Trump given a week to decide on representation in impeachment panel

The US House Judiciary Committee in a letter on Friday asked President Donald Trump to notify it within a week if he intends to be represented at the next stage of the impeachment proceedings.

"Please provide the Committee with the notice of whether your counsel intends to participate, specifying which of the privileges your counsel seeks to exercise, no later than 5:00 pm on December 6, 2019," the committee's chairman Jerrold Nadler wrote to Trump.

The panel earlier said that it would hold its first impeachment hearing on December 4 to discuss constitutional grounds for presidential impeachment and analyse the evidence gathered thus far -- mainly through depositions of witnesses in the House Committee on Intelligence.

Trump has hitherto refused to cooperate with the probe initiated by the House Democrats who seek to prove that he abused his powers by pressuring Ukraine into investigating his political rivals -- former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.

The US President has repeatedly said that he did not engage in a quid pro quo and characterised the impeachment bid as another political witch hunt by the Democrats to reverse the results of the 2016 presidential polls.