Donald Trump should be impeached. I feel compelled to be as intellectually honest about that as possible. It's not just that Michael Cohen's sworn testimony in a Manhattan courthouse that Trump directed him to commit criminal acts rendered Trump an "unindicted co-conspirator," though it certainly did. It's that Cohen's confession and the documentary evidence federal prosecutors have to prove it mean Trump intentionally and knowingly participated in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the American people.
I want to be really clear about this. Trump didn't just violate campaign finance law—he willfully and intentionally engaged in criminal activity in order to deprive American voters of being fully informed about who they were voting for in advance of casting their ballots. I am by no means a trained lawyer, but to me, defrauding the American people in order to get elected to the highest office in the land qualifies as "high crimes and misdemeanors," the Constitutional bar for impeaching the president.
But since very few Republicans or Democrats wanted to have a serious discussion about impeachment, I found myself in odd company. Conservative columnists Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post and Bret Stephens of the New York Times, of all people, laid out their cases for impeachment, the main thrust of which I agreed with. Stephens quoted part of what then-GOP Rep. Lindsey Graham said in 1998 as he led the charge for impeaching President Bill Clinton.
President Richard Nixon, Graham said, faced the threat of impeachment in 1974 because had "cheated the electoral system by concealing efforts of a political break-in." Clinton, he added, was facing impeachment after "cheating our legal system," through perjury, evidence tampering, and conspiring to prevent false testimony.
"We believe he assaulted our legal system in every way," Graham declared on the House floor in December of 1998. "Let it be said that any President who cheats our institutions shall be impeached." Unless the year is 2018 and the president, with whom you regularly play golf, hails from your own party, apparently.
Just three years ago, NBC's Chuck Todd revisited Clinton's impeachment trial with Graham and asked if the benefit of hindsight had changed his feelings on the topic.
"Having a consensual sexual act wasn't a high crime or misdemeanor to me," he responded. "But when you take the legal system and you trash it, when you try to intimidate witnesses, when you hide evidence, when you basically assassinate people's character to help yourself in a lawsuit, I think that needs to be dealt with." Tell me that doesn't sound like an exact description of Trump's actions.
Todd asked Graham if knowing what he knows now he would impeach all over again.
"For the manipulation of the legal system, yeah," Graham said.
If that was his standard in 1998 and his standard in 2015, what's different now other than a far more flagrant assault on the rule of law by a sitting U.S. president?
Trump has surely committed other crimes besides the one he was tagged with by Cohen's plea, likely before he was candidate, as a candidate, and as a president. He has both attempted to collude with Russia during election and obstructed justice as commander in chief in plain sight. Whether prosecutors are able to prove those crimes remains to be seen. But the worst possible offense in my mind—criminally scamming the American people in order to get elected—is already on the books.
Fortunately, constitutional law scholar Laurence Tribe tweeted out an excerpt of a book he co-wrote, To End A Presidency: The Power of Impeachment, affirming my view.
While creating the Constitution, [the Framers] repeatedly described corrupt acquisition of the presidency as a paradigm case for impeachment.
And yet Congress is poised to do nothing about it—at least in the near term. Not only are GOP lawmakers in the majority both saying they need more information and yet doing little to get it, but Democratic lawmakers remain electorally terrified of the I-word.
Morally, ethically and legally speaking, I personally believe the principled thing is to start broaching the topic. But that's not the way of Washington on any given day and it's certainly not how Capitol Hill rolls just several months out from an election. And politically speaking, not talking impeachment on the Democratic side appears to be working quite well. A new Fox News poll (of all things) provided evidence that Americans are steadily gaining faith in the Russia probe and special counsel Robert Mueller, in particular, despite Trump's incessant attacks on the investigation.
Approval of Special Counsel Robert Mueller stands at 59 percent, up 11 points since July, and 40 percent expect the investigation will find Trump committed criminal or impeachable offenses, up 5 points.
The key indicator here is the upward trend—especially in terms of Mueller’s approval rating—because earlier polling had suggested Trump was chipping away at Mueller's reputation. Instead, multiple polls now show overall support for the investigation and Mueller trending in a positive direction.
It's also reasonable to believe that trend will continue upward as Mueller secures more convictions. Additionally, the overall stench around Trump just continues to grow as federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, the New York State Attorney General and the Manhattan District Attorney circle both the Trump Organization and Trump Foundation. And whatever Trump might be able to do to block Mueller, he's powerless to stop those inquiries. This week, we not only seem to have gotten the smoking gun necessary to impeach Trump from Cohen, we also appear to have moved beyond the question of whether the law will ultimately catch up to Trump one way or the other, even if it's not while he's still pr*sident.
So even as the Democrats studiously avoid talking impeachment, the corruption enveloping Trump, his White House, and his family business and foundation is serving as the unavoidable backdrop to the final months of the midterms. In fact, Democrats believe Trump is so pervasive with all the twitter tirades, seedy revelations, and ongoing investigations, they're purposely leaning into kitchen table issues rather than talking Trump.
“The voters who are paying attention to the national back and forth will have heard more than enough about Michael Cohen or the Helsinki summit,” said Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic strategist. “Our obligation is to make sure they hear about health care repeal and tax giveaways.”
Electorally speaking, that seems like a solid bet—even more so than it did several months ago when it looked like the electorate was growing more distrustful of Mueller and his investigation. And if there’s one thing we can count on, it’s that Trump and his henchmen will get increasingly desperate and even more crazy as the weeks wind down toward Election Day.
Until then, just imagine what it will be like to have actual adults like Reps. Elijah Cummings of Maryland and Jerrold Nadler of New York running the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees respectively. Now, isn’t that a pretty picture. Nothing but sugar plums there, my friends.