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Donald Trump has already committed an impeachable offense, according to federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York. In a December sentencing filing for Trump's longtime attorney Michael Cohen, prosecutors alleged that Cohen made two hush-money payments to women with whom Trump had affairs in order to "suppress the stories" from reaching the public and “thereby prevent them from influencing the [2016] election."
"[W]ith respect to both payments," they wrote in the filing, "[Cohen] acted in coordination with and at the direction of Individual-1."
Individual 1—if it wasn't obvious enough, given the publicly released recording of Cohen and Trump mulling the payment—was later identified by Cohen as Trump. In short, Trump directed Cohen deceive the American people in order to steal the election.
As constitutional law scholar Laurence Tribe has noted and written in the co-authored book To End A Presidency, "While creating the Constitution, [the Framers] repeatedly described corrupt acquisition of the presidency as a paradigm case for impeachment.” But when we first learned about news of the Trump-Cohen conspiracy in early December, the last thing House Democrats wanted to discuss before they had even been sworn in was the notion that impeachment proceedings were imminent. As I wrote then, even if it was the right remedy, it still wasn't the politically smart remedy.
But with BuzzFeed's new report Thursday night that Trump directed Cohen to give false testimony to Congress, Democrats are promising to investigate and have even started to invoke the once-dreaded I-word. BuzzFeed alleges that Cohen told the special counsel that Trump directed him to lie to Congress about key aspects of the Trump Tower Moscow Project, and that "internal company emails, text messages, and a cache of other documents" exist to prove it.
If this allegation proves true, Trump will have committed two impeachable offenses that in broad strokes formed the basis for impeachment proceedings against two past presidents: Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. In fact, as the House undertook its final debate over Clinton's impeachment in 1998, Lindsey Graham explained the overlapping parallels between the offenses of both men.
Nixon cheated -- he cheated the electoral system by concealing efforts of a political break-in, and his people thought the other side deserved to be cheated. They thought his enemies deserved to be mistreated. Ladies and gentlemen, they were wrong.
Today, Republicans, with a small handful of Democrats, will vote to impeach President Clinton. Why? Because we believe he committed crimes resulting in cheating our legal system. We believe he lied under oath numerous times, that he tampered with evidence, that he conspired to present false testimony to a court of law. We believe he assaulted our legal system in every way.
In Graham’s framing, Nixon cheated the electoral system through a cover-up and Clinton cheated the legal system through a cover-up. After the election, Nixon would then circle back to obstruct the investigation into his illegal acts. But at base, both Nixon and Clinton intended to cheat our foundational institutions of their proper functions. Of course, it's worth mentioning here that whatever moral judgment one might make about Clinton's conduct, he lied to cover up an affair. If the new BuzzFeed allegation proves true, Trump conspired to suppress information key to understanding his ties to Russia and whether he's acting in the best interests of the United States as commander in chief. In that sense, they're not even close to equivalent offenses. Clinton was never a clear and present danger to the nation.
As federal prosecutors have alleged, Trump cheated the American people by depriving them of information critical to their consideration of who should hold the highest office in the land. And if Trump truly directed Cohen to lie to Congress, he also cheated our political system in its design to serve as a check on executive power. Trump allegedly cheated twice—before the election to steal the presidency, and after the election to keep the presidency.
As Graham noted back in '98 while pondering such crimes of obstruction, "Let it be said that any President who cheats our institutions shall be impeached." Donald Trump now appears to have repeatedly attempted to cheat the very democratic institutions that are designed to protect and defend our republic.
Over the course of the next couple months, the American people will hear from Michael Cohen and presumably from other people who testify about Trump’s conduct. If the allegation is borne out by the testimony of first-hand witnesses, Trump’s base of support—which has already begun to weaken over his politically unpalatable shutdown—could and should erode even further. He has already fallen below 40 percent in the aggregate of approval polls. Even if Trump gets a small bump of support as Democrats focus their resources on his alleged obstruction, he is arguably as weak as he has been at any point in his presidency. It’s a downward trend that only stands to get worse.