Rep. Jerry Nadler Says Trump Hush Payments Could Be Impeachable Offense

Many eyes currently are on Democratic Rep. Jerrold “Jerry” Nadler because he likely will become the next chairman of the House Judiciary Committee come January.

And given the recent developments in the Mueller probe, and the cases against Donald Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen, ex-campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, everyone is wondering if and when Trump will be impeached.

Nadler has always remained cautious about calling for Trump’s impeachment, The New York Times pointed out in a recent profile. About a week ago, he said calls for impeachment would be “premature.”

But on Sunday, Nadler seems to have ceded some ground on the issue. The New York congressman told CNN’s Jake Tapper that if Trump ordered Cohen to make the hush money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal—as prosecutors alluded to in their filings on Friday—those felonies could be impeachable offenses.

“Well, I think what these indictments and filings show is that the president was at the center of a massive fraud—several massive frauds—against the American people,” Nadler said. “And it’s now our job…to get to the bottom of this.”

Tapper asked if the prosecutors’ allegations would be impeachable offenses if proven.

“Well, they would be impeachable offenses,” Nadler acknowledged, before adding an important caveat: “Whether they are important enough to justify an impeachment is a different question. But certainly, they’d be impeachable offenses, because even though they were committed before the president became president, they were committed in the service of fraudulently obtaining the office.”

But the two alleged campaign finance violations aren’t the only legal trouble Trump likely will find himself in. Nadler acknowledged that Friday’s filings by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team and prosecutors from the Southern District of New York also showed a “much broader conspiracy against the American people,” including Trump lying for “an entire year” about his business dealings with Russia and obstruction of justice.

“All of these have to be looked at very seriously,” Nadler said.

He also noted that the “Republican Congress absolutely tried to shield the president. The new Congress will not try to shield the president. It will try to get to the bottom of this in order to serve the American people, and to stop this massive fraud on the American people.”