Ayesha Rascoe

Updated at 6:20 p.m. ET

A federal watchdog concluded that President Trump broke the law when he froze assistance funds for Ukraine last year, according to a report unveiled on Thursday.

The White House has said that it believed Trump was acting within his legal authority.

President Trump has decided to stay out of the impeachment inquiry being conducted by the House of Representatives.

White House counsel Pat Cipollone rejected an offer from House Democrats that would have allowed the president to send counsel to represent him at future impeachment hearings.

In a short two-paragraph letter to Democrats, Cipollone said the impeachment inquiry is "completely baseless and has violated basic principles of due process and fundamental fairness."

Updated at 10:13 a.m. ET

Vice President Pence made a surprise visit to Iraq on Saturday to greet U.S. troops ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday.

Pence and second lady Karen Pence flew to Al Asad Air Base in western Iraq, aboard a C-17 military plane, along with the vice president's chief of staff Marc Short, his national security adviser Keith Kellogg and a small group of reporters.

The visit was kept secret because of security concerns.

Updated at 5:15 p.m. ET

President Trump had what he called a "wonderful and very productive" meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday, at the same time as House impeachment hearings got underway on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Updated at 12 p.m. ET

The impeachment inquiry into President Trump turned its spotlight on Monday on four top White House officials, asking them to testify behind closed doors as Democrats probe whether Trump held up military aid as leverage to get Ukraine to investigate his political rivals.

But none of them showed up, citing legal advice.

President Trump said on Friday that he knows what it's like to be treated unfairly, comparing his own experience with an impeachment inquiry in Congress to inequities in the U.S. criminal justice system.

Trump was speaking at the Second Step Presidential Justice Forum held at the historically black Benedict College in South Carolina. The forum also featured Democrats vying for the presidential nomination, and was focused on the future of criminal justice policies.

Vice President Mike Pence scolded the NBA and Nike on Thursday for backing down from support for Hong Kong protesters after China complained.

"Some of the NBA's biggest players and owners, who routinely exercise their freedom to criticize this country, lose their voices when it comes to the freedom and rights of the people of China," Pence said in a speech about the Trump administration's China policy in Washington.

Updated at 2:45 p.m. ET

President Trump says he is lifting sanctions on Turkey after the country agreed to what he called a permanent cease-fire in northern Syria, ending Turkey's military offensive that began after the U.S. pulled troops from the area.

Trump argued that his decision to remove U.S. forces — criticized by U.S. Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike — helped to bring the deal to fruition.

President Trump says his request for Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden was driven by his concerns about corruption.

"This is not about politics, this is about corruption," Trump said last week. "If you look and you read our Constitution and many other things, I have an obligation to look at corruption."

But anti-corruption advocates say his administration's record of fighting corruption is weak and not in line with Trump's rhetoric.

Updated at 4:35 p.m. ET

President Trump held a press conference Wednesday with visiting Finnish President Sauli Niinistö, as the impeachment probe into Trump's conduct intensifies.

Trump faced questions about the House inquiry that was sparked by a whistleblower complaint that accuses Trump of pressuring Ukraine's president to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

It's no secret that former national security adviser John Bolton did not see eye to eye with President Trump on a whole range of subjects.

But in his first public remarks since his ouster earlier this month, Bolton made clear just how deeply disconnected he was from his former boss on how to handle North Korea.

The whistleblower complaint released Thursday charges that White House officials attempted to limit access to potentially damaging details about President Trump's call with Ukraine's president by using a classified system reserved for highly sensitive information.

Updated at 12:30 p.m. ET

At the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, President Trump told world leaders to reject "globalism" and to look out for the interests of their own countries first.

"The future does not belong to globalists; it belongs to patriots," Trump said.

Tuesday marked Trump's third address to the General Assembly as president. As he has done in the past, Trump used his remarks to the international organization to make the case for his "America first" style of diplomacy that puts nationalism ahead of multilateral efforts.

A House committee will take up legislation on Tuesday aimed at preventing mass shootings, as lawmakers and the White House move to respond to a recent spate of attacks across the country.

The bills being considered by the House Judiciary Committee include measures that would limit access to high-capacity gun magazines and block any person convicted of a hate crime from obtaining a firearm.

Former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Cory Booker went head-to-head over their records on criminal justice on the second night of the Democratic presidential primary debate in Detroit.

This was a fight that had been brewing for a while. The New Jersey senator spent the past few weeks repeatedly criticizing Biden for his role, when he was a Delaware senator, in crafting the landmark 1994 crime law that many criminal justice reform activists identify as one of the major contributors to the swelling of the U.S. prison population.

Updated at 5:05 p.m. ET

Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta is stepping down after criticism over his role in a nonprosecution deal reached years ago with the well-connected businessman accused of sex crimes, Jeffrey Epstein.

Acosta appeared on Friday at the White House with President Trump and announced his resignation.

"I do not think it is fair for this administration's Labor Department to have Epstein as its focus rather than the incredible economy we have today," Acosta said. "The right thing was to step aside."

Updated at 2:47 p.m. ET

President Trump is standing by Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta, at least for now.

Acosta is facing calls for his resignation after new sex trafficking charges were filed against multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein on Monday.

Tucked into the 2017 law intended to cut Americans' taxes was a program aimed at helping communities struggling with high unemployment and run-down housing.

What's not clear is who's actually getting the most assistance from it.

The program allows investors to defer and potentially lower their capital gains taxes in exchange for investing in designated low-income neighborhoods.

Sen. Kamala Harris of California directly challenged former Vice President Joe Biden over his past opposition to federal busing policy, in a heated exchange on the second night of the first Democratic presidential primary debate.

This issue, from early in Biden's lengthy career in Congress, has hung over his campaign for president, creating a clear target for challengers to his front-runner status.