Impeachment debate moves to center of midterm fight

Impeachment has moved to the center of the midterm debate following the remarkable assertion from Michael Cohen that President Trump orchestrated illegal hush-money payments through his former personal attorney to silence two women ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

The developments are leading to a scramble by House Democratic leaders to tamp down talk of impeaching Trump, even as Republicans seek to make protecting Trump a bigger part of their own message heading into the midterm elections.

But liberals who have pressed for impeachment see Cohen’s guilty plea on Tuesday as bolstering their case.

“It does cause the countdown to impeachment to accelerate,” Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) said Wednesday by phone.

{mosads}Green, the sponsor of impeachment articles accusing the president of inciting racial divisions, has already forced two floor votes on the issue over the past year. The first, in December, was supported by 58 Democrats.

The number rose to 66 in the second vote in January — a bump attributed to Trump’s derogatory comments about “shithole countries” made just a week before.

“I have no reservations about the effort to bring the articles to remove an unfit president from office,” Green said.

He did not say when.

The push for impeachment has ebbed and flowed since Trump took office, gaining momentum after particularly controversial episodes — like Trump’s equivocal response to last summer’s violent white supremacist marches in Charlottesville, Va. — only to fade when those headlines dwindle.

Impeachment proponents see Cohen’s plea — combined with the almost simultaneous conviction of Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, on eight counts of financial fraud — as another pivotal moment in the drive to oust the president.

“Walking through my district, everyone is so taken aback,” Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.), an impeachment supporter, said Wednesday by phone.

“This is a Watergate moment.”

Espaillat is one of 18 Democrats who have endorsed a resolution, sponsored by Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), seeking to impeach Trump on five separate grounds, including obstruction of justice and eroding press freedoms.

Espaillat said the bill’s supporters will “regroup” when Congress returns to Washington next month to determine whether Michael Cohen’s claims warrant a sixth article.

“This, obviously, has lots of traction in the district and on the ground,” he said. “There’s greater appetite in the population for this to occur.”

But Democrats remain deeply divided when it comes to impeachment, especially in light of the upcoming midterms. 

Multiple Democratic officials and operatives said that pushing impeachment would be particularly risky in Senate elections. Democrats are defending more than two dozen seats in 2018, including many in states that Trump won in 2016.

One Democratic official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss strategy candidly, acknowledged that the party had no immediate plans to make impeachment a central part of its midterm strategy.

But the official held out the possibility that it could become a more prominent issue down the road.

“It may be that we address this obliquely; it may be that we address this directly at some point,” the official said. “It sure as shit isn’t bad for us.”

Instead, Democrats are seeking to keep a focus on government accountability, more broadly. That includes a push to protect Mueller’s investigation from potential interference by the White House.

One strategist working on House races waved off the notion that Democrats could face pressure to take a more aggressive stance on impeachment, arguing that candidates in swing districts simply aren’t talking about the issue.

Ultimately, the strategist said, it would be up to Republicans to address the controversies mounting around the president.

“This is a cloud hanging over their heads and Republicans are forced to talk about this while Democrats talk about healthcare, taxes, protecting Social Security and Medicare,” the strategist said in an email.

It was a view shared by Juanita Tolliver, the director of campaigns at the Center for American Progress, who said that the path to impeachment is “clear,” but also argued that the ball is in the GOP’s court.

“Honestly, I don’t think it’s going to fall to Democratic challengers once they take the House, but it’s really on congressional Republicans right now, who are in those seats who have the opportunity right now to hold the president accountable, and really name and pin down this culture of corruption that he’s perpetuating,” she said in an interview with Hill.TV’s Krystal Ball and Buck Sexton on “Rising.” 

Spokespeople for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the GOP’s Senate campaign arm, and the National Republican Congressional Committee, its House campaign arm, did not respond to The Hill’s requests for comment.

For now, the divergent views among Democrats about how to handle any potential impeachment of Trump will likely continue. 

Need to Impeach, the campaign launched by Democratic mega-donor Tom Steyer to push for Trump’s removal from office, is working on a new television ad as it seeks to seize on the news of Cohen’s guilty plea.

Kevin Mack, the group’s lead strategist, said Wednesday that by ignoring the issue of impeachment, Democrats are leaving the issues that their voter base cares about off the table.

“All of this is going to get worse over the next couple months,” Mack told The Hill. “Impeachment is an unavoidable topic at this point. It’s being discussed openly everywhere, so it’s not something they can avoid talking about.”