Michael Cohen plea deal fuels Trump impeachment frenzy
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Michael Cohen's guilty plea, in a matter of hours, has kicked up speculation about Democratic impeachment efforts against President Trump, as lawmakers declare the president is now implicated in a criminal conspiracy.
Former Trump lawyer Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations, saying Trump directed hush money to two women who claimed affairs with him.
While the president and his allies deny Trump is in any legal trouble, the controversy raised concerns on the right that Democrats will use the issue to pursue impeachment should they reclaim the House majority.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}“The framers of the Constitution provided impeachment as the way to remove an unfit President,” longtime impeachment supporter Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, tweeted on Wednesday. “The ultimate question is, does Congress have the will?”
Top Democratic leaders aren't all following suit. But Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., who as ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee would likely play a pivotal role in any impeachment effort, said in a statement that, "The President of the United States is now directly implicated in a criminal conspiracy.”
He added, "[T]he Judiciary Committee has real work to do.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"The Congress stands at a crossroads. Democrats are poised to take action to respond to this culture of corruption that has taken hold under Mr. Trump and Republican Congressional Majorities. It is not too late for my Republican colleagues to put our country ahead of their politics and join us in our work."
Asked about the impeachment talk, Nadler told The New York Times he needs to see more evidence from the special counsel probe, but added, “We may get there.”
Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., top Democrat on the oversight committee, also called for a congressional hearing with Cohen.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Other top Democrats have remained quiet on the possibility of pursuing Trump impeachment.
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California on Wednesday said that impeaching Trump is "not a priority" for her party and that she prefers for Democrats, if they win the House in November, to conduct oversight and ensure Special Counsel Robert Mueller can finish his work.
"[I]mpeachment has to spring from something else,” she told reporters. "If and when the information emerges about that, we'll see. It's not a priority on the agenda going forward unless something else comes forward."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said on Wednesday that it is too early to talk about impeachment, but added that the country is on “the verge of constitutional crisis.”
“I think the first conversation is about the seriousness of what happened yesterday,” Durbin said. “We are on the threshold of a constitutional crisis.”
Durbin added: “To have the president’s personal counsel suggest that he was directed by the president to commit an act which led to a plea of guilty ... is a serious allegation.”
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Meanwhile, billionaire former hedge fund manager and founder of the group Need to Impeach, Tom Steyer, launched a media blitz following Tuesday’s news. Steyer’s group quickly put out a digital ad about impeaching Trump and is working on a similar ad for television.
“The evidence continues to mount up,” Steyer said in a video. “The question is, when will Congress pay attention?”
Most Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill deflected from answering questions about the possibility of impeachment.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}“That is in hands of prosecutor that is working its way through courts,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said when questioned if Trump committed a crime by allegedly ordering the hush money to be paid. “They will handle that and prosecutor’s office will handle that if someone is accused of something they have the right to defend themselves.”
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said he wouldn’t judge whether Cohen’s implication of Trump in the hush money scandal was more serious than the allegations leveled against former President Bill Clinton that led to his impeachment hearings, but that he doesn’t see impeachment as a serious matter currently.
“Not at this point,” Hatch said. “But we have to take these matters very seriously.”
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}In regards to the impeachment proceedings brought against Clinton, one longtime Republican senator’s words came back to haunt him on Tuesday.
MSNBC commentator Lawrence O’Donnell posted a video of now-Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., speaking on the floor as one of the prosecutors in the House of Representatives’ case for removing Clinton from office.
“You don’t even have to be convicted of a crime to lose your job in this constitutional republic if this body determines your conduct as a public official is clearly out of bounds in your role,” the then-congressman says in the nearly 20-year-old clip.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}“Because impeachment is not about punishment,” he said. “Impeachment is about cleansing the office. Impeachment is about restoring honor and integrity to the office.”
The clip quickly spread across social media with Trump critics asking if he still believes in that standard.
In the hours after the news broke about Cohen and ex-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's conviction, Trump and White House staffers went on the offensive, with Trump slamming Cohen during a speech in West Virginia and tweeting on Wednesday that Cohen "plead[ed] guilty to two counts of campaign finance violations that are not a crime. President Obama had a big campaign finance violation and it was easily settled!"
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Trump appeared to be referencing that Obama's 2008 campaign was fined $375,000 by the Federal Election Commission for reporting violations that stemmed from missing notices for donations received during the final days of the campaign.
Nearly a dozen people close to the president, including current and former White House aides, told Politico that Tuesday was one of the darkest days of Trump’s presidency and that many are worried the revelations will bolster support for Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 elections.
“There was political momentum building to wrap up the Mueller probe soon,” a former administration official told Politico. “At the very least, in the short term, these two developments will pretty significantly bolster the office of the special counsel and people’s perceptions of it.”
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Despite the talk of impeachment, some experts say there is not enough evidence to impeach Trump.
“We’re far away from [an] impeachable offense or a criminal offense on the part of the president,” Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz said.
Fox News' Jason Donner and The Associated Press contributed to this report.