WASHINGTON • House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Thursday that President Donald Trump has already admitted to bribery in the Ukraine scandal that is at the heart of a Democratic-led inquiry, accusing him of an impeachable offence under the United States Constitution.

“The bribe is to grant or withhold military assistance in return for a public statement of a fake investigation into the elections. That’s bribery,” Ms Pelosi told a news conference the day after the first public hearing in the impeachment inquiry she announced in September.

“What the President has admitted to and says it’s ‘perfect’, I say it’s perfectly wrong. It’s bribery,” said the top Democrat in Congress.

Democrats are looking into whether Mr Trump abused his power by withholding US$391 million (S$530 million) in US security aid for Ukraine as leverage to pressure Kiev to conduct two investigations that would benefit him politically. The money, approved by Congress to help a US ally combat Russia-backed separatists in the eastern part of the country, was later provided to Ukraine. Mr Trump has denied any wrongdoing.

If the House approves articles of impeachment – formal charges – against him, the Senate would then hold a trial on whether to convict him and remove him from office.

Ms Pelosi’s comments could offer a preview of the articles of impeachment that Democrats might put forward. She also said Mr Trump’s administration had committed “obstruction of Congress” by blocking testimony of officials summoned to testify in the inquiry.

The US Constitution states that impeachable offences include “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanours”.

Democrats have begun to use “bribery” or “attempted bribery” in discussing Mr Trump’s actions. According to precedent, obstruction could be another potential article of impeachment.

Republicans accused the House Democrats of already having made up their minds to pass articles of impeachment, but Ms Pelosi denied that was the case, saying the inquiry must play out before any decision could be made.

The focus of the impeachment inquiry is a July 25 phone call in which Mr Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Democratic rival Joe Biden and the former vice-president’s son Hunter, who had served as a board member for a Ukrainian energy company called Burisma. Mr Trump also asked Mr Zelensky to probe a debunked conspiracy theory embraced by some Trump allies that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 US election.

Ms Pelosi compared Mr Trump’s actions to former president Richard Nixon’s actions in the Watergate scandal that led him in 1974 to become the only US president to resign.

Mr Trump’s actions to enlist a foreign power to help him in a US election and the obstruction of information about that “make what Nixon did look almost small”, she said.

US intelligence agencies and former special counsel Robert Mueller concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 election with a campaign of hacking and propaganda to boost Mr Trump’s candidacy.

Ms Pelosi said Russian President Vladimir Putin has benefited from numerous Trump actions, including the withholding of the security aid to Ukraine. “All roads lead to Putin,” Ms Pelosi said, also mentioning the withdrawal of US troops in Syria and actions by Mr Trump that have called into question US support for Nato.

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