With Thursday’s release of an almost comically damning complaint from an anonymous whistleblower alleging serious abuses of office by President Donald Trump, we seem to be barreling toward his impeachment. I would like to suggest that House Democrats slow down.

I start with the assumption that there will be no serious consequences for Trump as a result of the impeachment process. That assumption is informed by having been sentient and paying attention to the news during the last 20 years or so of American governance, and by reading a bit about the 20 before that. This is not a country that does serious consequences. I know we want to see Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs, but I also remember wanting very much to see the same thing happen to Karl Rove.

I would be happy to be proven wrong, but I do not expect Trump to be removed from office or to resign in a cloud of disgrace. I do not expect catharsis. Catharsis may be what some people are looking for from any sort of impeachment process, but I would invite them to read former Congressman Brad Miller’s remarkable history, in the latest issue of The American Prospect, of the last 40 years of congressional oversight of (Republican) presidential administrations. It is a story of shameless people getting away with it, over and over again, thanks in large part to a dubious but effective legal theory of presidential power developed by the current attorney general.

“Barr and others on the right have sought relentlessly for four decades to concentrate power in the president and strip power from Congress,” Miller writes, adding that “Barr is committed to presidential power with or without legal authority and with or without public support. And he will advance presidential power by any means necessary, which includes frivolous legal arguments and dilatory tactics forbidden by court rules and canons of legal ethics, and false testimony forbidden by criminal law.”

Impeachment is not a goal in and of itself, but a tool for ferreting out the truth.

In lieu of justice, what I would like is answers. I would like the full story, a complete and detailed account of everyone’s involvement in everything. The whistleblower’s complaint is in large part an explanation of how dedicated the White House is to avoiding public disclosure of malfeasance. The fact that we are able to read it today is proof that impeachment is not a goal in and of itself, but a tool for ferreting out the truth. It should convince any skeptic that an impeachment inquiry should be wide-ranging and inclusive of all the president’s most serious scandals, from his apparent family history of tax fraud, to his ongoing abuse of office for self-enrichment, to his well-documented attempts at obstruction of justice.