Surprise, surprise: In a $2 million lawsuit settlement, President Donald Trump has formally admitted what he spent the 2016 campaign angrily denying: that his charitable foundation, ostensibly geared toward veterans, was actually a tax-sheltered piggy bank. It's further confirmation that the wealthiest president in U.S. history is also the stingiest.

What would be a defining scandal for other presidents will fade quickly from the conversation for this one, dwarfed by impeachment proceedings over his attempt to sell out U.S. security interests in Ukraine for the sake of socking it to a political opponent. They are separate issues, but they should send Congress, and America, the same message about this president's self-obsessed priorities.

Trump's lack of personal generosity was a known trait of the billionaire businessman long before his presidential campaign. His penchant for cheating low-income customers, as in his sham Trump University, and stiffing less-well-heeled businesspeople is legendary. Last year's Forbes 400 list ranked the philanthropy of its inductees on a 1-to-5 scale; Trump landed at the low end with a score of 1, meaning he has given less than 1% of his income to those less fortunate.

So it wasn't surprising to learn, via The Washington Post in 2016, that a lot of the money raised through the Donald J. Trump Foundation was being misused for Trump's campaign, business and personal expenses — including, in that most Trumpian of details, $10,000 for a portrait of Trump, for display at one of his hotels. Veterans everywhere must have been uplifted.

Trump's strained public denials of wrongdoing didn't prevent him from agreeing to a lawsuit settlement announced last week with the New York attorney general's office. In it, Trump admitted the foundation gave his 2016 presidential campaign control of more than $2.8 million raised at a veterans' fundraiser in Iowa in January of that year, and that funds were used to settle legal obligations of his companies and other improper spending, including the portrait. He agreed to give the foundation's remaining $1.7 million to legitimate charities, and to pay another $2 million in fines.

Predictably, Trump lashed out on Twitter after the settlement, denying what he'd already admitted in court documents. At such factual crossroads, it's useful to remember which version was given under oath.

This is all unrelated to allegations that Trump suspended military aid to force the Ukrainian government to launch an investigation aimed at hurting former Vice President Joe Biden's Democratic presidential campaign — except in demonstrating that, whether it's business partners, veterans in need, or the security of an American ally, Trump's first priority is always Trump.

Congressional Republicans who continue relentlessly defending the president against possible impeachment should ponder what this lawsuit settlement tells us about the character of the man on whom they are staking their party's legitimacy.

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