The first two-thirds of the House Intelligence Committee’s lengthy report on the Trump-Ukraine affair, which was released on Tuesday, tells a story that, in broad strokes, will be familiar to anyone who follows the news. It details “a months-long effort by President Trump to use the powers of his office to solicit foreign interference on his behalf in the 2020 election.” The report describes how, earlier this year, he empowered Rudy Giuliani and the “three amigos” (the U.S. Ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland; the former Secretary of Energy Rick Perry; and the former special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker), Trump forced out the sitting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, and then froze U.S. security assistance—all in an effort to force Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s new President, to dig up dirt on Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden.

“We should care about this—we must care about this, and, if we don’t care about this, we can darn well be sure that the President will be back at it, doing this all over again,” Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the committee, said at a press conference, shortly after his staff posted the report online. Trump’s attempt to squeeze the Ukrainian government, Schiff went on, was part of a pattern in which he asked Russia to interfere in the 2016 election and, more recently, asked the Chinese government to investigate the Bidens. He added, “This is the result of a President who believes that he is beyond indictment, beyond impeachment, beyond any form of accountability, and, indeed, above the law.”

In addition to providing the basis for the House Judiciary Committee to draw up articles of impeachment, the report, which relied on the public and private testimony of more than a dozen witnesses, and carefully lays out the time line of the Ukraine caper, performs another important public service. It highlights Trump’s “unprecedented campaign of obstruction . . . to prevent the Committees from obtaining documentary evidence and testimony.”

The key point is that Trump egregiously abused his Presidential power twice: first by putting the squeeze on the Ukrainian government, then by trying to prevent Congress from getting to the bottom of things in a duly approved impeachment inquiry. His obstructive behavior, which is ongoing, raises fundamental issues about the ability, or inability, of the American political system to police a rogue President. And, in a related manner, it also raises questions about something that Schiff didn’t dwell on—the Democratic leadership’s desire to rush through impeachment to meet an electoral timetable.

After Congress launched its impeachment inquiry, in the wake of the anonymous whistle-blower’s complaint, “Trump ordered federal agencies and officials to disregard all voluntary requests for documents and defy all duly authorized subpoenas for records,” the report notes. “He also directed all federal officials in the Executive Branch not to testify—even when compelled.” The report points out how unusual this was. “No other President has flouted the Constitution and power of Congress to conduct oversight to this extent. . . . Even President Richard Nixon—who obstructed Congress by refusing to turn over key evidence—accepted the authority of Congress to conduct an impeachment inquiry and permitted his aides and advisors to produce documents and testify to Congressional committees.”

In the face of Trump’s stonewalling, the report reminds us, the impeachment inquiry was only able to get at some of the facts because of “courageous individuals who were willing to follow the law, comply with duly authorized subpoenas, and tell the truth.” And, in response to these witnesses coming forward, “the President engaged in a brazen effort to publicly attack and intimidate” them.

Schiff rightly emphasized what the repercussions will be if Trump is allowed to behave in this manner and openly flout the constitutionally dictated powers of Congress. “We are begging for more of the same,” he said. “We are signalling to any future President that he can engage in any corruption malfeasance or negligence, and they are beyond accountability.” Going forward, he said, “the balance of power . . . will be fundamentally altered” and Presidents will be far more likely to engage in “corruption, malfeasance, and incompetence.”

In recounting Trump’s abusive behavior, the report laid the groundwork for what is expected to be one of the articles of impeachment: the obstruction of Congress. Schiff and his Democratic colleagues, however, can do something more: they can appeal to a third branch of government—the federal court system—which still has the power, and, seemingly, the desire, to check Trump’s absolutist pretensions. Just last week, a federal judge in Washington ordered Don McGahn, the former White House counsel, to comply with a subpoena from the House Judiciary Committee, dismissing the White House’s blanket claims of executive privilege as “fiction” and subsequently denying the Justice Department’s effort to obtain a stay of the court’s order.

Even at this stage, there is nothing to prevent the Democrats from going to court and asking a judge to enforce the subpoenas that were issued to the likes of Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, and Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State. So far, Schiff and his colleagues on the Intelligence Committee have avoided pursuing these individuals and others through the courts because they don’t want to get bogged down—a concern that is understandable and yet not necessarily binding. “Courts can move quickly—but only if asked,” Kim Wehle, a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law, noted in a piece at The Atlantic.

The new report provides ample grounds for hastening to the judicial branch, including the need to obtain vital information that was denied to the impeachment committees. In a section on the White House’s decision to withhold aid from Ukraine, the report notes that “on July 25, 2019, OMB”—the Office of Management and Budget—“began using a series of footnotes in funding documents to notify DOD”—the Department of Defense—“that the assistance funds were temporarily on hold to allow for interagency review.” However, the report doesn’t say who ordered the O.M.B. to withhold the aid, or on what grounds this order was issued. The report does say, however, that the Ukraine scheme “was undertaken with the knowledge and approval of senior Administration officials, including the President’s Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Secretary of Energy Rick Perry.”

In a scandal of this import, it is simply outrageous that these officials, and others in positions of authority, haven’t been heard from. One theory is that the Democrats will seek to call them during the trial in the Senate, when John Roberts, the Chief Justice, will be presiding. At this stage, however, it isn’t even clear if Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, will allow a proper trial to take place, or on what terms it will be conducted. Right now, though, it seems likely that most Senate Republicans will do whatever necessary to toss the charges aside, further confirming that Presidents are indeed unaccountable—at least when one of the legislative chambers is under the control of a party wholly subservient to them.

The Intelligence Committee’s report does a good job of demonstrating that, as its preface claims, Trump “placed his own personal and political interests above the national interests of the United States, sought to undermine the integrity of the U.S. presidential election process, and endangered U.S. national security.” It is now up to Congress as a whole to decide how to respond. If the courts can lend a helping hand by breaking through the White House’s wall of obstruction, it would be folly not to accept it. After all, as Schiff pointed out, the future of the Republic may well depend on how this thing plays out.