The Ukraine Transcripts Are a Road Map for Impeachment

The experience of following the impeachment inquiry over the past week has been a bit like that old Buster Keaton skit of a man being taken down by an ever-expanding newspaper. The 1921 clip from the silent movie The High Sign shows Keaton settling down on a park bench to read the day’s paper. He crosses his legs and unfolds it. Then he unfolds it again. And again. And again. Eventually, struggling under a shroud of newsprint, he crashes down through the bench.

The transcripts, like Keaton’s newspaper, are relentless. They keep coming. They are huge—endless and repetitive—and they grow more and more detailed. As the week went by, they got longer and longer, as though the early part of the week, when one was a mere 156 pages, was just a warm-up. By week’s end, the House of Representatives was releasing transcripts weighing in at 446 pages—enough to send anyone crashing through a chair.

The transcripts released so