President Trump on Thursday invited House Democrats to impeach him, saying, “Do it now, fast.”

Mr. Trump’s taunting of House Democrats came an hour before House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that they were proceeding with articles of impeachment.

Mr. Trump said he welcomed impeachment as a chance to fight the allegations against him in the Senate and to clear the way for Congress to get back to work.

“The Do Nothing Democrats had a historically bad day yesterday in the House. They have no Impeachment case and are demeaning our Country. But nothing matters to them, they have gone crazy. Therefore I say, if you are going to impeach me, do it now, fast, so we can have a fair trial in the Senate, and so that our Country can get back to business,” Mr. Trump wrote in a series of Twitter posts.

The president said his Senate trial would force testimony by Mrs. Pelosi, Rep. Adam B. Schiff, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden and his son Hunter.

“We will have Schiff, the Bidens, Pelosi and many more testify, and will reveal, for the first time, how corrupt our system really is. I was elected to ‘Clean the Swamp,’ and that’s what I am doing!” tweeted Mr. Trump.

Mr. Schiff, the California Democrat who is chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that led the impeachment investigation, has been accused by Republicans of orchestrating the whistleblower complaint that set off the inquiry.

The whistleblower, who is believed to be a CIA analyst assigned to the White House, met with Mr. Schiff’s staff before filing the complaint.

The Bidens are central figures in the case against Mr. Trump. The whistleblower accused Mr. Trump of abuse of power for asking the Ukrainian president to investigate the Bidens.

Mr. Trump has acknowledged that he wanted an investigation into alleged corruption involving Hunter Biden, who landed a high-paying job on the board of Ukraine natural gas company Burisma Holdings in 2014. At the time, his father was the point man for Obama White House policy in the country, which is notorious for corruption, especially in the energy industry.

The elder Mr. Biden recently boasted of forcing Ukraine leaders to fire the country’s chief prosecutor in spring 2016 by threatening to block a $1 billion U.S. loan guarantee. The prosecutor was widely viewed as not doing enough to combat corruption. But the prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, also had looked into corruption allegations against Burisma and Mykola Zlochevsky, the Ukraine oligarch running the company.

Sign up for Daily Newsletters Manage Newsletters

Copyright © 2020 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.