We are now at one of those points. With the revelation on CNN Thursday night that, according to the network’s sources, Michael Cohen is ready to testify that the president* knew in advance of the now-legendary meeting in June of 2016 at which individuals connected to the Russian government offered to ratfck Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign for him, we stand as a self-governing republic at a stark, unclouded moment—either you believe the president* of the United States is utterly illegitimate, having conspired with a hostile power to gain the office he now holds, and that every act he has taken in that office, up to an including swearing the oath of office, is equally illegitimate, or you do not. It is now a binary. If Cohen is willing to testify to that effect, then the president* conspired with the regime of Vladimir Putin in order to gain control over the executive branch of government in this country—which includes not only the military, but the law-enforcement and intelligence apparatus as well. We are now at yes-or-no. From CNN:

The June 2016 meeting was arranged after a publicist who knew Trump Jr. told him in emails -- in no uncertain terms -- that a senior Russian official "offered to provide the Trump campaign" with damaging information about Clinton, and that the outreach was "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump." At the time, the Russian operation to covertly boost Trump's candidacy wasn't publicly known. Trump. Jr. responded, "if it's what you say, I love it," and started to arrange the meeting. At the meeting, Trump Jr. was joined by his brother-in-law Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort, who was Trump's campaign chairman at the time. There were four Russians in the room, including a lawyer with Kremlin ties, a businessman who worked for an oligarch and a lobbyist with old KGB connections.

At which point, if Cohen is willing to testify to that which CNN says he’s willing to testify, the deluge of lies began.

After news of the meeting broke in July 2017, the Trump team offered misleading explanations and changed their story several times. But one claim stayed consistent: that Trump had no knowledge of the meeting beforehand, wasn't told about it afterward and first learned about it one year later. Those denials were repeatedly issued by Trump, his attorney Jay Sekulow, Trump Jr., Futerfas and White House press secretary Sarah Sanders. Those people denied that Trump had contemporaneous knowledge of the meeting on more than 15 occasions, according to CNN's analysis. Trump said on July 12, 2017, that he "only heard about it two or three days ago." One week later, Trump repeated that he "didn't know anything about the meeting" because "nobody told me" about it. Around that same time, CNN's Jake Tapper asked Sekulow to confirm Trump's claims that he only recently learned about the controversial meeting. Sekulow's response: "Yes, I swear." But perhaps the highest-stakes denial was given by Trump Jr. in his testimony last year to the Senate Judiciary Committee. "He wasn't aware of it," Trump Jr. told lawmakers, referring to his father's knowledge of the meeting. "And, frankly, by the time anyone was aware of it, which was summer of this year, as I stated earlier, I wouldn't have wanted to get him involved in it because it had nothing to do with him."

Lawyer up, junior. There’s still room under the bus.

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Return with us, for a moment, to July 24, 1974. The Supreme Court has just ruled, by an 8-0 majority, that the White House had to surrender certain tape recordings to the Watergate special prosecution force. One of these tapes contained a conversation between President Richard Nixon and his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, from June 23, 1972, six days after four burglars in the employ of Nixon’s re-election campaign had been arrested in the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate office complex. It was the first time the president and his top advisor had met since the botched burglary.

It had been Nixon’s position all along that he had not learned the facts about Watergate until a meeting with White House counsel John Dean in March of 1973. As recently as May of 1974, the president had said that the meeting with Haldeman had not had any political purpose but, rather, that they had discussed how to keep the FBI investigation of Watergate from revealing any ongoing covert CIA operations. A matter of national security, the president had said. A White House lawyer named J. Fred Buzhardt cued up the tape of June 23, 1972. This is part of what Buzhardt heard.

Nixon: When you get in these people when you…get these people in, say: “Look, the problem is that this will open the whole, the whole Bay of Pigs thing, and the President just feels that” ah, without going into the details… don’t, don’t lie to them to the extent to say there is no involvement, but just say this is sort of a comedy of errors, bizarre, without getting into it, “the President believes that it is going to open the whole Bay of Pigs thing up again. And, ah because these people are plugging for, for keeps and that they should call the FBI in and say that we wish for the country, don’t go any further into this case”, period!

Haldeman: OK.

According to The Final Days, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s account of the Watergate denouement, Buzhardt went to then-chief of staff Alexander Haig.



“Well, we’ve found the smoking pistol,” he began. His voice was calm and emotionless.

“Are you sure?” Haig asked.

“Yes, it’s the ballgame. Bob [Haldeman] told him a lot that day.”

That was their yes-or-no moment. Two years of ducking and weaving. Two years of legal rope-a-dope. Two years of increasingly implausible alibis as half the White House staff either were convicted or pled themselves into jail. It all came to this. It wasn’t easy. (Woodward and Bernstein point out that Buzhardt at first had the devil’s own time getting anyone to agree with him about the June 23 tape.) But, by August, there was a new president of the United States because, ultimately, people stood at the yes-or-no moment and did what was best for the country.

That’s where we are today, if CNN’s reporting is accurate and if Cohen is telling the truth. This isn’t the smoking gun. It’s just the latest smoking gun. There are smoking guns and there are smoking guns, and then there’s this administration*, which looks like the Union line on Cemetery Ridge just as what was left of Pickett’s division arrived. I have no faith at all that enough people will do what needs to be done about this compromised and dangerous man. My first reaction to this news was that it would get folded into some nonsense that pops on the Friday news cycle—a barely coherent rage-tweet, or something stupid from the House of Representatives. But this is the yes-or-no moment. If CNN is right, and if Cohen is telling the truth, then, in the immortal words of J. Fred Buzhardt, that’s the ballgame.

Or ought to be.

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

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