Trump Forecast: Mostly Cloudy With a Chance of Impeachment

BuzzFeed reported last night that President Donald Trump ordered his former lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about his Moscow Trump Tower project. Whoa if true, and by “whoa,” I mean “suborning perjury and obstruction of justice.” And those are clearly impeachable offenses, unlike any we have seen from Trump before, writes Noah Feldman. It’s not the first crime Trump’s been accused of; he allegedly ordered Cohen to break campaign-finance laws in the Stormy Daniels affair. But that was when he was a candidate. This allegation involves his behavior as president and is thus far more serious, in Noah’s estimation. Read the whole thing.

There’s still a good chance this won’t matter, of course, but it will be hard for even congressional Republicans to ignore it, writes Jonathan Bernstein. It could also force Democratic lawmakers to stop waiting for Robert Mueller’s report before they talk more seriously about impeachment (as they reportedly are doing). And maybe it’s time for Mueller to show some cards anyway, so Congress can deal with this issue ASAP, Jonathan writes. As both Noah and Jonathan note, future Attorney General William Barr’s refusal to promise to make the Mueller report public may be inspiring investigators to leak this bombshell, and it could speed up the impeachment clock.