Watch live: Judiciary Committee hold first impeachment hearing

Latest updates on the impeachment inquiry

• The House Judiciary Committee will hold its first hearing of the impeachment inquiry beginning at 10 a.m., featuring testimony from four constitutional law experts.
• On Tuesday, the House Intelligence Committee voted to adopt a 300-page report by Democrats on President Trump’s actions toward Ukraine, accusing him of abusing his office and endangering national security.
• The 13-9 vote fell along party lines.
  

Washington — The House Judiciary Committee is taking the reins of the impeachment inquiry as the panel holds its first hearing of the next stage of the probe.

The committee, which will be responsible for drafting potential articles of impeachment, will hear from four constitutional law experts — Noah Feldman, Pamela Karlan, Michael Gerhardt and Jonathan Turley — beginning at 10 a.m.

On Tuesday, the House Intelligence Committee voted to endorse a 300-page report written by the Democratic majority on President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, accusing the president of abuse of power.

The vote fell along party lines, with 13 Democrats voting to endorse the report and nine Republicans dissenting. The report was written by Democratic staffers on the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight Committees.

“This report chronicles a scheme by the president of the United States to coerce an ally, Ukraine, that is at war with an adversary, Russia, into doing the president’s political dirty work,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said on Capitol Hill.

The report says the president “sought to undermine the integrity of the U.S. presidential election process” and “ordered and implemented a campaign to conceal his conduct from the public and frustrate and obstruct the House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry” once his actions were uncovered.

The report was sent to the Judiciary Committee, along with a separate document prepared by Republican members defending the president.

​Key findings from the Democratic impeachment report

5:00 a.m.: The report released Tuesday laid out nine findings of the investigation, including:

• The president “solicited the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, in the 2020 U.S. presidential election” and “sought to undermine the integrity of the U.S. presidential election process.”
• Mr. Trump “sought to pressure and induce Ukraine’s newly-elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to publicly announce unfounded investigations” to benefit the president politically.
• “President Trump ordered the suspension of $391 million in vital military assistance” to Ukraine “without any legitimate foreign policy, national security, or anti-corruption justification.
• “Faced with the revelation of his actions, President Trump publicly and repeatedly persisted in urging foreign governments, including Ukraine and China, to investigate his political opponent.”
• “President Trump ordered and implemented a campaign to conceal his conduct from the public and frustrate and obstruct the House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry.”

— Stefan Becket

​Democrats to focus on “ABCs of high crimes and misdemeanors” at hearing

4:30 a.m.: Democratic staffers working on the impeachment inquiry held a conference call to preview the party’s strategy heading into Wednesday’s hearing before the Judiciary Committee. Four legal experts will appear for questioning before lawmakers to “explain the scope of that constitutional standard of impeachment.”

“The hearing tomorrow will explore the extent to which this powerful, powerful evidence we now have of the president’s conduct implicates all of these dangers,” one of the staffers said. “You can think of them as the ABCs of high crimes and misdemeanors: abuses of power, betrayal of national security connected to foreign interest and corruption of our elections.”

Asked whether the questions will be limited to the material in the House Intelligence Committee’s report, one staffer said, “We will certainly have a primary focus on the Intelligence Committee report but we will see what other information comes up tomorrow,” suggesting Democrats may raise questions related to actions by the president described in the Mueller report. — Rebecca Kaplan