7:30: Top Republican accuses Democrats of attacking Ukrainian president

Rep. Doug Collins (Ga.), the top Republican member on the House Judiciary Committee, said the Democrats are “tearing down a world leader” and calling Zelensky “a liar” by suggesting he felt pressured by Trump when the Ukrainian president has said he didn’t.

“When we can’t make our case, we tear down, not only try to tear down the leader of the free world, President Trump, but we’re tearing down the newly elected leader of the Ukraine. This is amazing to me,” Collins said.

“I never thought we would cross outside of the ocean to try to basically impugn the integrity of a world leader like we have been on the last two hearings,” he added.

One of Democrats’ central arguments for impeachment is their contention that Trump tried to use a vulnerable ally to help him politically.

Collins, his voice raised to a yell, also railed against the Democrats for not allowing the Republicans to hold a minority hearing, warning that one day GOP will be back in power and will tell the Democrats they “put a dagger in minority rights.”

7:15: Nadler calls facts against Trump ‘overwhelming’ in opening statement

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) opened up Wednesday night’s hearing by detailing the rationale behind the two articles of impeachment drafted agianst President Trump: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

He called the facts, laid out in previous hearings, “overwhelming.”

“President Trump should have been focused on America’s national security,” Nadler said. “Instead, he completely ignored them to push his own personal, political interests.”

Nadler closed with an appeal to House Republicans, reminding them Trump would not be president forever. He implored them not to justify behavior “that we know in our heart is wrong.”

“When his time has passed, when his grip on our politics is gone, when our country returns, as surely it will, to calmer times and stronger leadership, history will look back on our actions here today. How would you be remembered?” Nadler asked.

“We have each taken an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. I hope to be remembered for honoring that oath. I hope you feel the same.”

An attorney for Michael Cohen filed a motion in federal court Wednesday that his client deserved a reduced jail sentence, arguing, in part, that the Justice Department under Attorney General William P. Barr is not a fair arbitrator because of his “Trumpian subservience.”

Cohen, the former attorney and “fixer” for Trump, who is serving a three-year prison sentence for financial crimes and lying to Congress, has requested his sentence be reduced to a year and one day or to be allowed to spend the duration of his sentence on “home confinement.”

The filing includes many pointed attacks on Trump, and makes several references to the impeachment proceedings.

“With ‘Articles of Impeachment’ drafted and awaiting a vote in the House of Representatives, and with an Inspector General’s Report “hot off the press,” Attorney General William Barr has moved both publicly, and vigorously, to insure that he is aligned with President Trump — a man for whom disruption and rancor know no discernible limits, as reflected by his references to the F.B.I as ‘scum’.”

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) sent a document containing classified witness testimony Wednesday to the Judiciary Committee for consideration before it marks up articles of impeachment, according to a letter from Schiff that accompanied the material and was released publicly.

The letter described the document as a “classified supplemental written submission” from Jennifer Williams, a special adviser on Russia to Vice President Pence who testified in an open impeachment hearing last month. The topic is a Sept. 18 phone call between Pence and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the letter stated.

The classified material was not released publicly, and The Post could not independently verify its contents.

Schiff wrote that his panel asked Pence’s office Dec. 6 to declassify the document “as there is no legitimate basis to assert that the information therein is classified,” but that Pence’s office has not responded. Pence’s office has said the call was classified and cannot be discussed in open settings.

Schiff’s letter stated that Williams provided the supplemental material to the Intelligence Committee through her lawyer Nov. 26, a week after her public testimony.

Trump critics will gather for marches and rallies in hundreds of cities and towns across the United States on the eve of the House vote to impeach the president.

There are more than 430 “Nobody Is Above the Law” events scheduled, according to the Impeach.org website.

The events’ partners include liberal advocacy groups such as MoveOn.org, Indivisible, Center for American Progress, Greenpeace and the Women’s March.

“Events will be visible, family-friendly, public gatherings to demonstrate to our lawmakers that their constituents are behind them to defend the Constitution — and that Trump has left them no alternative to uphold their oath of office but to support impeachment and removal,” the event page says.

The impeachment vote is expected next week.

Two figures intimately involved in the House Republican response to the impeachment inquiry visited Senate Republicans on Wednesday, another sign that the probe’s center of gravity is soon moving to the other side of the Capitol building.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a member of the House Judiciary Committee who joined the House Intelligence Committee ahead of last month’s impeachment hearings, attended an official lunch with Senate Republicans.

He was joined by Stephen R. Castor, the general counsel for the House Oversight and Reform Committee, where Jordan is the top Republican. Mirroring his boss, Castor joined the staff of the Intelligence Committee last month to temporarily assist in the impeachment inquiry.

Earlier in the week, Castor gave the Republican perspective on the House Intelligence Committee’s impeachment investigation as a witness before the Judiciary Committee. The hearing lasted nearly 10 hours.

On Tuesday, Senate Republicans hosted Jonathan Turley, the professor from George Washington University Law School who testified as a GOP witness before the Judiciary panel last week.

A Democratic member of the House Judiciary Committee will miss the markup of articles of impeachment after undergoing stent surgery Tuesday, his chief of staff announced in a statement.

Marc Cevasco described his boss, Rep. Ted Lieu (Calif.), as “in good spirits” and said he “does plan to watch a lot of TV as he recovers.”

Lieu was admitted to George Washington University Hospital for chest pain Monday evening, but tests revealed no heart attack or damage, according to Cevasco’s statement. He underwent stent surgery after a CT scan revealed partial blockage of an artery and will “likely be discharged” later Wednesday.

Lieu is an outspoken Trump critic who frequently comments on the impeachment proceedings to his 1.2 million Twitter followers. His absence means 40 lawmakers may deliver opening statements at the markup, which is scheduled to begin Wednesday evening.

Cevasco said Lieu “plans to be back at work next week.”

DECORAH, Iowa — Seated in a motor coach emblazoned with his name late last week, Biden took a breath and prepared himself to answer yet another question on a subject he clearly doesn’t like to discuss: his son Hunter’s business dealings in Ukraine.

“My son spoke, speaks for himself. He’s a 47-year-old man. He didn’t do a single thing that was illegal or wrong,” Biden said, adding a short while later: “I’m going to talk about Trump. Trump is the one who violated the Constitution.”

In the months since Trump began attacking the Bidens over Hunter’s lucrative job on the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma during his father’s time as vice president, the elder Biden has been reluctant to talk about a matter that is both personally painful and politically awkward.

When he has addressed it, he has struggled to provide a coherent explanation — insisting his son did nothing wrong while also vowing that no one in his family would serve on foreign boards if he was elected.

Forty-five percent of Americans think that Trump should be impeached and removed from office, while 50 percent disagree, according to a Monmouth University poll released Wednesday.

The poll is the second released in as many days that show slightly greater opposition to impeachment and removal than support.

A Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday showed that 45 percent of registered voters say Trump should be impeached and removed, while 51 percent say he should not be.

Some other polls conducted since the start of public impeachment hearings in the House have shown a somewhat different picture.

An Economist-YouGov poll released this week, for example, showed that 44 percent of Americans support the Senate removing Trump if he is impeached by the House, while 40 percent are opposed.

The Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday castigated the FBI over its 2016 investigation into the Trump campaign, declaring that such a shoddy case should never be pursued again.

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), a frequent defender of Trump, spoke at length at the start of a hearing with the Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, who testified about his 434-page report finding “serious performance failures” but no political bias driving the highly sensitive FBI investigation.

Graham said politicians of both parties should be alarmed to see how the FBI launched an investigation into a political campaign, told no one inside the campaign of their concerns and kept pursuing that investigation even after gathering a significant amount of exculpatory evidence.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday that the House had made “an extremely strong case” for Trump’s impeachment and questioned why Trump has refused to participate in the inquiry.

“The burden now lies on the president to rebut it if he can,” Schumer said during remarks on the Senate floor. “The fact that he refuses to … produce rebutting evidence, the fact that he blocks witnesses from testifying, the fact that he won’t let documents come forward may well indicate that he did everything alleged in the House proceedings.”

Schumer contended that Trump “has had every chance to defend himself.”

“If the president is so innocent, if this is a mere witch hunt, why isn’t he answering the specific charges?” the senator asked. “Why is he blocking witnesses from testifying who would have direct knowledge of these facts?”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Wednesday that the Senate impeachment trial will begin early next year if the House approves its articles before the holiday recess.

“If the House continues this destructive road and sends us articles of impeachment, the Senate will take them up in the new year and proceed to a fair trial,” McConnell said on the Senate floor. “Assuming that House Democrats send us articles of impeachment next week, a Senate trial will have to be our first item of business in January.”

The leader had suggested on Tuesday that this would be the timeline. On Wednesday, he repeated that legislation on a new trade deal with Canada and Mexico would also wait until next year, calling it a “casualty of Democrats’ impeachment obsession.”

Trump on Wednesday morning retweeted a spate of commentary on impeachment and FBI surveillance of his 2016 campaign from Republican lawmakers, conservative commentators and other allies.

The tweets shared by Trump included one by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) calling House impeachment proceedings an “absolute circus,” a “show trial” and a “propaganda trial.”

A tweet by Jenna Ellis, a legal adviser to Trump’s campaign, referred to “the Dem’s crazytown” and argued Democrats were trying to impeach Trump for “setting foreign policy” and “ensuring foreign aid was not used for corrupt purposes.”

Trump also shared several tweets by talk show host Buck Sexton, who argued in one that the “Democrats are willing to burn down any institution or tradition of governance when they don’t win.”

Former energy secretary Rick Perry voiced support Wednesday for an unfounded notion advanced by Trump and other Republicans that Ukraine interfered in the U.S. presidential election in 2016.

“Before this is said and done, there will be evidence that you can point to that clearly shows that the Ukrainians were engaged in trying to manipulate the election,” Perry said during an interview on Fox News.

Perry’s assessment is at odds with that of FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, who said in an interview with ABC News on Monday that there was “no indication” that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election.

Perry was among the “three amigos” — along with European Union Ambassador Gordon Sondland and former U.S. special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker — who operated an irregular foreign policy channel to push Ukraine to announce the investigations Trump sought.

During the Fox News interview, Perry noted that he had made trips to Ukraine, starting before this year’s election of Zelensky, and had many “casual conversations” about what happened during the 2016 election in the United States.

“There was some interest in our election, and it wasn’t necessarily in Trump’s favor,” Perry said.

Time magazine has picked teen climate activist Greta Thunberg over three key figures involved in the impeachment drama as its “Person of the Year.”

Other finalists for the distinction included Trump, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the anonymous whistleblower whose complaint sparked the inquiry — as well as the Hong Kong protesters who have spent months in the streets calling for democratic reform.

Time has chosen a “Person of the Year” since 1927, though the distinction originally was called “Man of the Year.” The title is not necessarily a positive award but, rather, one that recognizes “the man, woman, group or concept that has had the most influence on the world during the previous 12 months.”

The House Judiciary Committee is set to begin debate Wednesday night on the two narrowly drafted articles of impeachment against Trump: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) is scheduled to gavel the meeting open at 7 p.m. The panel is expected to hear opening statements from its 41 members before recessing until Thursday morning, when it will debate proposed amendments to the articles before voting on the articles themselves.

That would set up a full House vote on Trump’s impeachment for next week before Congress breaks for the holidays. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Tuesday that he expects a trial to begin in his chamber in early January.

Congress has impeached only two presidents in history: Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998. President Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 before the House could vote on articles of impeachment in the Watergate scandal. Lawmakers drafted three articles against Nixon, including charges of “high crimes and misdemeanors” that mirror the abuse-of-power and obstruction allegations Trump now faces.

Following a night of fiery rhetoric on impeachment at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, Trump has a quiet day scheduled at the White House on Wednesday.

According to his public schedule, Trump will participate in the swearing in of his new energy secretary, Dan Brouillette, at the White House, before attending two Hanukkah receptions with first lady Melania Trump. None of the events is advertised as open to the press.

At a rally Tuesday night in Hershey, Pa., Trump called the impeachment process a “sham,” and a desperate tactic by Democrats to gain an advantage in next year’s election.

“You know why, because they want to win an election and this is the only way they can do it,” Trump said.

Trump added that any Democrat who votes for the “flimsy, pathetic, ridiculous” articles of impeachment against him would be sacrificing their dignity.

“Everybody said, ‘This is impeachment lite. This is the lightest impeachment in the history of the country by far,’ ” Trump said. “It’s not even like an impeachment. These people are stone-cold crooked.”

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz is set to testify Wednesday about his findings that the FBI investigation of Trump’s 2016 campaign featured “serious performance failures” but was not motivated by political bias.

The inspector general is scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee two days after releasing a 434-page report analyzing the FBI investigation that was launched in the summer of 2016 to determine if anyone in the Trump campaign was conspiring with Russia to interfere in the presidential election.

The report has exposed major disagreements among Trump, Attorney General William P. Barr, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray and Horowitz, and lawmakers are likely to press the inspector general further on the areas where there are disputes.

Republicans and Democrats have trumpeted the parts of the report that validate their wildly opposing views regarding the nature of the FBI’s investigation, as either a baseless “witch hunt” or a fundamental defense of American democracy.

Former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg, a Democratic presidential contender, will donate $10 million Thursday to defend vulnerable Democratic House members against paid Republican attacks on their support for impeachment proceedings against Trump.

The money, which is meant to even an arms race on the 2020 congressional battlefield, was cheered by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who has been fielding concerns from some of her members over a costly Republican advertising offensive as the House moves toward an impeachment vote next week.

“In 2018, Mayor Bloomberg was a critical ally in helping House Democrats regain the majority,” Pelosi said in a statement. “Now, the stakes are even higher as we work to make health care more affordable by reducing the skyrocketing cost of prescription drugs, increase wages and root out corruption. We welcome and thank Mayor Bloomberg for his support.”

On Tuesday, Trump lashed out at House Democrats after they unveiled two articles of impeachment against him, tweeting “WITCH HUNT!” in capital letters and slamming House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) as “a totally corrupt politician.”

But as Trump raged, his campaign appeared to be busy thinking of a way to leverage the historic announcement — a milestone for Democrats leading the impeachment process — in the president’s favor. And by Tuesday afternoon, they had come up with an idea.

A 21-second video shared by the Trump War Room Twitter account featured the dramatic scene from Marvel’s “Avengers: Endgame,” in which supervillain Thanos is about to carry out his mission of wiping out half of all life in the universe — only the clip had been edited. Trump’s face is superimposed on Thanos and when the character snaps his fingers, a group of Democratic leaders are turned to dust.

The short video instantly triggered a flood of reactions. Many mocked the campaign for portraying Trump as a supervillain and questioned if the president’s reelection team had even watched the 2019 film, pointing out that the scene actually comes moments before Thanos realizes the Avengers outsmarted him. The altered clip even prompted a scathing response from Thanos co-creator, comic book writer and artist Jim Starlin.

Following a raucous campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Tuesday night, Trump tweeted a clip of a Fox News interview with former independent counsel Robert W. Ray, who argued that neither article of impeachment constitutes an impeachable offense.

“Neither one of those is a high crime or misdemeanor,” said Ray, who succeeded Ken Starr as the head of the Office of the Independent Counsel in 1999 and issued the final reports on the Whitewater scandal during President Bill Clinton’s tenure.

Assuming the House votes to impeach Trump, Ray said he would encourage a motion to dismiss in the Republican-led Senate ahead of a trial.

“I wonder really whether the country should be put through that given the fact that I do not think that the two articles that the House is now apparently going to vote on actually constitute impeachable offenses,” he said.