DONALD Trump has warned this morning that the stock markets would crash if he was removed from the White House.
The US President is currently facing an impeachment inquiry, which will probe whether he sought Ukraine’s help to smear rival Joe Biden.
But the firebrand Republican has hit out at the probe calling it a “scam” while pointing out that the US has enjoyed an economic boom during his turbulent tenure in office.
He tweeted: “If they actually did this the markets would crash.
“Do you think it was luck that got us to the best Stock Market and Economy in our history. It wasn’t!”
A few minutes later: “THE GREATEST SCAM IN THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN POLITICS!”
Trump’s tweets come as a declassified whistleblower’s complaint about his interactions with Ukraine were released today.
It has been claimed that the US leader tried to solicit foreign interference to help him win the 2020 election and attempted to cover it up.
The complaint claimed President Trump used the “power of his office to solicit interference” from a foreign country.
It was further alleged that White House officials subsequently tried to “lock down” records of that phone call.
The rough transcript of the July call, between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, was already released a day earlier by the White House.
It confirmed that Trump sought an investigation from Ukraine into the Biden family, though did not show the president explicitly leveraging U.S. aid as had initially been suggested in some media reports.
But the whistleblower complaint, released by the Democrat-led House Intelligence Committee ahead of testimony from Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, goes further, though it is not a first-hand account of the call.
The complaint says that White House officials who heard the call were “deeply disturbed” by it.
It cited “multiple White House officials with direct knowledge of the call” and accuses Trump of attempting “to pressure the Ukrainian leader to take actions to help the President’s 2020 reelection bid.”
It then presents allegations that the White House tried to “restrict access” to records of the call.
“In the days following the phone call, I learned from multiple U.S. officials that senior White House officials had intervened to ‘lock down’ all records of the phone call, especially the official word-for-word transcript of the call that was produced–as is customary–by the White House Situation Room,” the complaint says.
IMPEACHMENT is a formal charge of serious wrongdoing against a holder of public office in the United States.
It is one of the few ways a sitting president can be kicked out of the White House before an election.
The US Constitution states a president “shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanours”.
The “sole power of impeachment” is held by the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of Congress.
A simple majority is required – i.e. more than half of Representatives must vote to impeach the president.
Then the case would be tried by the Senate, the upper chamber of Congress, where a two-thirds majority is needed.
While the Senate is still controlled by the Republicans, with 53 of the 100 seats, the Democrats have control of the House of Representatives, with 235 of the 435 seats.
This means that it’s possible for the House of Representatives to pass a vote to impeach the president.
However, a two-thirds majority of 67 Senators voting to impeach Trump would still be needed in the Senate when it is tried.
The document is sure to fuel the impeachment inquiry formally launched by House Democrats earlier this week.
The US President is currently facing an impeachment inquiry, which will probe whether he sought Ukraine’s help to smear ex-Vice President Biden.
But Trump dismissed the probe, which threatens to oust him, as a “joke” in a press conference at a UN General Assembly meeting on Wednesday.
And he had offered to release a transcript of the phone call, saying it was “beautiful”.
Reports previously claimed Biden, while vice president, threatened to withhold $1billion in American loan guarantees in 2016 if the nation’s leaders did not fire Ukraine’s top prosecutor.
At the time the prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, was probing the company where Hunter was a board member.
However, Ukraine’s current prosecutor, Yuriy Lutsenko, said in May he had no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden or his son.
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