All my years tell me what's happening. They did so many bad things during that campaign that there is no way to keep it from coming out. They did too many things. Too many people know about it. There is no way to keep it quiet. The time is going to come when impeachment os going to hit this Congress and we better be ready for it.

—House Majority Leader Thomas P. O'Neill, Jr. to Speaker Carl Albert, January, 1973.

(Quoted by Jimmy Breslin: How The Good Guys Finally Won: Notes From An Impeachment Summer, 1975.)

As he was in so many things, Breslin was right about how things turned on Richard Nixon. It did not happen all at once. It did not happen with a single explosive event, although explosive events there certainly were. (The moment that Alexander Butterfield told the Ervin Committee about the White House tapes is still gobsmacking.) It began for real with small conversations in small rooms, little turns of little wheels, small levers that began to move big events.

We had one of those on Friday when Jerrold Nadler announced that his House Judiciary Committee would subpoena the entire unredacted report compiled by special counsel Robert Mueller in the matter of the 2016 presidential election. Nadler also subpoenaed..."the underlying evidence." From NBC News.

In a statement, Nadler said that the Justice Department must comply by May 1. "I am open to working with the Department to reach a reasonable accommodation for access to these materials, however I cannot accept any proposal which leaves most of Congress in the dark, as they grapple with their duties of legislation, oversight and constitutional accountability," he said Friday.

The gravitational pull of the ultimate constitutional sanction is light at this point, but it is undeniable. If it weren't, the White House wouldn't be about to fight this subpoena as hard as it's going to fight it. There is a momentum building toward a distinct end point. At some time over the next year, it is going to become irresistible, whether people want it to be or not. Impeachment is going to hit this Congress, too.

Respond to this post on the Esquire Politics Facebook page here.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io