Impeachment fight escalates as Trump calls probe a ‘coup’

Washington, October 2

US President Donald Trump and Congress traded threats on Wednesday in a growing impeachment scandal that threatens to engulf the White House in what the president claimed is a “coup”. The power struggle between Trump — accused of leaning on Ukraine’s president to dig up dirt on one of his main 2020 election rivals — and congressional Democrats entered ever more volatile territory.

Adam Schiff, the Democrat leading the impeachment probe, said there was a “real sense of urgency” to press forward. Trump fought back with language that would once have been inconceivable for a president, including his claim late Tuesday on Twitter that this is “not an impeachment, it is a COUP”. Trump insists that he did nothing wrong in a phone call with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky and got support from Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, who said he saw “nothing compromising” in the conversation. — AFP