Evidence against Donald Trump is 'overwhelming', final House impeachment report finds

The evidence for impeaching Donald Trump, the US president, for misconduct in office and obstruction is "overwhelming," the final report on the House investigation into the US leader said Tuesday.

"The evidence of the President's misconduct is overwhelming, and so too is the evidence of his obstruction of Congress," said the report, meant to support formal charges against Trump.

"The impeachment inquiry has found that President Trump, personally and acting through agents within and outside of the US government, solicited the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, to benefit his reelection."

The committee is scheduled to meet this evening to vote on its findings.

The matter will then go to the House Judiciary Committee, which will open its proceedings on Wednesday.

If the full House eventually votes to approve formal impeachment charges, a trial would be held in the Republican-led US Senate, where a two-thirds majority of those present would be required to convict and remove Trump from office.

At issue is whether Trump misused the power of his office to pressure Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading contender for the Democratic nomination to face Trump in the 2020 election.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing and accused Democrats of using the impeachment process to overturn the results of the 2016 presidential election. Opinion polls show Americans are bitterly divided over whether to impeach Trump.

Politicians and the public have heard testimony from current and former officials that military aid was withheld from Ukraine and that a White House meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president, was conditioned on Kyiv conducting the probe as well as one into a debunked conspiracy theory about Ukraine interference in the 2016 US election.