Tag: Watergate

COURTSIDE HISTORY: WHO KNEW? — NDPA Maven Deb Sanders’s Late Father, Donald G. Sanders, Was A Watergate Hero!🦸🏻‍♂️

 

From NY Times, 09-29-1999:

https://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/29/us/donald-g-sanders-dies-at-69-brought-nixon-taping-to-light.html

  • Give this article

By William H. Honan

  • Sept. 29, 1999

Donald G. Sanders, a former Senate lawyer who uncovered the White House tapes that led to President Richard M. Nixon’s resignation, died on Sunday at a hospital in Columbia, Mo. He was 69.

Mr. Sanders, who lived in Columbia, died of cancer, said his wife, Dolores.

A former F.B.I. agent, Mr. Sanders was a Republican staff lawyer for the Senate committee investigating the Watergate break-in when he brought to light ”the smoking gun” that eventually pointed to Nixon’s complicity in a cover-up of the break-in.

It was in a closed-door preliminary interrogation that Mr. Sanders’s curiosity was aroused by seemingly apprehensive answers from Alexander P. Butterfield, Nixon’s former appointments secretary.

Mr. Sanders dug deeper and asked if it were possible that some sort of recording system had been used in the White House.

Mr. Butterfield answered, ”I wish you hadn’t asked that question, but, yes, there is.”

Mr. Sanders then hurried to tell Fred D. Thompson, the lead minority counsel who is now a Republican senator from Tennessee.

”We both knew then it was important,” Mr. Sanders recalled in a 1997 interview.

Then, in nationally televised hearings, Mr. Thompson asked Mr. Butterfield about the recording system.

”It was actually Don who discovered the existence of the White House taping system, but he was too unassuming to ever mention it,” Mr. Thompson said on Monday in an interview with The Associated Press.

Mr. Sanders had returned to his home state in the 1980’s after more than two decades of Federal Government service as a lawyer for Congressional committees, an F.B.I. agent and an Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Gerald R. Ford.

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Donald Gilbert Sanders was born on April 26, 1930, in St. Louis. He graduated from the law school of the University of Missouri and then spent two years in the Marines. From 1956 to 1959, he was city attorney for Columbia.

From 1959 to 1969, Mr. Sanders worked for the F.B.I.

In 1969, he started working as a lawyer for Congressional committees.

After returning to Missouri, Mr. Sanders served as a commissioner in Boone County in 1989 and 1990, but he did not seek re-election. He had a private law practice in Columbia until his death.

In 1997, Mr. Sanders, while battling cancer, tried to start a national campaign to draft Senator Thompson for the 2000 Republican Presidential nomination, but Mr. Thompson declined to enter the race.

In addition to his wife, Mr. Sanders is survived by two sons, Michael, of Dallas, and Matthew, of Monrovia, Calif.; a daughter, Deborah Sanders, of Arlington, Va., and his mother, Ann Sanders of Columbia.

A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 29, 1999, Section A, Page 25 of the National edition with the headline: Donald G. Sanders Dies at 69; Brought Nixon Taping to Light. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

******************

Well, my friend Deb knew, of course!

What an important role! And, one that is antithetical to most of today’s GOP, with a few exceptions. It’s an interesting (discouraging) contrast with the total lack of integrity among most GOP politicos and “parallel universe” supporters whose corrupt willingness to face truth about Trump’s criminal conspiracy to overthrow our Constitution and our duly elected Government still threatens our American democracy!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-21-22

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  4. THE GIBSON REPORT — 09-15-20 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group

THE GIBSON REPORT — 09-15-20 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group

THE GIBSON REPORT — 09-15-20 — Compiled By Elizabeth Gibson, Esquire, NY Legal Assistance Group

Elizabeth Gibson
Elizabeth Gibson
Attorney, NY Legal Assistance Group
Publisher of “The Gibson Report”

COVID-19

Note: Policies are rapidly changing, so please verify the latest information on the relevant government websites and with colleagues on listservs as best you can.

 

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Closures

 

Guidance:

 

TOP NEWS

 

Panel Tosses Nationwide Freeze on Trump’s Public Charge Rule

Bloomberg: A nationwide injunction blocking a Trump administration rule that denies legal status to immigrants receiving public assistance was stayed by a Second Circuit panel. The Southern District of New York…likely lacked jurisdiction to enter the injunction while the appeal of its previously-issued injunction was pending, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said Sept. 11.

 

USCIS Wants Sponsors To Repay Gov’t For Benefits

Law360: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on Thursday announced an initiative to hold immigrant sponsors legally responsible for reimbursing the government for benefits used by their immigrant sponsees.

 

US seeks sweeping DNA collection of immigrants, sponsors

AlJazeera: Its proposal also vastly expands the biological information that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) collects beyond genetic material to include eye scans, voiceprints, and palm prints, the department’s US Citizenship and Immigration Services said in a notice published in the Federal Register.

 

After a Pandemic Pause, ICE Resumes Deportation Arrests

NYT: Since mid-July, immigration agents have taken more than 2,000 people into custody from their homes, workplaces and other sites, including a post office, often after staking them out for days.

 

The Life and Death of Administrative Closure

TRAC: TRAC’s detailed analysis of the court records on administrative closure yields four key findings. First, administrative closure has been routinely used by Immigration Judges to manage their growing caseloads as well as manage the unresolved overlapping of jurisdictions between the EOIR and other immigration agencies. Second, TRAC finds that far from contributing to the backlog, administrative closure has helped reduce the backlog. Third, data from the Immigration Courts show that immigrants who obtain administrative closure are likely to have followed legal requirements and obtain lawful status. Fourth, the EOIR significantly misrepresented the data it used to justify this rule.

 

Immigration to New York City Declines, Amplifying Economic Concerns

WSJ: Immigration to New York City dropped 45% between 2016 and 2019, with about 34,000 immigrants moving to the city last year compared with 62,000 in 2016, according to an analysis of U.S. Census Bureau population estimates by William Frey, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. City officials and immigration advocates say tighter federal immigration policies and delays in processing visa applications during the pandemic ave reduced the flow of transplants.

 

US revokes visas for 1,000 Chinese students deemed security risk

BBC: The move follows a proclamation by President Donald Trump in May aimed at Chinese nationals suspected of having ties to the military. He said some had stolen data and intellectual property. China has accused the US of racial discrimination. Nearly 370,000 students from China enrolled at US universities in 2018-19.

 

Americans are renouncing U.S. citizenship in record numbers – but maybe not for the reasons you think

The Conversation: In surveys and testimonials, these people say they’re dropping their U.S. citizenship because American anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism regulations make it too onerous and expensive to keep.

 

DHS Whistleblower Complaint Includes Surprising Insights on Immigration Policy

ImmProf: Mr. Murphy believes former DHS head Kirtjen Nielsen presented Congress with “knowing and deliberate submission of false material information” about the number of [known or suspected terrorists] crossing the southern border.

 

Immigration agency cuts of 800 Kansas City jobs expected to trigger backlogs, delays nationwide

Kansas Reflector: Members of Congress from the Kansas City region scored a victory last month when a federal immigration agency backed off plans that would have led to thousands of layoffs of government employees in the metro area. But their relief was short lived, as the agency now intends to furlough 800 of its local private contractors instead — a move expected to set off immigration backlogs and processing delays throughout the nation.

 

Trump administration considers postponing refugee admissions, U.S. official says

Reuters: The refugee cap was cut to 18,000 this year, the lowest level since the modern-day program began in 1980. So far, roughly half that many refugees have been let in as increased vetting and the coronavirus pandemic have slowed arrivals.

 

LITIGATION/CASELAW/RULES/MEMOS

 

Federal court blocks Trump plan to exclude undocumented immigrants from census count used to allocate seats in Congress

CNN: The court ruled Thursday that the President’s July order violates the federal laws that set out how congressional seats are apportioned, and granted a permanent injunction blocking the rule. The court did not decide if the President’s memorandum violates the Constitution.

 

Md. Judge Finds Wolf Likely Appointed Illegally At DHS

Law 360: A Maryland federal judge held Friday that acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf was likely illegally appointed, and temporarily barred the Trump administration from enforcing new asylum restrictions on members of the advocacy organizations that challenged them.

 

District Court Issues Consent Order and Final Statement in Class Action Challenging Delay in Issuance of EADs

On 8/21/20, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio (Eastern Division) entered a Consent Order and Final Statement in the class action lawsuit challenging delays in issuance of EADs by USCIS following approval of Form I-765 applications. (Subramanya v. USCIS, 8/21/20) AILA Doc. No. 20080438

 

Immigrants detained at Buffalo Federal Detention Center in Batavia sue contractor over $1-a-day work program

Batavian: The Worker Justice Center of New York (WJCNY) has filed suit in New York’s Supreme Court against the private, for-profit company, Akima Global Services (AGS), for its exploitation of detained immigrants at the Buffalo Federal Detention Center in Batavia.

 

CA1 Vacates Preliminary Injunction Against ICE Courthouse Arrests in Massachusetts

The court held that the district court abused its discretion in finding plaintiffs were likely to succeed in showing that the INA implicitly incorporates a common law privilege against civil arrests for individuals attending court on official business. (Ryan, et al. v. ICE, et al., 9/1/20) AILA Doc. No. 20090831

 

CA1 Upholds BIA’s Denial of Motion to Reconsider Where Petitioner’s VAWA Self-Petition Was Pending

Where the petitioner had premised his motion to reopen on a pending Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) self-petition, the court upheld the denial of his motion to reconsider, holding that the BIA did not err by finding he had failed to make a prima facie case. (Franjul-Soto v. Barr, 8/24/20) AILA Doc. No. 20090331

 

CA1 Finds Petitioner’s Conviction in Massachusetts for Drug Possession with Intent to Distribute Was an Aggravated Felony

The court held that the petitioner’s Massachusetts’ drug conviction for possession with the intent to distribute amounted to “illicit trafficking in a controlled substance” and was thus an aggravated felony under INA §101(a)(43)(B). (Soto-Vittini v. Barr, 8/24/20) AILA Doc. No. 20090330

 

CA2 Stays Nationwide Injunction on DHS Public Charge Rule

The court stayed the district court’s July 29, 2020, preliminary injunction in the DHS public charge rule, thus allowing USCIS to require the Form I-944 in all jurisdictions. (State of New York, et al., v. DHS, et al., 9/11/20) AILA Doc. No. 20091190

 

CA3 Upholds Asylum Denial After Finding Syrian Militia Is a Tier III Terrorist Organization Under INA §212(a)(3)(B)(vi)(III)

The court upheld the denial of asylum to the petitioner, who fled involuntary military service in a government-controlled militia in Syria, finding that the militia was not beyond the scope of the Tier III provision under INA §212(a)(3)(B)(vi)(III). (A.A. v. Att’y Gen., 9/2/20) AILA Doc. No. 20090834

 

CA3 Holds That “Substantial Evidence” Standard of Review Applies to an IJ’s Reasonable Fear Determinations

After holding that the substantial evidence standard applies to an IJ’s reasonable fear determinations, the court found that substantial evidence supported the IJ’s conclusion that the Mexican petitioner did not have a reasonable fear of persecution or torture. (Romero v. Att’y Gen., 8/25/20) AILA Doc. No. 20090333

 

CA3 Says It Lacks Jurisdiction to Review BIA’s Discretionary Denial of Petitioner’s Motion for Certification of Late-Filed Appeal

Concluding that the “settled course exception” did not apply in the context of the case, the court held that it lacked jurisdiction to review the BIA’s discretionary decision to decline to self-certify the petitioner’s late-filed appeal. (Abdulla v. Att’y Gen., 8/20/20) AILA Doc. No. 20090332

 

CA4 Finds Petitioner Failed to Establish That Salvadoran Government Was Unable or Unwilling to Control MS-13

Finding that the record did not compel the conclusion that the Salvadoran government was unwilling or unable to control the MS-13 gang, the court upheld the IJ and BIA’s conclusion that the petitioner did not qualify as a refugee under INA §101(a)(42)(A). (Portillo-Flores v. Barr, 9/2/20) AILA Doc. No. 20090835

 

CA5 Upholds Denial of Motion to Reopen Where BIA Found Petitioner Had Failed to Pursue His Rights Diligently

The court held that the BIA did not abuse its discretion in finding that the Mexican petitioner’s motion to reopen, which was filed seven years after the entry of his removal order, was untimely and not entitled to equitable tolling. (Flores-Moreno v. Barr, 8/24/20) AILA Doc. No. 20090334

 

CA8 Finds District Court Correctly Dismissed Petitioners’ Request for Nunc Pro Tunc Adjustment of Status

The court held that the district court properly dismissed the petitioners’ request for nunc pro tunc adjustment of status, because they had failed to adjust their status to lawful permanent residents, and thus could not meet the requirements for naturalization. (Al-Saadoon v. Barr, 8/28/20) AILA Doc. No. 20090336

 

CA8 Affirms Denial of EAJA Attorney’s Fees Where Government’s Position Was Substantially Justified

The court held that the district court did not err in concluding that the government’s litigation position was substantially justified, and thus affirmed the district court’s order denying the petitioner’s attorney’s fees under the Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA). (Garcia v. Barr, 8/20/20) AILA Doc. No. 20090335

 

CA9 Finds Domestic Violence Waiver Under Special Rule Cancellation of Removal Did Not Cover Petitioner’s Drug Conviction

The court held that the domestic violence waiver established under INA §237(a)(7), and made applicable to cancellation of removal by INA §240A(b)(5), is limited to crimes of domestic violence and stalking, and thus did not cover petitioner’s drug conviction. (Jaimes-Cardenas v. Barr, 9/1/20) AILA Doc. No. 20090836

 

CA9 Reverses IJ’s and BIA’s Adverse Credibility Determination as to Asylum-Seeking Member of Minority Somali Clan

The court held that substantial evidence did not support the IJ’s and BIA’s adverse credibility determination, finding that, in light of the totality of the circumstances, the evidence compelled the conclusion that the Somali petitioner’s testimony was credible. (Iman v. Barr, 8/25/20) AILA Doc. No. 20090339

 

CA9 Defers to BIA’s Interpretation of Perjury and Holds That Conviction for Perjury in California Is an Aggravated Felony

Deferring to the BIA’s interpretation of “perjury” as used in the aggravated felony definition of INA §101(a)(43)(S), the court held that perjury under section 118(a) of the California Penal Code is an aggravated felony. (Yim v. Barr, 8/25/20) AILA Doc. No. 20090338

 

CA9 Says Petitioner Seeking to Reopen Proceedings Was Not Required to Attach a New Application for Relief

The court held that the BIA abused its discretion in finding that a noncitizen who seeks to reopen an earlier application for relief, and attaches that application to the motion, has failed to attach the “appropriate application for relief” under 8 CFR §1003.2(c)(1). (Aliyev v. Barr, 8/24/20) AILA Doc. No. 20090337

 

CA11 Finds BIA Erred in Retroactively Applying Stop-Time Rule to Pre-IIRAIRA Conviction of Petitioner Seeking Cancellation

The court held that because the petitioner had pled guilty before the stop-time rule was enacted via the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRAIRA), applying the stop-time rule retroactively to his conviction was impermissible. (Rendon v. Att’y Gen., 8/26/20) AILA Doc. No. 20090340

 

Matter of R-C-R, 28 I&N Dec. 74 (BIA 2020)

(1) After an Immigration Judge has set a firm deadline for filing an application for relief, the respondent’s opportunity to file the application may be deemed waived, prior to a scheduled hearing, if the deadline passes without submission of the application and no good cause for noncompliance has been shown.

(2) The respondent failed to meet his burden of establishing that he was deprived of a full and fair hearing where he has not shown that conducting the hearing by video conference interfered with his communication with the Immigration Judge or otherwise prejudiced him as a result of technical problems with the video equipment.

 

District Court Grants Preliminary Injunction After Finding It Has Jurisdiction to Review USCIS’s Revocation of I-140 Petition

The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida held that it has jurisdiction to review USCIS’s revocation of the plaintiff’s I-140 petition, and granted the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction. (6901 Coral Way Management, LLC, et al., v. Cucinelli, et al., 9/10/20) AILA Doc. No. 20091135

 

USCIS Launches SAVE Initiative to Collect Information on Sponsor Deeming and Agency Reimbursement

USCIS launched a new SAVE initiative asking agencies that administer federal means-tested benefits to share how they use sponsorship information in sponsor assessment and agency reimbursement processes, with the goal of helping agencies make eligibility determinations and hold sponsors accountable. AILA Doc. No. 20091032

 

DHS Proposed Rule on Use and Collection of Biometrics

DHS proposed rule on the use and collection of biometrics in the enforcement and administration of immigration laws. Comments on the rule are due on 10/13/20, with comments on associated proposed form revisions due 11/10/20. (85 FR 56338, 9/11/20) AILA Doc. No. 20090494

 

CDC Rule Finalizing Interim Final Rule on Foreign Quarantine

CDC rule finalizing the interim final rule published at 85 FR 16559, which provided a procedure for the CDC to suspend the introduction of persons into the United States from designated foreign countries or places for public health purposes. (85 FR 56424, 9/11/20) AILA Doc. No. 20090833

 

DHS Publishes Privacy Impact Assessment on Immigration-Related Information Sharing with U.S. Census Bureau

DHS released a PIA examining the privacy impact of immigration-related information sharing between DHS and the Census Bureau. DHS is providing administrative records to the Bureau to assist in determining the number of citizens, LPRs, and unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. during the 2020 census. AILA Doc. No. 19122704

 

RESOURCES

 

 

EVENTS

 

Note: Check with organizers regarding cancellations/changes

 

ImmProf

 

Monday, September 14, 2020

Sunday, September 13, 2020

Saturday, September 12, 2020

Friday, September 11, 2020

Thursday, September 10, 2020

Wednesday, September 9, 2020

Tuesday, September 8, 2020

Monday, September 7, 2020

 

************************

So much outrageous conduct by the regime. So little effective “pushback” from the other two branches who largely continue to treat the dissolution of democracy as “just another day at the office.”

With so much “bad stuff” to choose from, here’s my personal “favorite of the week:”

DHS Whistleblower Complaint Includes Surprising Insights on Immigration Policy

ImmProf: Mr. Murphy believes former DHS head Kirtjen Nielsen presented Congress with “knowing and deliberate submission of false material information” about the number of [known or suspected terrorists] crossing the southern border.

Cabinet Secretary lies to Congress. Regime uses lies to proclaim a bogus “national security emergency” at the Southern Border. Some Federal Courts, including the Supremes, accept the pretexts for furthering the Trump/Miller racist, White Nationalist anti-asylum-seekers of color agenda. 

Nothing happens to the liars. Congress and the Federal Courts “normalize” lying as a “standard Executive practice,” defer to it, and allow regime to impose potential death sentences without due process. Victims are just a bunch of largely non-White vulnerable humans that righty Federal Judges don’t believe are human or “persons” under our law.

As one of my esteemed, now retired, Arlington colleagues used to say: “The system is broken.” 

But, disturbingly, this time it’s not just the Immigration Court system we’re talking about. It’s the whole justice system, the checks and balances, and the separation of powers set up by our Constitution. Lack of accountability for gross misconduct by public officials is the sign of a failing state.

I almost feel sorry for T. Dick Nixon. If he were in office today, the Watergate burglary, conspiracy, and cover-up would have been dismissed by the GOP politicos as “fake news.” And, today’s righty judges on the Supremes and the appellate courts would simply have looked they other way and made up legal gobbledygook and gibberish to cover for their supreme ruler.

Remember, part of Nixon’s downfall was the “missing 18 minutes” of the tapes. There’s nothing missing about the “Trump tapes.”

He’s recorded committing “criminal negligence” in office, lying about it, and endangering the lives and health of tens of thousands of Americans. Then, he and his stooges get up before the public and lie some more about what happened. Then, to prove he really doesn’t give a damn about the American people, he follows up by holding a rally that fails to comply with, and in fact mocks and disparages, his own Administration’s best health advice.

Nixon was a liar. But, I guess not a shameless enough one. And, he didn’t kill as many Americans.

Fortunately for Trump, the dead can’t vote. But, their families, friends, and colleagues can! How many more must die unnecessarily before we finally “throw the bum out” (with apologies to honest bums everywhere) and get a real President into office?’

PWS

09-15-20  

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AMERICA ON RED ALERT🆘🏴‍☠️🤮☠️: Theocrat, Autocrat, Liar, Race Baiter, Anti-Democracy Activist Billy The Bigot Barr Conspires With “His Don” To Annihilate Our Constitutional Republic, Says Former GOP Deputy AG Don Ayer  — Trump and Barr: “Really an unholy alliance working for the two of them and against the country,” Ayer Tells Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick on Amicus Podcast!

Don Ayer
Don Ayer
American Lawyer
Former U.S. Deputy Attorney General — Photo www.ali.org
Dahlia Lithwick
Dahlia Lithwick
Supreme Court Reporter
Slate
Wikimedia Commons — Public Domain

Has Bill Barr Broken the Department of Justice Forever?

Bill Barr is not simply doing the president’s bidding, he is following his long-held beliefs about America.

Read in Slate: https://apple.news/Aj7921kJPQbWnLPJtiLhThA

Shared from Apple News

Bill Barr’s American Carnage

The attorney general is not just a Trump enabler, he has his own agenda.

SEPTEMBER 12 2020 10:00 AM

Listen to the episode here.

What is Bill Barr doing, and why is he doing it? Donald Ayer, former U.S. attorney and principal deputy solicitor general in the Reagan administration and deputy attorney general under George H.W. Bush, on the attorney general’s ideology, how it predates Trumpism, and why it’s so dangerous.

In the Slate Plus segment, Mark Joseph Stern breaks down the latest voting breakdown in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, the latest Census case dead end, and the stupidity of Trump’s latest SCOTUS list.

************

How timely! Just yesterday on Courtside, I gave Billy the Bigot the nod over Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions and “John the Con” Mitchell in the hotly contested race for “The Worst AG in Modern American History.” 

I still think that Gonzo could have pulled it out if he had only been given some more time! His overt racism, misogyny, intellectual dishonesty, fraud, stupidity, bias, and “crimes against humanity” set a standard for morally corrupt officials that seemed unassailable until Billy the Bigot went into “full destructo mode.”  

As someone who started working at the DOJ in 1973, I witnessed (if only from the crowd standing outside the Great Hall) the “voluntary departure” of Elliot Richardson following the “Saturday Night Massacre,” where he resigned rather than carry out President T. Dick Nixon’s inappropriate demand that he fire the Watergate Special Prosecutor. Could you imagine Billy the Bigot refusing any demand from “His Don,” no matter how illegal, unethical, and/or outrageous? When it comes to the history of Government corruption and the DOJ, I know what I’m talking about. 

Heck, I even survived long enough to get “purged” myself by Ashcroft in 2003, during my “DOJ reincarnation.” So, I’m no stranger to the imperfections and shortcomings in the supposed “independence” of the DOJ. 

Nevertheless, I heartily agree with Don Ayer that the dishonesty, deceit, bias, bigotry, racism, and scofflaw attitudes installed into DOJ operations by Gonzo and Billy are light years beyond prior abuses I have witnessed during my nearly five decades in the law.

Don Ayer, my former DOJ colleague and partner at Jones Day DC, confirms what I have been saying for a long time on Courtside about Billy the Bigot’s unconstitutional and unethical control of the Immigration Courts.

Listen to this podcast and ask yourself: “How could any foreign national, particularly an asylum seeker, non-Christian, or person of color get a fundamentally fair and impartial hearing before ‘judges’ selected, directed, evaluated, and governed by Billy?” If that’s not enough, if the foreign national does happen to win, Billy just unilaterally intervenes and changes the results, even in cases completed back in the Bush II Administration!

Obviously, this isn’t justice; to use Don Ayer’s term, this is “Banana Republic” authoritarian injustice.

So, how have Congress and the Roberts-led Supremes let Billy get away with this disgraceful unconstitutional mockery of everything our nation stands for?  Good question with no happy answer.

During Watergate, it took a concerted effort by a bipartisan Congress, the Federal Courts including the Supremes, and independent lawyers and investigators working for the Watergate Special Prosecutor within the DOJ to bring about Nixon’s forced resignation in the face of inevitable impeachment and conviction.

By contrast, today’s GOP Senate and the GOP-appointed “JR Five” on the Supremes have shown themselves to be shameless toadies, sycophants, and enablers in the face of clearly abusive Executive overreach and tyranny. The post-Watergate ethical reforms, checks, and balances put in place by former GOP-appointed AG Ed Levi, cited by Don, have been completely dismantled in broad daylight by the Trump regime with no pushback from Congress or the Supremes. This serious, entirely preventable, deterioration and abandonment of the rule of law and ethical norms cuts across all three Branches of Government and threatens the very foundations of our democracy.

Assuming (by no means a certainty) that our nation puts it together this Fall to remove the Trump kakistocracy, we need a careful and thoughtful re-examination of the types of individuals we are rewarding with life-tenured judicial appointments and why those now on the bench, as a group, failed so miserably to uphold the Constitution, protect human dignity and decency, and thwart the outrageous scofflaw agenda of Trump and his cronies like Billy the Bigot and neo-Nazi Stephen Miller.

Don Ayer specifically mentions the outrageous “Wall Charade” where Trump illegally and unethically steamrolled legislation, the Constitution, the public purse, and common sense to divert money to his “Political Wall” using a patently bogus and fabricated “national security” pretext.

But, here’s the rest of the story: When Trump-owned Solicitor General Noel Francisco presented this  “false claim” to the Supremes, disingenuously asserting a clearly fabricated “emergency” he got the JR Five to roll over! Instead of upholding the lower court’s correct injunction and referring Francisco to bar authorities for unethical conduct, they actually approved this farce, by a 5-4 “party line vote.” Of course, that spineless performance has greenlighted other racist-driven White Nationalist policies and an aura of impunity among the Trump regime kakistocracy.

Gee wiz, a Federal Court actually determined some time ago that DHS honchos Chad “Wolfman” Wolf and Ken “Cooch Cooch” Cuccinelli are both illegally serving in their current positions. But, in the “no consequences no accountability” atmosphere established by the Roberts Court, Cooch and Wolfie continue to abuse migrants with arrogant impunity. They obviously have no fear of accountability. Even if  they got in trouble, Trump would simply run over the Constitution to pardon them.

As I constantly say, “it’s not rocket science.” There are scores of talented courageous lawyers out there in the private, NGO, and academic sectors who could have out-performed the “JR Five” in protecting our republic. Why are they stuck in the trenches rather than sitting on the Federal Benches?

When Congress and the Executive fail, the nation turns to the supposedly independent Article III Courts as democracy’s last defender. But, Roberts & Co. have been more than “MIA” — they have actively contributed to the downfall with outrageous derelictions of duty on voting rights, civil rights, and grotesque, unconstitutional “Dred Scottifiction” of migrants of color that actually harms, maims, and kills innocent humans almost every day.

Think that “Dred Scottification” couldn’t happen to you? Guess again! Don Ayer says all of our freedoms and democratic norms will be on the line if Billy and “His Don” get another four years to complete their destruction. Believe him!

This Fall, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does!

PWS

9-13-20

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  2. 🤮NO PEACE ON EARTH GOODWILL TOWARD MEN (WOMEN, OR ESPECIALLY CHILDREN) FROM REGIME OF “BAD SANTAS” 🦹🏿‍♂️🎅🏻— Illegally Separated Families Continue To Suffer Irreparable Trauma, 😰 Volunteer Groups 😇🗽⚖️ Left To Pick Up Pieces — A Reminder That Defeated Regime Has Mocked, Disparaged, & Trashed Christ’s Values & Assaulted Humanity Over Four Christmases!🏴‍☠️🤮☠️⚰️👎🏻
  3. 🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️🤮👎🏻THE TRUMP REGIME & A CORRUPT SOLICITOR GENERAL HAVE CONDUCTED A WAR OF ATTRITION AGAINST AMERICAN LAWYERS ON THE FRONT LINES OF THE BATTLE TO SAVE DEMOCRACY — John Roberts & His GOP Buddies On The Supremes Have Aided, Abetted, & Encouraged It! — Constant Improper & Ethically Questionable Interference With Thoughtful, Legally Correct Lower Court Rulings Holding The Regime Accountable Have Demoralized The Profession’s Best & Bravest! — The Answer Is Better Judges For A Better America!
  4. 🏴‍☠️☠️🤮👎🏻IN NYT OP-ED, FORMER TRUMP DOJ ATTORNEY ERICA NEWLAND ADMITS COMPLICITY! — Having Undermined Democratic Institutions, Sold False Narratives To (Too Often Willing) Federal Judges, & Participated In Racist-Inspired “Dred Scottification” (“Dehumanization”) Of the Other Is Actually a BIG Deal! — So Is The Destruction Of Due Process & Fundamental Fairness In The Immigration Courts (Now, “Clown Courts”🤡, or “America’s Star Chambers”☠️) 

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: Will Judge Emmet Sullivan Become The Judge John Sirica of “Trumpgate?”  — “No Nincompoops!”

Judge John “Maximum John” Sirica
Judge John “Maximum John” Sirica
1904-1992
US District Court, D.C.
1957-1992
Hon. Emmet G. Sullivan
Hon. Emmet G. Sullivan
US District Judge
DC

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: Will Judge Emmet Sullivan Become The Judge John Sirica of “Trumpgate?”  — “No Nincompoops!”

By Paul Wickham Schmidt

Courtside Exclusive

May 17, 2020.  Nearly five decades ago, a tough-minded U.S. District Judge in Washington, D.C., refused to “go along to get along.” Judge “Maximum John” Sirica saw through the corrupt B.S. being put forth by defendants (“The Plumbers”) who pleaded guilty in attempting to “cover up” the badly bungled Watergate burglary of DNC headquarters in the Watergate Hotel. So, Sirica did some digging on his own. 

One of his most famous quotes — the “No Nincompoops Rule”  was set forth in his New York Times obit: 

“I don’t think a Federal judge should sit up on a bench — particularly in a case like this one, with great public interest in it — I don’t think we should sit up here like nincompoops.” https://www.nytimes.com/1992/08/15/us/sirica-88-dies-persistent-judge-in-fall-of-nixon.html

None other than former Attorney General John Mitchell had been involved in orchestrating the Watergate caper, and the “cover-up” trail eventually led all the way to the Oval Office and President Nixon. Nixon eventually resigned with impeachment, conviction, and removal staring him in the face. 

The scandal involved some truly bizarre moments such as the “kidnapping” of Mitchell’s eccentric, talkative, estranged wife Martha and White House Counsel John Dean being told to “deep six” potentially incriminating documents by throwing them off the 14th Street Bridge on the way home to his Alexandria townhouse. It added to our vocabulary colorful terms like “stonewalling,” “twisting slowly in the wind,” “Deep Throat,” and more, in addition, of course, to “deep six.” John “The Con” Mitchell was convicted of conspiracy, perjury, and obstruction of justice (although never charged with Martha’s kidnapping) and served time in a Federal Penitentiary. Judge Sirica was named Time’s “Man of the Year.”

Watergate also resulted in changes in ethical rules and an effort to insulate the DOJ investigative and prosecution functions from political influence, particularly interference from the White House. With AG Billy Barr’s assistance, Trump has basically blown away all ethical safeguards and politicized and “weaponized” government institutions to a degree that probably exceeds Watergate. 

Now, Billy Barr is trying to further Trump’s agenda by making the Flynn prosecution go away. That’s after Flynn actually pleaded guilty to the charges before Judge Emmet G. Sullivan. At least initially, Judge Sullivan appears skeptical about the sudden change of course by DOJ prosecutors. It’s a move that led to the withdrawal of the career prosecutors involved in the case and a demand from a bipartisan group of more than 2,000 former DOJ officials (including me and many colleagues from the Round Table of Retired Judges) that Barr resign.

Judge Sullivan has a reputation for independence and not suffering fools lightly. He has appointed private counsel to argue against dismissal of the charges. We’ll have to see what, if anything, comes of it all. 

It’s also unclear whether a lone Federal Judge of courage and integrity still can “make a difference” in today’s rapidly deteriorating legal and political environment. During Watergate, a unanimous Supremes (with Chief Justice Rehnquist recused) stood up to Nixon and rejected his bogus executive privilege claim on incriminating tapes. GOP Congressional leaders eventually joined those voices urging Nixon to resign.

So far, by contrast, the Roberts-led Supremes’ majority hasn’t shown an inclination to stand up to Trump on any major issue of Executive overreach. And, GOP legislators have shown themselves to be so scared of Trump and so far inside his pocket that they can’t see the light of day. Indeed, they appear to have lost ambition to do anything other than help Trump and cover up his corruption and “malicious incompetence.”

Even if Sullivan does uncover something shady, it’s likely that Roberts and the GOP will leap to help Trump and Barr suppress and cover up any evidence of wrongdoing by blocking or obstructing any further investigation by House Democrats. Times have changed. And, right now, that doesn’t appear to be for the better for our justice system or our nation.

PWS

05-17-20

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🏴‍☠️BILLY BARR ERADICATES AMERICAN JUSTICE👎– So Far, He’s On A Roll: Weaponized Immigration Courts, Protecting a Corrupt President by Undermining Prosecutors, Mischaracterizing The Mueller Report, “Stonewalling” Congress (The Dems, Anyway), Investigating “Enemies,” Misleading Representations to Courts, Treating the Supremes Like Trump’s Toadies, It’s All a “Walk In The Park” For Arguably The Worst & Most Dangerous ☠️ AG In Modern U.S. History! — “I’ve lived through Attorneys General Mitchell and Meese,” Gillers said, referring to John Mitchell and Edwin Meese, who served as Attorneys General in the Nixon and Reagan Administrations, respectively. “Those guys were choir boys 😇 next to Barr.”

 

David Rohde
David Rohde
Executive Editor
newyorker.com

https://apple.news/A1-289cR1QfWt1o8ao_UTaQ

 

 

David Rohde writes in The New Yorker:

 

Three years ago, President Donald Trump appeared to be politically wounded and legally encircled. On May 17, 2017, eight days after Trump had fired James Comey, then the F.B.I. director, Robert Mueller was appointed as special counsel, to investigate ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. Memos written by Comey stated that Trump had asked him to “let go” of the F.B.I. investigation of Michael Flynn, Trump’s national-security adviser, who had been fired after he lied to Vice-President Mike Pence and other officials about the nature of a phone call that he’d had with the Russian Ambassador. As 2017 came to a close, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to F.B.I. agents about the call and agreed to serve as a coöperating witness for Mueller’s investigation. Trump’s effort to flout post-Watergate reforms, which were designed to prevent a President from pressuring the F.B.I. into halting a politically embarrassing investigation, appeared to have failed.

Yet now, six months before he faces reëlection, Trump, with the help of Attorney General William Barr, is successfully rewriting that history. Last Thursday, Barr dismissed the charges against Flynn, declaring him the victim of an F.B.I. plot. (The federal judge who oversaw Flynn’s case said that he would appoint a retired judge to review Barr’s action, and whether Flynn should now be charged with perjury.) At Barr’s direction, the Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation of Comey, the F.B.I. officials who investigated the Trump campaign, and the C.I.A. officials who concluded that Russia had intervened in the 2016 election on Trump’s behalf. Barr is flatly rejecting the findings of Mueller and the Justice Department’s inspector general: that the F.B.I was justified in investigating the highly unusual contacts between the Trump campaign and a hostile foreign government—which did, in fact, intervene in the race on Trump’s behalf—and that Trump and his aides had welcomed that aid and repeatedly lied about their own actions.

Instead, Barr, in an extraordinary act by an Attorney General, declared, last month, that the F.B.I. investigation of the Trump campaign was “without any basis,” an attempt to “sabotage the Presidency,” and “one of the greatest travesties in American history.” He added, in reference to his department’s new investigation—but without citing any specifics—that “the evidence shows that we are not dealing with just mistakes or sloppiness” but that “there was something far more troubling here.” Those statements violated a long-standing Justice Department practice of not commenting on investigations before they have been completed. In a subsequent interview, Barr hinted that he might release the results of the ongoing probe, led by a federal prosecutor, John Durham, before the election. Barr said that a Justice Department policy prohibiting prosecutors from filing criminal charges or taking investigative steps to impact elections did not apply. “The idea is you don’t go after candidates,” Barr said. “But, you know, as I say, I don’t think any of the people whose actions are under review by Durham fall into that category.”

On Wednesday, the acting director of National Intelligence, Richard Grenell, gave Republican senators records he had declassified that listed the names of three dozen Obama Administration officials, including Joe Biden, who requested to know the identity of an American citizen who had had a series of phone calls with foreign officials after Trump won the election. The citizen was Flynn. On Wednesday, those senators released the names of the officials and accused the former Vice-President of participating in a plot to entrap Flynn. Former national-security officials said that it is routine to request, or “unmask,” the names of Americans whose conversations with foreign officials contain intelligence, and noted that the practice has increased by seventy-five per cent under Trump. Ben Rhodes, a former top Obama adviser, tweeted, “The unconfirmed, acting DNI using his position to criminalize routine intelligence work to help re-elect the president and obscure Russian intervention in our democracy would normally be the scandal here.” Grenell replied in a tweet, “Transparency is not political. But I will give you that it isn’t popular in Washington DC.”

Next Tuesday, the Senate Intelligence Committee is expected to approve the nomination of John Ratcliffe, a pro-Trump Republican congressman from Texas, to replace Grenell as the director of National Intelligence. Ratcliffe caught Trump’s eye when he assailed Mueller on national television during the former special counsel’s testimony before Congress. An individual involved in Ratcliffe’s confirmation effort said that “the fact that the President trusts Congressman Ratcliffe—not because they are friends but because he’s observed his good judgment and the way he handles himself—that affords a great opportunity to strengthen the relationship between the President and the intelligence community.”

Former Justice Department and intelligence officials have expressed alarm at Trump’s success at appointing partisan loyalists who they say echo the Presidents political messaging. David Laufman, a former head of the Justice Department’s counterintelligence section, who worked on the Trump-Russia investigation, told me, “I think we need to be careful not to be too lackadaisical in recognizing the significance of what is happening throughout our government, not just in law enforcement and intelligence but the attempted politicization of our public health system,” citing attacks by Trump supporters on Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the government’s top infectious-disease experts. “It’s everywhere, and it matters in ways that are increasingly important to the well-being of people in our country.”

The transformation has been most striking at the Justice Department, an institution that, after Watergate, both Republicans and Democrats agreed should strive to remain politically neutral. Stephen Gillers, a professor of legal ethics at New York University, said that, more than any other modern Attorney General, Barr has enabled the President to use the department for his own purposes. “I’ve lived through Attorneys General Mitchell and Meese,” Gillers said, referring to John Mitchell and Edwin Meese, who served as Attorneys General in the Nixon and Reagan Administrations, respectively. “Those guys were choir boys next to Barr.” (A spokeswoman for Barr did not respond to a request for comment.)

 

. . . .

***********************************

Read the rest of Rohde’s article at the link.

Ethics certainly has taken a holiday, a long one, during the Trump regime! Talk about someone “stocking the swamp!”🐊 On the “choirboy front,” remember that “John the Con” Mitchell actually served time in a Federal Pen for his role in Watergate. So, it’s “no mean feat” for Billy to achieve a higher “corruption rating” than “The Con” from Professor Gillers!

As someone who “came to Washington” during Watergate, I was shocked by the ease with which Trump and his cronies did away with all the ethical rules and protections put in place in the aftermath.

I’m still stunned and saddened by the lack of integrity and courage shown by the Article III Federal Judiciary under the spineless leadership and kowtowing to Executive authority of John Roberts. I actually thought he was better than that. But, hey, I was wrong to give him the “benefit of the doubt.”

I’m also surprised by the complete corruption of today’s GOP. During Watergate, Nixon certainly had his GOP defenders, particularly at first. But, as the evidence against him mounted, many members of the GOP joined in pressuring him to “do the right thing” and resign before being impeached and removed. And, Nixon, for all his quirks, biases, cover-ups, and total lack of personal charisma was still a better and more effective leader, even at the end, than Trump ever has been or will be.

Also, the “meltdown” at Justice stands out. During Watergate, Nixon had to get down to the #3 politico at the DOJ, Solicitor General Robert Bork, to fire the Watergate Prosecutor, after AG Elliot Richardson and DAG William Ruckelshaus resigned rather than violate their oaths of office. And, Bork’s questionable decision to comply with Nixon’s order probably helped cost him a seat on the Supremes.

Today, by contrast, the “5th Floor” of the DOJ is teeming with unethical sycophants, starting with Barr, who seem to be competing with each other to “out-Trump Trump.”

Another interesting thing is how Billy managed to hide his far-right extremism, intellectual dishonesty, contempt for American Justice and rule of law beneath a veneer of “corporate respectability” in the ranks of “Big Law” for many years. At Billy’s confirmation hearing, perhaps glad to finally be rid of “Gonzo Apocalypto,” many seemed to “take him at his word” as he skirted the big questions and lied his way to the head position at one of the “nerve centers” of American Justice.

This November, vote like your life depends on it. Because it (and the future of our nation) does!

PWS

05-16-20

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COURTSIDE HISTORY: Elizabeth Drew Tells Those (Unlike Me) Too Young To Remember What “Watergate” Was REALLY About!

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/10/will-the-myths-of-watergate-prove-misleading

Elizabeth Drew writes in Vanity Fair:

Considerable mythology has arisen about Watergate, and these myths are confusing the current discussion around why and how Nixon was driven from office—which in turn has muddled the conversation around the possible fate of Donald Trump, whom Democrats might move to impeach if they take control of the House in November. In any event, it’s worth separating myth from reality when it comes to Watergate and the impeachment proceedings against Richard Nixon.

One of the greatest misconceptions around Watergate is that it was the break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, and the subsequent cover-up, that led to Nixon being forced to surrender the presidency. But, in fact, when Nixon returned to Washington from his vacation home in Key Biscayne, Florida, three days after the break-in had been discovered, he and chief of staff H.R. Haldeman had another matter on their minds. The two men were worried that if the burglars—a group of “plumbers,” established ostensibly to ferret out the source of leaks that upset the Nixon White House led by E. Howard Hunt, a former C.I.A. operative who’d participated in the Bay of Pigs invasion, and G. Gordon Liddy, a former F.B.I. G-man—talked to federal investigators, their other activities on behalf of the White House might come to light. The real role of the plumbers was to “destroy” (Nixon talked that way) Nixon’s real and perceived “enemies,” meaning that, as Haldeman put it to the president when they met three days after the discovered break-in, “the problem is that there are all kinds of other involvements.” (This conversation was recorded on the tape of which 18 and a half minutes was later discovered to have been erased—a revelation that set off one of a number of explosions in the Watergate story. John Ehrlichman, Nixon’s head of domestic policy, wrote in his memoir that Nixon had done the erasing at Camp David.)

The “other involvement” that Nixon and Haldeman were most worried about being discovered was a break-in on September 3, 1971, more than nine months before the famous Watergate intrusion. This earlier break-in occurred at the office of the psychiatrist of Daniel Ellsberg, the defense analyst who, in June 1971, leaked the Pentagon Papers, a Johnson-era analysis of the Vietnam War, to The New York Times, The Washington Post,and The Boston Globe. Although the report had nothing to do with the Nixon administration directly, it did raise serious questions about the rationale for the war. Nixon, egged on by national-security adviser Henry Kissinger, was enraged at the study’s leak, and wanted Ellsberg “crushed” and any further unwonted leaks stopped. And so the Office of Special Investigations—the plumbers unit—was established, and Nixon’s obliging top aides drew up “Hunt/Liddy Special Project No. 1,” the goal of which was to recover damaging intel on Ellsberg.

Once it was revealed, the break-in at the office of Dr. Lewis Fielding was considered by observers—as it had been by Nixon himself—to be far more serious than the Watergate break-in. Even conservative members of Congress were shocked. During hearings by a special Senate committee in the summer of 1973, Georgia’s conservative Democratic Senator Herman Talmadge (southern Democrats hadn’t yet gone red) asked Ehrlichman if he recalled the English principle in which “no matter how humble a man’s cottage is, even the king of England cannot enter without his consent.” Ehrlichman replied chillingly, “I am afraid that that has been considerably eroded over the years.”

As it happens, the burglars found no medical papers about Ellsberg in Dr. Fielding’s files. Nevertheless, that particular raid had far-reaching consequences. It remained secret until Ellsberg’s 1973 trial, when the Justice Department was obliged to disclose it. Citing this stunning news, the presiding judge dismissed the case against Ellsberg, saying that the administration’s behavior “offend[s] a sense of justice.” The Fielding break-in was incorporated into the articles of impeachment against Nixon.

Another oft-repeated Watergate myth, which arose from those Senate hearings, is that the committee vice-chair, Tennessee Republican Howard Baker, asked Nixon administration witnesses a particularly penetrating question: “What did the president know, and when did he know it?” This question was considered so clever that it’s been applied to determine whether Trump played a direct role in collaborating with the Russians in the 2016 presidential election. In fact, Baker was working with the Nixon White House, and the point of the question was to narrow the grounds for holding Nixon to blame for the Watergate break-in; unless a witness could pinpoint precisely that Nixon knew, for example, about the Watergate break-in ahead of time, he was blameless and couldn’t be held accountable for the acts of his aides and hired thugs.

The question of whether to hold a president accountable for the acts of his aides was a critical question facing the House Judiciary Committee in the summer of 1974, as it considered articles of impeachment. The most important of the three that it adopted, which it approved on July 30, was Article II, which accused Nixon of various abuses of power—wiretapping, using government agencies against his “enemies”—and also suggested that the president could be held responsible for a given “pattern or practice” on the part of his aides, meaning that simply winking and nodding would not insulate him from their untoward acts. The president determines the climate of the White House, and his aides can often ascertain what he wants done without receiving specific instructions. In effect, it didn’t matter whether Nixon knew about the Watergate break-in beforehand—according to Article II, he was implicated in it regardless.

A third widely misunderstood and highly important event that occurred shortly before the end of the Nixon presidency was the discovery of an excerpt from three tapes that Nixon, under pressure from his staff and the public, released belatedly on August 5. The tapes captured conversations between Nixon and Haldeman on June 23, three days after their initial meeting following the discovery of the Watergate burglars. The president admitted that he had withheld the recordings from even his own lawyers and staff, though in a seeming contradiction, he added that he hadn’t realized the “implications” of their contents. An unusually contrite Nixon admitted that it is “clear that portions of the tapes of these June 23 conversations are at variance with certain of my previous statements.” In a key passage, Nixon could be heard instructing Haldeman to tell the C.I.A. to tell the F.B.I. to halt its investigation into the Watergate case, for the sake of protecting matters pertaining to national security—a well-worn excuse for all sorts of misuses of power.

Here was indisputable evidence that the president was obstructing justice. And this, the myth goes, is why Nixon was forced to resign. In fact, by the time the missing piece of tape was released, the House Judiciary Committee had already approved, on a bipartisan basis, its three articles of impeachment (one was about obstruction of justice), and Nixon’s political position was so weakened by now that it was widely assumed he would be impeached and convicted. The scrap of tape only hastened his departure.

The events leading to Richard Nixon’s ouster are largely misremembered

Nixon, photographed departing in his helicopter after resigning as U.S. president in 1974.

By Bill Pierce/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images.

As it turns out, Trump isn’t the only president whose aides occasionally saved him from himself by disregarding his orders. Nixon was often drunk at night (a condition exacerbated by Dilantin, an anti-convulsant that he’d been erroneously advised would help with depression), and he’d telephone aides at all hours to bark out instructions, once ordering the firing of an entire floor of State Department officials the next day. Those who received the calls were forced to use their (questionable) judgment to determine which orders to carry out, and which to ignore. One of the most infamous examples of this phenomenon was when Nixon instructed the plumbers to firebomb the Brookings Institution, where two former Johnson administration officials who’d worked on the Pentagon Papers were believed to be keeping unreleased portions of the report. In the confusion that was to be caused by the fire, the plumbers were instructed to break into said files and retrieve the unpublished papers. But someone on Nixon’s staff headed off this harebrained scheme. As it happened, neither man’s office contained even a file cabinet.

The events involving the break-ins and Nixon’s attempts to avoid prosecution—milquetoast in contrast to Trump’s—were more than a series of simple criminal acts. They were, in essence, a constitutional crisis. For some time, the question was whether the president could be held accountable to the Congress or the courts, as intended by the Constitution. But the situation was still more alarming than that: the Watergate break-in, as well as other activities perpetrated by Nixon’s goon squad, were parts of an effort by a sitting president to affect—if not determine—his Democratic opponent in the next election. Faced with a slate of possible opponents, including Ted Kennedy and Edmund Muskie, Nixon and his aides concluded that these potentially formidable candidates should be knocked out of the race, and that by contrast, Nixon believed, George McGovern, an anti-Vietnam War liberal (though he was a World War II hero), would be easy pickings in the general election. Ultimately, McGovern was chosen as the Democratic nominee, thanks in part to the machinations of the current governing party—an effort that veered dangerously close to fascism.

What may ultimately have saved the country was the fact that the plumbers botched every operation they undertook. In an act of carelessness that came to define their leadership, Hunt and Liddy had their picture taken in front of Dr. Fielding’s office door using a C.I.A.-supplied camera. (They then asked the C.I.A. to develop the pictures when they returned to Washington, which meant the agency had a copy of the two men at the site of their first and most serious misdeed.) The famous Watergate break-in was actually the plumbers’ fourth attempt at, in Nixon’s terms, “getting the goods” on D.N.C. chairman Lawrence O’Brien, whose office was in the Watergate complex. During their first attempt, they staged a dinner in the building as a pretext for a raid, but somehow ended up locked in a closet overnight. On their second try, they reached the D.N.C. offices, but discovered that they lacked the right equipment for breaking the lock. After one of the burglars returned to Miami to acquire said tool, they managed to break into the D.N.C.’s Watergate offices on their third attempt, over Memorial Day weekend of 1972. There, they bugged phones and photographed certain documents. But the tap on O’Brien’s phone didn’t work, and John Mitchell, formerly Nixon’s attorney general and now the chairman of his re-election committee, was said to have denounced the fuzzy pictures as “junk.” (Though it’s doubtful that that’s the exact word he used.) He instructed the plumbers to return.

Finally, the details around why a group of Republican leaders urged Nixon to resign have been misrepresented. The widely held belief, then and now, has been that the G.O.P. eminences from Capitol Hill, who told Nixon that his support among their colleagues had evaporated, acted courageously, out of patriotism. In truth, Nixon still had pockets of support around the country. These supposed courageous statesmen were hoping to avoid an inconvenient vote against the president. Nixon, anxious to keep his pension and to be granted the staff accorded presidents after they leave office voluntarily, agreed. He needed to pay off his sizable legal bills, and he wanted a staff to help write his memoirs and plot a return to public life—a scheme in which he succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. And so, on August 9, 1974, Nixon became the first president in our lifetime to resign from office. Before long, we may find out whether he will be the last.

************************************

“Summer of ’73” — the Senate Watergate Hearings — when my wife Cathy and I arrived in Washington, D.C. and settled down across the river in Alexandria, VA. Alexandria was then home to the notorious Presidential Counsel John Dean who once testified that Nixon’s Chief Domestic Affairs Adviser, the equally notorious John Ehrlichman, suggested that he could use his short commute across the Potomac to “deep six” potentially incriminating evidence by throwing it in the river!

That led my cousin’s husband to (jokingly, of course) suggest that my job prospects in the Nixon Justice Department would be greatly improved by my Alexandria address!

Gotta give Trumpie credit for making “slimeballs of the past” like Ehrlichman & Dean “relevant” again.

PWS

10-15-18

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  1. THE DOJ’S NEW TITLE UNDER BILLY BARR: “HOOKERS FOR TRUMP” – “Why Bill Barr’s DOJ replaced Catholic Charities with Hookers for Jesus” – Why “There has never been a better time to be a Hooker for Jesus.”
  2. HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: Will Judge Emmet Sullivan Become The Judge John Sirica of “Trumpgate?”  — “No Nincompoops!”
  3. 🏴‍☠️BILLY BARR ERADICATES AMERICAN JUSTICE👎– So Far, He’s On A Roll: Weaponized Immigration Courts, Protecting a Corrupt President by Undermining Prosecutors, Mischaracterizing The Mueller Report, “Stonewalling” Congress (The Dems, Anyway), Investigating “Enemies,” Misleading Representations to Courts, Treating the Supremes Like Trump’s Toadies, It’s All a “Walk In The Park” For Arguably The Worst & Most Dangerous ☠️ AG In Modern U.S. History! — “I’ve lived through Attorneys General Mitchell and Meese,” Gillers said, referring to John Mitchell and Edwin Meese, who served as Attorneys General in the Nixon and Reagan Administrations, respectively. “Those guys were choir boys 😇 next to Barr.”
  4. THE SADNESS OF PROPHECY WITHOUT POWER: Two Years Ago, I Gave A Speech Warning Of The Consequences Of “1939 Germany” — Now, We’re In “Germany 1938” With 1939 Just An Election Away! — Moscow Mitch, Lindsey The Toad, Texas Ted & The Rest Of The GOP Fellow Travelers & Cultists Would Be Right At Home With Franz van Papen!