First step to oust Trump
US Democrats have launched a longshot bid to have President Donald Trump removed from office.
In an article of impeachment, Californian Democrat Brad Sherman accused Mr Trump of obstructing investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, in part by firing former FBI director James Comey.
Mr Sherman acknowledged that filing the article is “the first step on a very long road”.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said yesterday that Mr Sherman’s resolution was “utterly and completely ridiculous”.
Mr Sherman’s effort has little chance of success in the Republican-led House and he does not even have the backing of many fellow Democrats.
Democratic leaders believe efforts to impeach Mr Trump serve only to energise the President’s supporters.
Mr Sherman filed the article a day after the President’s son, Donald Trump Jr, acknowledged he met a Russian lawyer during last year’s presidential election campaign after an intermediary promised she had damaging information from Moscow about Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton.
Mr Trump Jr said he received no information about Mrs Clinton at the meeting.
Earlier, Mr Trump claimed Russia’s Vladimir Putin would rather have had Hillary Clinton in the White House than him.
In an interview with Chris- tian Broadcasting Network founder Pat Robertson, Mr Trump tried to hose down claims that Russia was working with the Trump campaign to get the billionaire elected.
“If Hillary had won, our military would be decimated. Our energy would be much more expensive. That’s what Putin doesn’t like about me,” he said. “And that’s why I say, ‘why would he want me?’ Because from day one I wanted a strong military — he doesn’t want to see that.”
Mr Trump claimed Mr Putin “probably” did not want him to become president because of his push to expand US oil and gas production, which he said could hurt Russian energy exports.
He and Mr Putin “get along very, very well”, he said. “We are a tremendously powerful nuclear power, and so are they. It doesn’t make sense not to have some kind of relationship.”
Mr Trump, who left the US for a trip to Paris yesterday, declared his son “innocent”.