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Trump says the call was perfect. "What the president has admitted to and says it's 'perfect', I say it's perfectly wrong. It's bribery," Pelosi said.
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The House opened its historic hearings to remove America's 45th President to the public this week, with more to come on Friday, launching a political battle for public opinion that will further test the nation in one of the most polarising eras of modern times.
Democrats and Republicans are hardening their messages to voters.
Trump assails the proceedings as a "sham" and a "hoax" and House Republican Party Leader Kevin McCarthy dismisses the diplomats' accounts as hearsay, at best second-hand information.
The President flatly denies the latest revelations. During Wednesday's hearing a diplomat testified that another State Department witness overheard Trump asking about the investigations the day after his phone call with Kiev.
"First I've heard of it," Trump said, brushing off the question at the White House.
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The Associated Press reported on Thursday that a second US Embassy official also overheard Trump's conversation.
On Friday (US time), Americans will hear from Marie Yovanovitch, the career foreign service officer whom Trump recalled as the US ambassador to Ukraine after what one State Department official has called a "campaign of lies" against her by the President's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
At its core, the impeachment inquiry concerns Trump's July phone call with Zelensky that first came to attention when an anonymous government whistleblower filed a complaint.
In the phone conversation, Trump asked for a "favour", according to an account provided by the White House. He wanted an investigation of Democrats and 2020 rival Joe Biden. Later it was revealed that at the time the administration was withholding military aid from Ukraine.
"The bribe is to grant or withhold military assistance in return for a public statement of a fake investigation into the elections," Pelosi said. "That's bribery."
"It's also spelled out in the Constitution as one of the possible grounds for impeachment - 'treason, bribery or other and high crimes and misdemeanours'."
On the first day of the House hearings, career diplomats William Taylor and George Kent delivered sombre testimony about recent months.
They testified how an ambassador was fired, the new Ukraine government was confused and they discovered an "irregular channel" - a shadow US foreign policy orchestrated by Giuliani that raised alarms in diplomatic and national security circles.
Top US diplomat in Ukraine William Taylor, right, and career Foreign Service officer George Kent, left, are sworn in to testify at the first public impeachment hearings into President Donald Trump this week. Credit:AP
It's a dramatic, complicated story, and the Democrats' challenge is to capture voter attention about the significance of Trump's interactions with a distant country.
With a hostile Russia its border, Ukraine is a young democracy relying on the US as it reaches to the West.
"We're in Chapter One of a process," said Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, a member of the Intelligence Committee conducting the inquiry. The challenge, he said, is educating Americans about what happened "and then explaining why it matters".
AP