By now much has been said about Vice President JD Vance’s comments last week at the Nixon Library, where he attempted to rewrite the history of the Watergate scandal by musing that “if Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story.”
He further stated, “If you look at the story of how the deep state took down Richard Nixon, it’s not all that different from what the same groups of people, the same institutions tried to do to Donald Trump in the first Trump administration.”
I am a former assistant Watergate special prosecutor. I was there. Vance’s description of the Watergate scandal was a fairy tale.
The June 1972 arrest of burglars at the Democratic National Committee may have been a 12-hour news story if the Nixon White House cover-up, which described the matter as a third-rate burglary, had been successful.
It was not.
While the cover-up held up through the 1972 presidential election in which Nixon won in a landslide victory, Nixon’s stonewalling began unraveling two months after he was inaugurated to his second term. On March 23, 1973, Judge John Sirica, a Republican appointee who presided over the criminal prosecution of the burglars, said he believed there was a wider conspiracy and planned to sentence the burglars to stiff sentences.
Nixon’s stonewalling began unraveling two months after he was inaugurated to his second term.
One of the Watergate burglars, former CIA operative James McCord, came forward and revealed to the judge that the burglars had been pressured to plead guilty and remain silent at the direction of others.
This breakthrough in the case was the beginning of the end for Nixon. Additional facts emanated from the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the nomination of L. Patrick Gray to be FBI director. Gray admitted to burning relevant documents in his fireplace. Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were publishing various exposés from their source identified as “Deep Throat.”
None of this drip-drip of almost daily revelations amounted to a mere 12-hour news cycle. While Nixon pushed back, proclaiming, “I am not a crook,” more details of his crookedness were revealed over a two-year period. Working on the Watergate case, I dealt with the onslaught of allegations that turned into a flood of criminality. All of this amounted to an ongoing news cycle that did not end, even after Nixon left office. Should a similar scandal emerge today, in a similar fashion, we shouldn’t expect it to play out much differently.
The Nixon revelations led to the formation of a Senate select committee to investigate the burglary and the appointment of Archibald Cox as special Watergate prosecutor.
The nationally televised Senate committee hearings revealed the existence of a secret taping system in Nixon’s White House offices. After the Supreme Court unanimously ordered Nixon to release the tapes on July 24, 1974, Nixon proposed a compromise by which former Sen. John Stennis, who was partially deaf, would listen to the tapes to create summaries.
Cox refused to agree to this compromise since summaries of the tapes would not be admissible at the Watergate cover-up trial. Cox’s position resulted in the Saturday Night Massacre on Oct. 23, 1973, in which Nixon fired his attorney general and deputy attorney general, who refused to fire Cox. The solicitor general, the third highest member of the Justice Department, carried out Nixon’s order to fire Cox.
The Watergate scandal was not limited to the burglary at the Democratic National Committee. In the course of over a year, there were revelations that some of the same people who were involved in the burglary also burglarized the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist. Ellsberg was No. 1 on Nixon’s enemies’ list because he had released the Pentagon papers exposing the problems with the rationale for America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. Some of these same individuals were also part of a plot to kill Ellsberg.
Other revelations included illegal campaign contributions, misuse of the federal agencies such as the IRS to target Nixon’s enemies, the Nixon White House’s mistreatment of demonstrators and Nixon’s scheme to commit tax fraud by backdating a deed of a gift of papers to the government to obtain a tax deduction.
Vance was also dead wrong that the “deep state took down” Nixon. It was just the opposite. The former FBI and CIA operatives who were involved in the Watergate burglary and the actions against Ellsberg were those typically considered part of the deep state, rather than those that helped hold all involved accountable.
Vance was also dead wrong that the “deep state took down” Nixon. It was just the opposite.
Nixon himself attempted to use a deep state conspiracy to cover up the White House’s involvement in the burglary. On June 23, 1972, less than a week after the arrest of the Watergate burglars, Nixon is heard on tape directing his chief of staff to call the director and deputy director of the CIA to have them call the FBI to halt the investigation into the break-in for ostensibly national security reasons. That was the “smoking gun” tape that led to Nixon’s resignation.
In another tape recording of March 21,1973, Nixon is overheard meeting with his closest advisers, approving the payment of $1 million in cash as hush money to the Watergate burglars who were demanding funds to pay their lawyers. This was orchestrated by Nixon, not by the deep state.
It is important to recognize that in 2024, the Supreme Court upended the law governing crimes committed by a president. The court created presidential immunity for all “official acts” as opposed to personal acts. As such, Nixon’s attempt to direct the CIA and FBI to obstruct the Watergate investigation would now be off limits from prosecution. Other crimes, such as the burglaries, are arguably “personal” and not subject to presidential immunity.
This is not to say that a Nixon-style cover-up under the Trump administration would not have the same impact today. A prime example, which Vance should have understood, is Trump’s stonewalling of the Epstein files. The yearlong clamor for full release of the government’s Epstein files has clearly reached beyond the bounds of a 12-hour news cycle, with Congress and the public still demanding full disclosure of the remaining reported 1 million documents and disclosure of the redactions.
The public interest has shown no sign of dissipating. Indeed, just a few days ago, a federal judge ordered the DOJ to release certain redacted documents in unredacted form by July 2 or explain why these documents should remain hidden.
It is still too early to know whether Trump’s transgressions will ultimately bring down his presidency, as happened with Nixon. But it is clear that plenty of folks and even governing bodies will continue to work hard to hold Trump accountable, given what is at stake.
The post I was a Watergate prosecutor. Here’s what JD Vance missed. appeared first on MS NOW.
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