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U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, took to Twitter early Friday calling on President Donald Trump to resign after reports that he instructed his former lawyer Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about Trump’s business interests in Moscow. Merkley was among a chorus of congressional Democrats claiming that Trump may have committed an impeachable offense. “If this report of Trump suborning false testimony is confirmed, then Trump committed a felony and must resign or be impeached,” Merkley tweeted. The bombshell report, issued Thursday evening by internet site Buzzfeed, attributed the claims to two anonymous members of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team. “The special counsel’s office learned about Trump’s directive for Cohen to lie to Congress through interviews with multiple witnesses from the Trump Organization and internal company emails, text messages, and a cache of other documents,” the Buzzfeed story said. “Cohen then acknowledged those instructions during his interviews with that office.” Merkley was among the first to call for Trump’s resignation along with Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, and Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn. Trump has consistently denied any wrongdoing, calling the Mueller investigation a “witch-hunt." Cohen pleaded guilty in late November to lying to Congress. He cut a deal with Mueller’s team to cooperate. Trump afterwards began referring to his former fixer as a “rat.” “Remember, Michael Cohen only became a “Rat” after the FBI did something which was absolutely unthinkable & unheard of until the Witch Hunt was illegally started,” Trump tweeted on Dec. 18, They BROKE INTO AN ATTORNEY’S OFFICE!" Mueller’s initial charter was to investigate whether Russians conspired to interfere in the 2016 election to get Trump elected. At the core of the current matter is whether Trump was pursuing his personal real estate interests in Moscow even as he was running for office. The Trump real estate organization hoped to build a $300 million office tower in Moscow. Cohen told Congress the deal was dead by January 2016, a claim that’s been widely discredited. The reality of Trump’s Moscow project has now faded a bit as the claims emerge that Trump instructed Cohen to lie. Cohen, who is scheduled to testify before Congress next month, has acknowledged that the conversations he had about the project with Trump exceeded the three short briefings he testified that he gave the president and that he also held more extensive discussions about it with other members of the Trump family. The sources said Cohen gave Trump’s children “very detailed updates.” As of Friday morning, no major news organization had issued a story confirming the Buzzfeed report.