US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said there is clear evidence President Donald Trump used his office for personal gain and undermined America’s national security.

Speaking at her weekly press conference on Thursday, Pelosi, however, said that no final impeachment decision had been made.

She said that it was up to the Democratic-led House Intelligence Committee to determine how to proceed with the impeachment inquiry as House members continued to gather facts and hear from witnesses.

“The evidence is clear … that the president has used his office for his own personal gain and in doing so undermined the national security,” she told reporters. “He has violated his oath of office.”

Pelosi made the remarks as the Democrat-led House Intelligence Committee conducted its fifth and final day of public hearings on Thursday in the impeachment inquiry centered on the July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

The US House Intelligence Committee resumed the public impeachment hearings on Tuesday.

The Republican president called Pelosi “highly overrated” and “incompetent” for not passing the so-called US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA.

“The woman is highly overrated,” Trump said. “We can’t get USMCA approved because Nancy Pelosi is grossly incompetent.”

Asked by a reporter on Thursday whether the House invoke articles of impeachment against Trump, Pelosi said, “We haven’t made any decision.”

“We are not finished yet. The day is not over and you never know what testimony of one person may lead to the need for testimony of another,” Pelosi said.

She also asked Trump to come forward, saying, “if you have any information that is exculpatory … because it seems as if the facts are uncontested to what happened. Now if you have contrary, if you have reason to convince people that something was different, under oath, please let us know.”

Trump on Monday said he will “strongly consider” giving testimony in the ongoing impeachment inquiry by the House of Representatives.

Trump has responded to Pelosi’s statement in which she said the president could “come right before the committee and talk… or he could do it in writing.”

Trump

House Democrats launched an impeachment inquiry against Trump in September after a whistleblower alleged the Republican president pressured Zelensky to investigate Biden and his son Hunter, who had served as a director for Ukrainian energy company Burisma.

Democrats are looking into whether Trump abused his power by withholding $391 million in US security aid to Ukraine as leverage to pressure Kiev to conduct an investigation that would benefit him politically.

Republicans have consistently criticized the Democratic-led impeachment investigation by saying that witnesses did not have firsthand knowledge of Trump’s role in trying to persuade Ukraine to investigate Biden.

Reported by Presst


v