[John Vause, Cnn International Anchor:] in the Oval Office. And her name was once mentioned alongside Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi, but now Aung San Suu Kyi will speak out defending Myanmar's military against charges of genocide. U.S. House Democrats have decided to narrowly focus on impeachment case on the President's decision to ask Ukraine for help in his 2020 reelection campaign, the U.S. military aid for political investigation scandal. The House Judiciary Committee will debate two articles of impeachment on Wednesday, the end result of a two-month-long investigation which heard from dozens of witnesses, 17 testifying publicly. The articles are both related to the President's request for Ukraine to help with that 2020 reelection. That's article one, abuse of power. Article two, obstructing Congress, was based on the White House's refusal to provide documents and allow witnesses to testify.
[Rep. Jerry Nadler:] The framers of the Constitution prescribed a clear remedy for presidents who so violate their oath of office. That is the power of impeachment. Today, in service to our duty to the constitution and to our country, the House Committee on the Judiciary is introducing two articles of impeachment, charging the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, with committing high crimes and misdemeanors.
[Rep. Adam Schiff:] We stand here today because the President's continuing abuse of his power has left us no choice. To do nothing would make ourselves complicit in the President's abuse of his high office, the public trust, and our national security.
[Vause:] President Trump though downplaying all of this calling it impeachment lies and weak.
[Donald Trump, President Of The United States:] The Republicans have stuck together. It's a witch hunt. It's a terrible thing. But even the Democrats, they couldn't find very much because they put up two articles that, frankly a very weak. They're very weak.
[Vause:] So what's next in the impeachment process? CNN's Phil Mattingly has details.
[Phil Mattingly, Cnn U.s. Congressional Correspondent:] You have the articles of impeachment. Now we know there are two of them, abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. And that's obviously a huge step for basically laying the groundwork for an almost certain vote to impeach President Trump. But here's what's going to happen going forward. Right now you've got members of the Judiciary Committee, Democrats and Republicans meeting behind closed doors to kind of plan the process of actually considering those articles of impeachment and that's where they will initially start in the committee process where they will what's called mark up those articles to see if Republicans can get any changes, to see if Democrats want any changes. The assumption right now is no but it will be the legislative process in the committee. It will be lengthy. It will start Wednesday night and continue into Thursday. Don't expect many changes, if any changes at all to be made, but there will be certainly a lot of back and forth. And what this all tees up is a final House vote. We've been talking now for several weeks that House Democratic leaders have been targeting next week as the week that they vote to impeach President Trump. They are very much on target for that vote to happen at that timeline. Now, we don't know the exact day yet. We don't know the exact process of how it's going to be structured and played out. But we do know those two articles of impeachment, obstruction of Congress, abuse of power will get house four votes next week. Those votes to impeach President Trump only the third president in the United States history to be impeached. And then sending those articles of impeachment over to the United States Senate for a trial. A trial that likely won't start until sometime the first or second week in January. But we know for sure the House is moving, the House is moving quickly, legislative action in the committee this week, House floor vote next week.
[Vause:] CNN Presidential Historian and the former Director of the Nixon Presidential Library, Tim Naftali is with us now from Washington. So, Tim, we've got the Democrats now filing just two articles of impeachment narrowly focused on Ukraine, no specific mention of the Mueller report or the Russia investigation on election meddling, nothing to do with the Emoluments Clause, for example. It seems you know, even the White House was expecting, you know, a bigger scope here with the articles. Listen to this.
[Stephanie Grisham, White House Press Secretary:] We were anticipating certainly that they would come forth with articles of impeachment, but we thought actually that it was going to be four or five. I think that perhaps Speaker Pelosi had to make a deal with her Dems.
[Vause:] Do you think this is part of a deal that Pelosi stuck with the moderate Democrats and those Trump leaning states make it easier for them, or is this just the KISS theory at work, keep it keep it simple, stupid.
[Tim Naftali, Cnn Presidential Historian:] Well, I'm not surprised that the White House didn't quite understand the Constitution in this instance. Under the Constitution, the House has the sole prerogative of impeachment. And the members of the of the committee that the house chooses to look this over, they are to act like jurors. So they have to study information, evidence. You would have had to provided them with evidence from the Mueller investigation so that they could then pass judgment on whether there were any reasons for impeachment within that collection of data. All the data they received was the that I understand that they received was from the House Intelligence Committee. So they weren't going to have articles of impeachment regarding potential misconduct that other investigations had looked at but for which they received no information. It made it would make no sense at all. So the pool of information from which they decided to seek two articles of impeachment was that pool of information generated through the investigation of the House impeachment the House Intelligence Committee.
[Vause:] I want to ask you about the language you used at the very end of the articles of impeachment because this clearly this language was not included in the articles that were up against Nixon or Bill Clinton. After describing Trump as a threat to national security, it goes on to add, "President Trump does warrant impeachment and trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States." Was that language included because of the speculation that had been out there for a while that, you know, if Donald Trump in the unlikely event he was removed by the Senate from offers, he could actually run again in 2020 and win?
[Naftali:] Well, I believe that the language is there because Donald Trump is the first president in the 20th the first in the 20th century, 21st and 20th century, the modern era, who is being impeached at the end of his first term. Andrew Johnson, in the 19th century, actually had dreams of being a reelected of running again and being reelected. He was ultimately not nominated by the Democratic Party in 1868. But he actually could have run again in 1868. But after the change in the law, after the changes in the constitution following FDR, no American president can serve more than two terms. And so Donald Trump is the first president who faces the possibility of being impeached in his first term, and therefore, by the terms of the Constitution, he is eligible for reelection. If he were removed under the circumstances, this impeachment would prevent him from running again.
[Vause:] OK, very quickly. You know, one of the choices the Democrats had to make here was you know, impeach him now or just let voters decide on the President's fate in November next year. The Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff explained why they decided to impeach. Here he is.
[Schiff:] The argument, why don't you just wait amounts to this. Why don't you just let him cheat in one more election? Why not let him cheat just one more time? Why not let him have foreign help just one more time?
[Vause:] It always seemed an odd argument to me. You know, allow an election to the side the faith of the guy who's been trying to rig that election?
[Naftali:] Yes. Well, and I think there's another argument to be made. I understand why Congressman Schiff made the argument he made, but there's another argument, which is it if Congress allowed the behavior it learned about from the whistleblower to go unchecked, then I believe, was laying the foundation for future presidents to suborn and subvert U.S. foreign relations for their domestic political needs, and that's very dangerous. Regardless of the President, whether Republican or Democrat, you do not want presidents to use the Trump approach to foreign policy. So I think this impeachment, regardless of its short term political consequences, is letting or set down a marker for a future president. Your administration will be tainted if you attempt to imitate Donald Trump's approach to the Ukrainians.
[Vause:] We're out of time, but very quickly. So just with the argument though, is the obstruction of Congress charge here, the one which is I guess, in the overall scheme of things, the one which sort of has the greatest ramifications if that is not defended, if Congress is right to oversight is not defended?
[Naftali:] Well, I think both are very important. I believe that an abuse of power is one of the most dangerous source of misconduct by a president. Presidents have enormous power, and so much happens under the radar. If they see if they feel they have license to use the instruments of government to promote their own personal agendas and to go after their personal enemies, This country would be a very different place. Richard Nixon tried to do it and he got caught. It seems Donald Trump tried to do it and at the very least, he is going to bear forever a political stain because of it. The other is important too, but there's a long history of constitutional debate between the executive branch and the legislative branch as to how much compliance there should be. One of the things that never been that has never been tested by the Supreme Court or in the Supreme Court is the extent to which an executive the executive has to help Congress impeach it. That's never been tested. And so the second article, while very important, it's part of the long term struggle between the two of the branches of the U.S. government.
[Vause:] Yes. I guess my argument was that if you don't have that oversight, then essentially the executive can do essentially whatever they want. But your point, I take as well. Tim, thank you so much. Good to see you. I appreciate it.
[Naftali:] My pleasure. Thank you.
[Vause:] Just like the impeachment investigation which we found no political motivation behind the FBI's Russia investigation, President Trump still claims his campaign was spied on by the Bureau and he was the target of a deep state conspiracy. An Inspector General's report found both claims were baseless and the FBI was justified in opening investigation in ties between Russia and the Trump campaign. FBI Director Christopher Wray also shut down another Trump conspiracy theory saying there's no evidence of Ukrainian interference in the 2016 presidential election. It was all Russia. And Wray who was appointed by Trump stood by the I.G. report.
[Christopher Wray, Director, Fbi:] The Inspector General did not find that political bias or improper motivations impacted the decision to open the Russia interference investigation or the decisions to use certain investigative tools in the investigation. But that doesn't end the inquiry for me. What's important to me is I make sure and we make sure that we're doing everything by the book, bias or no bias.
[Vause:] The I.G. did find 17 examples of mistakes, in particular, how surveillance applications were handled with regards to the Trump campaign and the aide Carter Page. The President and his backers have lashed onto that one element saying it proves spying and the conspiracy. Here's the Attorney General William Barr.
[William Barr, Attorney General, United States:] clearly spied upon. I mean, that's what electronic surveillance is. I think wiring people up to go in and talk to people and make recordings of their conversations is spying. I think going through people's e-mails, which they did as a result of the FISA warrant. They went through everything.
[Vause:] President Trump now suggesting that because Wray spoke out and told the truth and use facts, his time at the FBI may be short. He tweeted, "I don't know why what current report director sorry, what report current director of the FBI Cristopher Wray was, but sure it wasn't the one given to me. With that kind of attitude, he will never be able to fix the FBI, which is badly broken, despite having some of the greatest men and women working." Tuesday offered a 2017 flashback at the White House. President Trump was attacking the Russia probe and slamming the FBI director. He was also meeting with the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. CNN's Matthew Chance reports now from Moscow.
[Matthew Chance, Cnn Senior International Correspondent:] Well, the fact neither U.S nor Russian media were allowed to even take a photograph of the meeting between President Trump or the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, underlines just how sensitive this encounter was particularly at a time when President Trump is facing an impeachment process but withholding military aid from Ukraine, a country which Russia has impart invaded. In a news conference after the meeting, Foreign Minister Lavrov spoke of a range of issues that him and the U.S. President have discussed, arms control, the conflicts in Syria, Ukraine, and Afghanistan, the situation with the Iranian nuclear deal, and economic cooperation between the United States and Russia. He did not give a clear answer, however, when asked repeatedly, President Trump had warned Russia not to interfere in U.S. elections. The White House insists that President Trump did issue such a warning. When pressed on the issue, Lavrov acknowledged that the U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke on the matter, but made no reference to President Trump. Well, this was the first official meeting in the Oval Office between Trump and Lavrov since May 2017 when Trump is alleged to have discussed highly classified intelligence with the Russian Foreign Minister and the then-Russian ambassador. Lavrov also confirms an invitation for Trump to attend Victory Day celebrations in Moscow next year, but said that the American president was yet to decide whether or not he would come. Matthew Chance CNN, Moscow.
[Vause:] Volcanic conditions on New Zealand's White Island are hindering recovery efforts. Two days after an eruption killed at least six people, it's still too dangerous to deploy teams to the island. Eight people remain missing, sad to say another eruption is likely within 24 hours.
[Graham Leonard, Volcanic Geologist, Gns Science:] In summary, yesterday there was a there was a high risk of an eruption. Today there was an even higher risk of interruption. And the parameters are worsening at the moment.
[Vause:] Many survivors suffered excessive burns to their bodies as well as their lungs. 25 people remain in hospital in critical condition. Coming up on CNN NEWSROOM, we're on the eve of the Brexit election in the U.K. and totally uphill for Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Also ahead, a wakeup call for the newest billionaire Democrat running for the White House. Michael Bloomberg says his opponents would get eaten alive by Donald Trump.