Trump news - live: President reacts as impeachment speculation intensifies and his own lawyer admits he cannot rule out that aid to Ukraine was used as bribe

Donald Trump has insisted that he is not taking talk of impeachment seriously as he once again claimed he had done nothing wrong in a phone call with the president of Ukraine.

Arriving at the United Nations in New York for a session on religious freedom, he said the row over his “perfect” phone call with Volodymyr Zelensky was a “Democrat witch-hunt”, saying: “They failed with Russia, they failed with recession, they failed with everything, and now they’re bringing this up.”

Meanwhile, his personal lawyer, the former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, told Fox Business he could not be “100 per cent sure” that Mr Trump didn’t threaten to cut off aid to Ukraine unless the former Soviet country agreed to investigate Joe Biden’s son.

The president is scheduled to have a series of meetings today with fellow world leaders, including the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, Egypt’s Abdel Fattah al-Sisi - whom he once reportedly referred to as “my favorite dictator”, and what is described as a “pull aside” with New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern.

Later impeachment pressure will build from a different direction, as the Democrat-led House judiciary committee holds a session entitled “Presidential corruption: emoluments and profiting off the presidency”.