Donald Trump Impeachment Inquiry Live Updates, Latest News

Update (2:00 p.m. ET): President Donald Trump slammed Democrats for their impeachment inquiry and even suggested putting a stop to it upon returning to the White House from the U.N. General Assembly in New York.

"What these guys are doing—Democrats—are doing to this country is a disgrace and it shouldn't be allowed. There should be a way of stopping it, maybe legally through the courts," Trump told reporters.

The president also lamented having to "put up with Adam Schiff on an absolutely perfect phone call to the new president of Ukraine. That was a perfect call."

Update (1:30 p.m. ET): House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said his panel of lawmakers will work through the upcoming recess to continue investigating President Donald Trump's communication with Ukraine's leader.

"We are determined to get to the bottom of this," Schiff said.

His comments followed an hours-long hearing between the committee and Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire. Maguire testified that the whisteblower "did the right thing" but called the entire situation "unprecedented."

Schiff told reporters after the hearing that "it's hard to imagine a more serious set of allegations that those contained in the complaint." While the chairman would not get into the specifics of the committee's investigation against Trump, he said they are going "to move as expeditiously as possible."

Update (11:30 a.m. ET): House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the White House's efforts to conceal records of President Donald Trump's phone call with Ukrainian president is evidence of a "cover-up."

"This is a cover-up, this is a cover-up," Pelosi said during her weekly press conference.

A redacted version of the complaint was made public by the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday morning. The document revealed that senior White House officials attempted to "lockdown" all records of the call, including a verbatim transcript of the conversation.

Pelosi said the impeachment inquiry is now totally focused on the allegation that Trump pressured Ukraine's president to investigate Joe Biden and his efforts to conceal the conversation from Congress.

"Why the president thinks that this is exculpatory, maybe he doesn't know that word, that the president thinks that this proves his innocence, only goes to how further he doesn't understand right from wrong," Pelosi told reporters.

Original story: The House of Representatives officially launched a formal impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump earlier this week, marking the fourth time in U.S. history that a president has faced being removed from office.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the inquiry on Tuesday following reports that he pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

"The President must be held accountable. No one is above the law," Pelosi said. "Actions taken to date by the President have seriously violated the Constitution."

Since her announcement, it's been reported by several news outlets that at least 218 lawmakers in the House (the exact number of votes needed to impeach Trump in the chamber) support moving forward with impeachment. As of Wednesday night, 217 Democrats and independent Representative Justin Amash favored the inquiry.

At the center of this impeachment effort is Trump's communication with Ukraine's Zelensky, which included Trump asking the foreign leader to gather dirt on Biden.

The conversation was first flagged by an intelligence official who filed a whistleblower complaint with the community's inspector general. The inspector general deemed the complaint credible, but Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire initially refused to hand over the details of the complaint to Congress.

As lawmakers battled the administration for the complaint, it was reported that Trump withheld nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine roughly one week before the phone call about Biden.

"This week, the President has admitted to asking the President of Ukraine to take actions which would benefit him politically. The actions of the Trump presidency revealed the dishonorable fact of the President's betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security and betrayal of the integrity of our elections," Pelosi said on Tuesday.

Trump had admitted to discussing Biden with Zelensky but denied any political wrongdoing. On Wednesday, the White House released an incomplete transcript of the July 25th call between the two leaders.

While the transcript does show that there was no explicit "quid pro quo" between Trump and Zelensky for dirt on Biden, it's not exactly the total exoneration that the president and his allies have claimed.

Trump told Zelensky twice that the United States has been "very, very good to Ukraine" before asking the foreign leader to "do us a favor."

"There's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution, and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. ... It sounds horrible to me," Trump added, according to the document.

On Thursday, the House Intelligence Committee released a redacted version whistleblower complaint. The document detailed concerns that Trump was "using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election."

The complaint also implicates Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr. Giuliani was described as a "central figure" in the situation.

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement on Thursday that "nothing has changed with the release of this complaint." Grisham described the document as "nothing more than a collection of third-hand accounts of events and cobbled-together press clippings—all of which shows nothing improper."