Forget creating more committees. Forget trying to get at the secret server in the White House. Forget issuing more subpoenas that will never be obeyed. The House already has everything it needs for impeachment, right now, and all of it was provided by President Donald J. Trump. His public statements—and especially his tweets—are a record of impeachable admissions.
Like the suspect in the last minutes of every episode of Law & Order or Perry Mason, or Jack Nicholson’s bug-eyed Marine colonel bellowing at the end of A Few Good Men, Trump is a compulsive confessor. He can’t help himself. He wants you to know that he did everything he’s accused of doing, and that he had every right to do it. From abuse of power to witness intimidation, from attempts to benefit from foreign payments—emoluments, one might call them—to a betrayal of his oath to take care that the laws are faithfully executed, Trump’s tweets and public outbursts offer more than enough material to draw up multiple articles of impeachment.
The most flagrant offenses Trump has admitted to so far fall under the broad charge of the abuse of power. Trump has said that he believes Article II of the Constitution gives him the authority to do anything he wants. This, of course, is industrial-strength toxic nonsense. He does not have the right to hijack the Oval Office for personal use, something we know he’s done because the sudden presence of a microphone is, to Trump, more powerful than truth serum.