There’s nothing particularly new about politics interfering with the Justice Department. Since the attorney general is a political appointee, tension between political aims and the impartiality expected of the justice system is a constant battle. Though these days George W. Bush aides comment censoriously about Trump, the Bush administration orchestrated a mass firing of U.S. attorneys for political reasons. Richard Nixon saw the Justice Department as responsible for protecting him, too.

This current situation is a little different for two reasons. First, Trump is more publicly estranged from Attorney General Jeff Sessions than any president has been from any cabinet member since the Andrew Johnson administration. Second, Trump is openly admitting he wants crimes covered up for political reasons, where his predecessors kept the truth behind closed doors.

Trump says the quiet part loud.

For the president to say this is at once astonishing and utterly predictable. It’s the latest example of Trump saying the quiet part loud—openly declaiming the nefarious ulterior motive that other corrupt politicians try to stifle. But the president has been working up to a statement of this sort for his entire term. A week after taking office, according to former FBI Director James Comey, Trump told him, “I need loyalty, I expect loyalty.” Trump has disputed the account, but Comey testified to it under oath, and the president has made plenty of other similar remarks publicly.

He shared an assessment that Sessions’s recusal from Russia-related matters was “an unforced betrayal of the President of the United States.” He also contrasted Sessions with former Attorney General Eric Holder, telling The New York Times, “I don’t want to get into loyalty, but I will tell you that, I will say this: Holder protected President Obama. Totally protected him.” (The implication that Holder saved Obama from prosecution is entirely without evidence.) I and other writers have also noted the way that Trump is consistently working to undermine and subvert the rule of law.

So while it has been clear for some time that Trump views the Justice Department’s proper role as protecting him, he has never said so quite so bluntly. For him to do so in the context of the Republican House majority is ironic: Trump, the ultimate renegade to party rule, has become the ultimate party hack. Yet when Trump worries for the GOP’s fortunes, he is truly worrying for his own future, since a Democratic majority might attempt to impeach him.

Comments like Monday’s tweet, however, may serve only to reinforce arguments for impeachment. Many of Trump’s prior statements have been naked attempts to intervene in the process of justice—whether it was allegedly asking Comey to drop an investigation of Flynn, or his regular demands for Sessions to end the “witch hunt” of the Russia investigation. The comment on Collins and Hunter is unusual because for once he is lamenting decisions after the fact. Yet in doing so, he has proclaimed his corrupt theory of the Justice Department.