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U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday said she was asking the House Judiciary Committee to proceed with drafting articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump.
A House vote on the impeachment is widely expected to take place before Christmas.
“The facts are uncontested,” she said. “The president abused his power for his own personal political benefit at the expense of our national security by withholding military aid and a crucial Oval Office meeting in exchange for an announcement of an investigation into his political rival,” Pelosi said during a news conference.
Just before the California Democrat’s announcement, Trump tweeted that if Democrats are going to impeach him, they should “do it now, fast, so we can have a fair trial in the Senate, and so that our Country can get back to business.”
The Democrats’ impeachment inquiry centers on Trump’s pressure on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to launch investigations into Democratic White House hopeful Joe Biden and his son Hunter, as well as into a theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 presidential election.
In a 300-page report released Tuesday following two months of private and public testimony, the House Intelligence Committee said Trump made a White House visit and military aid contingent on Ukraine’s announcing those investigations.
The impeachment inquiry shifted Wednesday to the House Judiciary Committee, which heard from scholars who said Trump’s actions reached the Constitution’s threshold of “bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” The one professor that Republicans were allowed to invite said impeachment wasn’t warranted.
Related: Melania Trump says Pamela Karlan ‘should be ashamed’ of her Barron punch line at impeachment hearing
And see: Trump would become a king if impeachment fails, scholar warns
