Forty-eight years ago today, Richard Nixon, the President of the United States, announced his resignation from office. After two long years of investigations, Congressional hearings, court cases, protests and counter-protests; Nixon finally took the \u201ceasy\u201d way out. He resigned, not saying he did anything wrong, but that he didn\u2019t have support of Congress to continue his fight. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was seventeen at the time.\u00a0\u00a0The Watergate crisis had subsumed my life since the first Congressional hearings in the spring and summer of 1973.\u00a0\u00a0I was convinced that Richard Nixon led a conspiracy. He hid the felonies his campaign committed with his full knowledge. I was right.\u00a0\u00a0He disgraced the Presidency, and he had to go.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I fully expected to spend the next six months, my freshman year in college, watching the second impeachment and removal of a President .<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So his speech on that August night wasn\u2019t a total surprise. The actual \u201cnews\u201d was leaked earlier in the day. But it was a pleasant acceleration of justice. The \u201clong national nightmare\u201d of Watergate, as the incoming President Ford called it, was over. The United States could focus on something else. I \u201craised a glass\u201d that night, to the final triumph of American justice. (Yes, I was underaged \u2013 it was champagne, and you can consider this a confession). <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n A few weeks later, Ford pardoned Nixon for any crimes he might have committed, from Watergate to income tax evasion.\u00a0\u00a0 I was outraged. If we are all equal in the eyes of the law, justice \u201cblind\u201d to status; then Nixon deserved to be \u201cin the dock\u201d. He should suffer the same fate as his Attorney General, his Chief of Staff and his Domestic Affairs Advisor. He should go to jail.\u00a0\u00a0Later on, I better understood Ford\u2019s reasoning. He hoped .to end the focus on Watergate, and avoid the spectacle of a former President\u00a0\u00a0on trial.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n That was before Donald Trump.\u00a0\u00a0Looking back over those forty-eight years, my entire adult life, I now see that Ford inadvertently established a precedent. He established that American justice will not be applied to those that reach the highest office in the land.\u00a0\u00a0Of the forty-five men who have held that office (Grover Cleveland counts twice since he served two different terms), there really hasn\u2019t been a concern about their possible criminality.\u00a0\u00a0That is, except for Nixon, who was pardoned.\u00a0\u00a0And now, except for Trump, who has weaponized and transformed the Republican Party to serve as his defense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yesterday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation executed a search warrant at Mara Lago, the home of the former President, Donald Trump. The warrant was to search for papers improperly removed from the White House, in violation of the Federal Records Act and national security statutes. At least, that\u2019s what we know so far. But this unprecedented search, after more than a year of negotiations among Trump\u2019s attorneys, the National Archives and the Department of Justice; can\u2019t possibly just be about old menus, draft speeches, and a letter from Kim Jong-Un. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump himself wasn\u2019t there.\u00a0\u00a0He was in New York, preparing for a deposition with the New York Attorney General about possible civil law violations and his real estate transactions.\u00a0\u00a0The FBI sent \u201cplain clothes\u201d agents, and notified Trump\u2019s Secret Service detail of the warrant.\u00a0\u00a0But Trump, with his usual hyperbole, claimed that the FBI was \u201claying siege\u201d to Mara Lago, and illegally exercising a political vendetta.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The New York Times reports that there was an index one hundred pages long of unclassified documents improperly removed from the White House. More importantly, there was a second index, three pages long, of classified documents.\u00a0\u00a0Perhaps the value of some of those classified documents is so great, and the former President\u2019s position so intransigent, that the only choice was to go and physically get them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That we know of, Donald Trump is under investigation by a Federal Grand Jury in Washington regarding the insurrection, another Grand Jury dealing with violations of the Records and National Security Acts, a state Grand Jury in Atlanta for election interference, and a state Grand Jury in New York for fraudulent financial dealings.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0And of course, the January 6th<\/sup>\u00a0Committee continues to investigate, as well.\u00a0\u00a0Documents legally seized by the FBI in their search aren\u2019t just restricted to any one of those investigations.\u00a0\u00a0If they are relevant, they can be shared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Executing a search warrant is not \u201cproof\u201d of anything.\u00a0\u00a0But this warrant, a warrant to search the home of this former President, must have been the most carefully scrutinized document ever produced by the Department of Justice.\u00a0\u00a0It would have been cleared all the way to the Attorney General.\u00a0\u00a0It was signed off by a Federal Judge, who agreed that there was probable cause that evidence of a crime was present at the home.\u00a0\u00a0Every one of those officials involved knew exactly the momentous and unprecedented decision they were making.\u00a0\u00a0They all knew that, as Roger Stone would say, they would have \u201ctheir time in the barrel\u201d for this.\u00a0\u00a0Whatever they were searching for, they were damn well sure it was there, in Mara Lago.<\/p>\n\n\n\nPrecedent<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Investigations<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Proof<\/h3>\n\n\n\n