For those born as early as the 1950s, one cannot help feel that we are reliving the tragic Watergate saga that dragged out from June, 1972 through August of 1974 and ended in the imminent impeachment of President Richard Nixon and his last minute resignation.
According to Wikipedia:
“Watergate was a major political scandal that occurred in the United States in the 1970s, following a break-in at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. in 1972 and President Richard Nixon‘s administration‘s attempted cover-up of its involvement. When the conspiracy was discovered and investigated by the U.S. Congress, the Nixon administration’s resistance to its probes led to a constitutional crisis…
“The scandal led to the discovery of multiple abuses of power by the Nixon administration, an impeachment process against the president that led to articles of impeachment, and the resignation of Nixon. The scandal also resulted in the indictment of 69 people, with trials or pleas resulting in 48 being found guilty, many of whom were Nixon’s top administration officials.”
In the memorable words of Howard Baker, ranking member of the Senate Watergate Committee, “What did the President know and when did he know it?”
Nixon was not accused as having planned or even authorized the Watergate break-in but rather the impeachment charges were for obstructing justice, misusing the powers of the Presidency, and contempt of Congress.
As related by key insider Jeb Magruder a decade and a half after the fact as reported in the New York Times, ” ‘As far as I know the primary purpose of the break-in was to deal with the information that has been referred to about Howard Hughes and Larry O’Brien and what that meant as far as the cash that had supposedly been given to Bebe Rebozo and spent later by the President possibly.’
“Magruder went on to confirm the secondary motive as well, saying that the burglars were also looking for information the President’s men could use to keep the Hughes-Rebozo transaction ”under wraps” during the election campaign.”
We should reflect upon the comparative damage to the electoral process and national security of
- a break in then to seek specific information concerning knowledge of an illegal political donation and
- conspiring with a foreign adversarial government to hack and release of copious files of John Podesta, the Chairman of the Democratic party’s election committee.
Moreover, if true, the power that such knowledge provides Russia to blackmail the President of the United States to achieve Russia’s foreign policy goals.
Why aren’t our most respected political commentators and editorial writers suggesting that the possible involvement and ongoing lying of Donald Trump are greater reasons for an impeachment investigation by the House of Representatives than the serious but not as endangering to our national security earlier offenses of Richard Nixon?
The Republicans who control both Houses do not want a prolonged public investigation in Congress to occur or any special committee, as has been suggested by some elected officials. We are going to have to wait for the FBI to complete its investigation. At this point the evidence of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia are pretty thin but with yesterday’s testimony by Comey, there is now a cloud over the presidency that needs to be resolved as quickly as possible so US foreign policy is not under a suspicion of collusion or blackmail by Russia. If there is collusion those involved must be quickly removed even if that means impeachment.
If we go down the path of impeachment, I hope that as in the Nixon era the vice president (then the corrupt former governor of Maryland, Spiro Agnew) is removed because Mike Pence will be even worse than Trump on many issues. Where is our Gerald Ford?
Wow, “Where is our Gerald Ford”??!! And, I totally agree, Kevin, though I never thought that there would be a day when I would say that out loud, “Where is our Gerald Ford”?!
Kind of humbling, and a lesson in political change.
I think this time you might see impeachment move faster. These people would love to replace Trump with Mike Pence, one of their own.
I’ve seen a number of commentaries about Trump’s impeachability. However, the only Republican in Congress that has been willing to take Trump to task publicly has been John McCain.
“Statesmanship” and “moderate” became terms of derision in the Republican Party with and since Newt Gingrich’s emergence as Speaker of the House in the 90’s. We only can hope that sooner rather than later Trump will be deemed expendable by the Republican establishment because of their interests.
Could Trump not be impeached using the Emoluments Clause?
Wow, Talk about birds or a feather! Impeachment? Ha Ha Ha Ha. What a bunch of sore losers. If anyone had anything on the Donald it would be out there by now. Quit crying and do something positive.
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