May 18, 2019

The Nixon Impeachment—a Blueprint for Today

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/05/nixon-impeachment-model-donald-trump.html?fbclid=IwAR1U3lN6jjE7YaILU5XjCpG1NSdLs6MqT40BEM5XVJa7J_toV4UTAeD5DsU
"Donald Trump’s misdeeds, at least as spelled out in the Mueller report, appear to replicate some of Nixon’s worst acts. For example, Trump and his attorneys apparently dangled pardons before several witnesses to keep them from cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller. One witness stated that Trump called the director of national intelligence asking for his help in shutting down the Russia investigation. And Trump fired the FBI director and tried to remove Mueller to impede that investigation, too. It all began with Russia’s breaking into the Democratic National Committee electronically and using the information to help Trump in the presidential election (with outreach to the Trump campaign)—paralleling the burglary of the DNC headquarters by Nixon campaign operatives in connection with the 1972 presidential campaign. Covering up election tampering is bad enough, but it’s much worse when the tampering involves connivance with a foreign power—even though the degree of that connivance has been obscured by the Trump cover-up itself. Ironically, long after the Nixon presidency ended, we learned that Nixon had conspired with a foreign power, in this case South Vietnam, to scuttle Vietnam peace talks in order to help his election prospects. Had we known this at the time, Nixon’s treason-like conduct would have figured prominently in the articles of impeachment."