RIGHT SPEAK: Incoming Democrat Chairman Makes Definitive Case Against Impeaching Trump

Twenty years ago, Jerrold Nadler argued in Congress that impeaching the president based on private, consensual sex was a ‘partisan coup d'etat.’

Hours after midterm election night 2018, Mollie Hemingway reported that incoming House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) had impeachment on his mind, cavalierly chatting away on his phone on a train to Washington about the prospect of raising it against President Donald Trump. If his recent words are any indication, he may very well make good on that threat.

Following the release of the sentencing memorandum for the president’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, which alleged that Cohen had engaged in campaign finance violations at the behest of then-candidate Trump, Nadler took to the airwaves to lodge his most serious claim yet regarding presidential impeachment. Here’s the relevant exchange from CNN’s “State of the Union” with Jake Tapper:

TAPPER: If it is proven that the president directed or coordinated with Cohen to commit these [two federal campaign finance] felonies…are those impeachable offenses?
NADLER: Well, they would be impeachable offenses…even though they were committed before the president became president, they were committed in the service of fraudulently obtaining the office. That would be the — that would be an impeachable offense.

Nadler was careful to hedge, caveating that “You don’t necessarily launch an impeachment against the president because he committed an impeachable offense.”