In the past four days alone, two new items were added to President Trump’s list of impeachable offenses. He was already a sitting duck for a charge of obstruction of justice, which as an impeachable offense doesn’t require the standard of proof—intent—that a criminal charge does. He was also already vulnerable to a charge of accepting foreign emoluments—at the least for the profits his hotel just down Pennsylvania Avenue has been raking in from foreign governments, but also for some questionable business dealings by his sons in foreign countries and for flagrant ethics violations stemming from his refusal to detach himself from his private business interests. (Shortly before Trump took office, his “ethics lawyer,” in Trump’s presence, announced that his private company, now to be run by his sons, “will not enter into any new overseas deals while Trump is president.” This was the press conference that featured stacks of empty envelopes piled on a table.)

And now Trump has chalked up two more reasons to impeach him (or some kind of reckoning): abusing his office by ordering an investigation of the FBI’s investigation into whether his 2016 campaign conspired with Russia, and attempting to punish a specific individual by damaging that person’s business.

The actual likelihood of impeachment isn’t the important point. What matters is whether Trump—or any president—is held to account for alleged transgressions in gaining office, and then, once in it, abuse of its powers. If Trump gets away with these things unscathed, dangerous precedents will have been set.

First, there was his order this week to the Justice Department that it investigate whether the FBI had “infiltrated or surveilled” his campaign; second, the president was found to have been pressuring the postmaster general to punish Jeff Bezos—owner of The Washington Post, whose coverage of Trump galls him, and who also heads the giant commerce and services company Amazon—by significantly raising postal rates on Amazon’s packages. This would damage other companies that ship goods as well, thus affecting a major and growing part of the economy to the tune of billions of dollars, but Trump’s tweets and statements make it clear that his target is one person, Bezos.

In demanding on Monday of this week that the Justice Department turn over highly sensitive, even classified, information to his rampant Republican congressional allies, Trump is interfering with a law enforcement investigation of himself—a clear abuse of power. (This action can also come under a charge of obstruction of justice. Some of the charges against Richard Nixon also did double duty in articles of impeachment.) In fact, Trump’s interference with the federal investigation of himself makes Nixon look like a pussy-cat, but then, unlike Trump, Nixon didn’t have a Congress controlled by his own party to protect him. Trump is clearly colluding with some right-wing House Republicans to mess with the Justice Department, and to discredit special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe and build a case for removing him—even to the point of encouraging the outing of the name of an informant who has helped in previous FBI investigations.