanors.

They foresaw that a president might work with a foreign power to put his own interests over Americas, or that he might try to profit from his office, or that he might traffic in lies and obstruct justice. They, and we, might not have foreseen that one president would do all of these.

The testimony and evidence were clear from the start. The readout of President Trumps July 25 call with the Ukrainian president shows Trump asked for a favor that would directly assist his own reelection. Trumps chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, later admitted that military aid already appropriated by Congress and approved by the Pentagon was conditioned on Ukrainian investigations, and he saidAmericans should just get over it.

President Donald Trump(Photo: JIM WATSON, AFP/Getty Images)

And that was before the clear and convincing public testimony given to the House Intelligence Committee by a cavalcade of career civil servants and patriots, including several Trump appointees. The unerring direction of thetestimony was that the president used your money and resources to further his personal goals, and everyone in the administrations highest ranks knew this was so. The military aid was released only after the president was told the scheme had been exposed.

Several firsthand, front-row witnesses to this debacle have refused to testify after the president ordered them not to. We must conclude that their testimony would harm the presidents case.

There has been no plausible defense; assessing what happened here is a matter of plain facts and common sense. As a former prosecutor, this might be one of the clearest-cut cases Ive ever seen.

Now the House Intelligence Committee sends its findings to the House Judiciary Committee, which will hold a hearing Wednesday on how to proceed. We will hear from a panel of constitutional experts who will discuss how and why these uncontested violations rise to the level of impeachable offenses.

More on Trump: What swimming in my underwear taught me about getting away with it

2020: Trump can use his 'superpower' to defeat Democrats and their false narratives

This is a final chance for my Republican colleagues to get serious, to honor their oathsand to protect our national security.

Thus far, they have ignored clear evidence and chose instead to resurrect long-since-debunked conspiracy theories, including the Russian talking point that it was Ukraine that interfered in our 2016 election a fact-free claim directly contradicted by the unanimous finding of our intelligence agencies.

Now Republicans must stand up and be counted: Are they OKwith this presidents undebatable abuse of power? Are they prepared for what America becomes if we accept it? Is this the conduct we want to be commonplace in our childrens America?

I have hope that at least some House Republicans are starting to see the light. Behind closed doors, I saw how deeply disturbed some were by the damning details and corroborating evidence that piled up during this process. I saw that the deliberate smearing of career patriots who came in to testify, often over the White Houses objections, didnt sit well with these lawmakers.

Watergate taught us that history looks kindly on those like Sen. Lowell Weickerof Connecticutand Reps. William Cohenof Maine and Tom Railsbackof Illinois who are willing to stand up to their own party to do the right thing. Lemmings usually arent rewarded with historys praisebut rather with a grisly demise at the bottom of a cliff.

So much is at stake. We must ensure that future presidents, no matter their party, are held to account for their actions. We must ensure that foreign governments never feel empowered to interfere in Americas elections. We must make sure that we dont end up looking like Russia, where a dictator relies on disinformation to maintain power. Ironically, the whole point of supporting Ukraine is to limit the number of nations that are remade in Russias despotic image.

Ive mostly given up hope of Donald Trump behaving presidentially, but I have hope that my Republican colleagues can behave congressionally. Even people who have confessed to crimes deserve a fair process, and we will continue to give the president that fairness while pursuing swift justice come hell or high water. The future of our democracy relies on us doing this together.

Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., a former prosecutor, serves on the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees and co-chairs the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee. Follow him on Twitter at @RepSwalwell

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Trump impeachment: House Republicans have a final chance to put the nation first - USA TODAY