This Is How Impeachment Begins

- 

The persistent skepticism that has surrounded President Trump’s legal travails arose again toward the end of February when news reports claimed that special counsel Robert Mueller would soon finish his final report. If Mueller was almost done, the thinking went, he couldn’t have much more. The chances of anything touching Trump directly started to appear lower than the nearly two-year investigation’s ending with a whimper.

Michael Cohen’s testimony before the House Oversight Committee all but destroyed that presumption. Trump’s former attorney and fixer alleged not only systematic criminality by his former boss but deep culpability in the Russia scandal itself. In the wake of that hearing, it seems inevitable that Trump will face impeachment in the House (though, given his party’s continued loyalty and the need to obtain the votes of 67 senators, probably not removal). In fact, future historians will likely consider Cohen’s testimony the first hearing in the process.

Cohen’s opening statement reviewed many of Trump’s familiar degeneracies. He is casually racist and habitually criminal, gleefully refusing to pay his contractors and arranging petty scams like using his charitable foundation for self-enrichment. Cohen also produced evidence, in the form of signed checks, that Trump violated campaign-finance law by reimbursing Cohen for payments to Stormy Daniels during the race. Trump signed one of those checks in 2017, as a sitting president. And, incidentally, by signing a Trump Organization check, he broke his promise not to involve himself in any business activities while in office. All of this made for spectacular television, even if Cohen’s explanation of his motivations was self-serving and disingenuous. (The real reason he flipped is simple, amoral, and obvious: He had no choice.)