Pelosi named seven so-called managers to make the case that Trump is guilty of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress

The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, revealed the team that will prosecute Donald Trump in an impeachment trial to get under way in earnest in the Senate early next week.

In a morning news conference, Pelosi named seven so-called managers to carry the articles of impeachment to the Senate and make the case that Trump is guilty of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

The team will be led by Adam Schiff, the intelligence committee chairman who took the lead in gathering evidence against Trump, and Jerry Nadler, chair of the judiciary committee.

“The emphasis is on litigators,” Pelosi said in introducing the group. “The emphasis is on comfort level in the courtroom. The emphasis is on making the strongest possible case to protect and defend the constitution in the name of the American people.”

The announcement raised the curtain on a day of busy impeachment procedure even as Washington buzzed over new evidence of the plot at the heart of the charges against Trump, released by Democrats the night before.

Trump is charged with using the power of his office to pressure Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president, to announce a false investigation into former vice-president Joe Biden in an effort to damage his political rival.

Late on Tuesday, Democrats released communications and notes belonging to Lev Parnas, a close associate of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, documenting a scheme to “get Zalensky to Annonce that the Biden case will be Investigated” with the direct involvement of “no 1” – thought to be Trump himself.

Democrats release Ukraine files including handwritten note on 'the Biden case' Read more

“Time has been our friend in all of this because it has yielded incriminating evidence, more truth, into the public domain,” Pelosi said.

As she spoke, Trump tweeted. “Here we go again,” he wrote, “another Con Job by the Do Nothing Democrats. All of this work was supposed to be done by the House, not the Senate!”

“President Trump has done nothing wrong,” the White House said in a statement. “He looks forward to having the due process rights in the Senate that Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats denied to him, and expects to be fully exonerated.”

Even as the case against Trump strengthened, the mechanism that could determine his political fate ground forward. After the naming of impeachment managers, the House was scheduled to hold a vote to send the articles to the Senate.

In the afternoon, the articles were to be placed in a hardwood box and escorted across Capitol Hill from the House to the Senate side.





“The president and the senators will be held accountable,” Pelosi said in a statement. “The American people deserve the truth, and the constitution demands a trial.” Trump is only the third president to face an impeachment trial in the Senate.



The Senate will transform into an impeachment court as early as Thursday, with the chief justice of the supreme court, John Roberts, presiding over senators, who serve as jurors.

In addition to Schiff and Nadler, other managers were: Hakeem Jeffries of New York, Zoe Lofgren of California, Val Demings of Florida, Jason Crow of Colorado and Sylvia Garcia of Texas.

As the articles were prepared for the Senate, a debate over whether senators should call witnessesat the trial continued to unfold. The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, has said he does not have the votes to simply dismiss the impeachment charges, as the president has suggested, but also has not committed to further testimony.

Republican senators were considering an agreement by which each witness called by Democrats, such as the former national security adviser John Bolton, would be rejoined by a Republican witness, such as Hunter Biden, the former vice-president’s son.

But Pelosi warned Republicans on Wednesday against calling “frivolous” witnesses.

“What is at stake here is the constitution of the United States,” she said.

Trump, Pelosi said, “tried to use the appropriations process as his private ATM machine, in order to advance his personal and political advantage. That is what the senators should be looking into … They shouldn’t be frivolous with the constitution of the United States, even though the president himself has.”

Trump and other Republicans have promoted the conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 US presidential election. American intelligence officials have called the president’s continued assertions false and misleading.

McConnell, who is negotiating rules for the trial proceedings, has said all 53 Republican senators are on board with his plan to start the session and consider the issue of witnesses later.

“There is little or no sentiment in the Republican conference for a motion to dismiss,” McConnell said. ‘‘Our members feel we have an obligation to listen to the arguments.” Some Republican senators have pushed for the possibility of calling witnesses.



“My position is that there should be a vote on whether or not witnesses should be called,” said Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who is leading an effort with Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and the vocal Trump critic Senator Mitt Romney of Utah.

Schiff said the latest evidence released by Democrats revealed Trump’s effort ‘‘to coerce Ukraine into helping the president’s re-election campaign” and must be included in the Senate trial.

Republicans control the Senate, with 53 members to Democrats’ 47 caucus members in the 100-seat chamber, and they are all but certain to acquit Trump. A two-thirds majority of present senators would be required to remove Trump.