With the testimony of a State Department official .. "Representatives" American resume the investigation to question Trump

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The US House of Representatives is resuming its inquiry into President Donald Trump's accountability by hearing a testimony from a senior State Department official on Monday, a day after a US judge rejected Republican objections to the Democratic-controlled House probe.

Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia Philip Reeker is expected to hold closed meetings with the House Foreign Affairs, Intelligence and Oversight Committees at Congress.

Philip Reeker, 54, a diplomat whose work extends to Ukraine, is the focus of a parliamentary investigation paving the way for Trump's dismissal. He has been in office since March 18.

The basis of accountability
Last month, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced an official inquiry into Trump's impeachment over his request in a telephone conversation with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelinsky in July 2019 to investigate corruption allegations attributed to former US Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, in a case linked to taking over. The latter is a responsibility in a Ukrainian energy company.

Biden is one of the frontrunners for the Democratic nomination to face Trump in the 2020 presidential election.

Trump denies putting any pressure on his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate Biden, and accuses Democrats of treating him unfairly.

Democratic members of the three House of Representatives committees responsible for accountability (foreign, intelligence, and censorship) said they were convinced they had gathered a great deal of evidence, and did not expect this phase of the investigation to continue for several more weeks before plenary sessions.

On the other hand, Republicans who control the Senate reject the ongoing parliamentary investigation and describe it as illegal, and Republicans are seeking a Senate resolution describing the investigation as illegal.

Judicial decision
On Friday, Judge Pearl Howell dismissed a lawsuit against the parliamentary accountability process and issued an order giving the Trump administration until the end of this month to provide the House Judiciary Committee with classified information in the report of special investigator Robert Mueller on possible Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election.

Judge Howell said the House of Representatives' formal approval of the decision to initiate accountability proceedings was not needed for the investigation to be true, one of the things Republicans insisted on the case.

The judge added that the need for the Judicial Committee in the House of Representatives to disclose the information withheld Muller's report "outweigh the need to continue to keep confidential."

It is noteworthy that the impeachment of the House of Representatives to Trump initially based on the report of a secret informant in the US intelligence services said that Trump pressured the Ukrainian president to investigate Joe Padin, his potential rival in the 2020 presidential election.

The Trump administration has refrained from handing over documents to House of Representatives investigative committees and is preventing former and current US government officials from testifying before lawmakers.