Congress will have to ‘start impeachment’ process after Cohen filings, former Nixon counsel says

Federal prosecutors filed new court papers on Dec. 7 that revealed a previously unreported contact from a Russian to Trump’s inner circle during the campaign. (Melissa Macaya , Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)

John Dean, a White House counsel under President Richard M. Nixon convicted for his role in the Watergate scandal, said Friday that allegations against President Trump detailed in new court filings give Congress “little choice” other than to begin impeachment proceedings.

Dean’s comments, made during CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront” segment, follow the release of a legal memo from federal prosecutors in New York regarding Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen. Prosecutors wrote Cohen had implicated Trump in the arrangement of hush-money payments to women during the 2016 election.

“I don’t know that this will forever disappear into some dark hole of unprosecutable presidents,” Dean said. “I think it will resurface in the Congress. I think what this totality of today’s filings show that the House is going to have little choice, the way this is going, other than to start impeachment proceedings.”

View the complete December 8 article by Michael Brice-Saddler on The Washington Post website here.