Most people just remember the Watergate break-in, if anything at all. Many weren’t even born yet. But Richard Nixon’s crimes went far beyond the break-in at the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters in the Watergate complex (photo below) and the coverup that followed.
- He kept wiretaps in place “long past their utility” for national security purposes because “they were turning up useful political information.”
- He ordered the Secret Service to spy on his brother and “conduct 24-hour surveillance of Senator Ted Kennedy in the hope of finding him with a girlfriend.”
- He approved hiring “thugs” from the Teamsters Union to “commit acts of physical violence against anti-war demonstrators.”
- He ordered compiling a list “of all Jewish-Americans in the US government, to maintain special control over them, and sought to fire all of those in the … Bureau of Labor Statistics.”
- He ordered creation of an “enemies list” of political opponents to be harassed by the IRS.
(Read story here.) Nixon, a lawyer, later defended his lawless conduct by saying, “When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.” This quote is reported and commented on in many places; a Yahoo News story (here) in November 2016, after Trump won the election but before he was inaugurated, suggested, “Today, I suspect a more cynical nation wonders whether a president really is above the law.”
Then, no, but only by a hair; Nixon nearly got away with it. He resigned only because a group of Republican senators led by Barry Goldwater told him his political support in Congress had collapsed and he would be impeached and removed from office if he didn’t resign, which would mean losing his pension (see details here).
Today, maybe; stay tuned. Trump survived two impeachments because his party no longer respects our democratic institutions or laws, so the question now is whether he’ll be prosecuted for what a federal judge has already termed “criminal” acts.
The difference between 1974 and today is that 48 years ago Republicans had principle and put country above partisanship, party loyalty, and pursuit of power. That plainly isn’t true anymore.
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