When Donald Trump met privately with Vladimir Putin last year, he didn’t even allow any of his own advisers in the room. Last night we learned, thanks to the Washington Post, that Trump went so far as to seize the translator’s notes, and to instruct him not to discuss the matter with anyone. Now Adam Schiff is taking things precisely where we’d been hoping.

The obvious solution all along has been for Congress to subpoena the translator, thus leaving the translator with a choice of either testifying or getting arrested for contempt of Congress. In such case the translator would likely show up to testify in a heartbeat.

Sure enough, Adam Schiff says that’s precisely what he plans to do: “Last year, we sought to obtain the interpreter’s notes or testimony, from the private meeting between Trump and Putin. The Republicans on our committee voted us down. Will they join us now? Shouldn’t we find out whether our president is really putting ‘America first?'”

Although Schiff is asking the Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee to join him in doing the right thing, he doesn’t need them. He and the Democrats on the committee have unilateral subpoena power, and now we know that they intend to use it to get to the bottom of Trump’s treason meeting with Putin.