HED: Trump DOJ investigating Nixon prosecutors is not AI slop without pictures
I was 10 years old in 1974 when my great-great-grandmother turned 100. Richard Nixon, then president, sent her a congratulatory letter with his signature at the bottom. She gave it to me because even then I was obsessed with the presidency.
I told everyone and their mother - literally - I had Nixon's autograph. Yes, his name was mud by then, but he was still the president, and I had his autograph.
Not long after, Nixon became the first president in American history to resign, and I understood, even at 10, that I was watching something historic. For years, I kept a copy of the Pittsburgh Press with that stunning resignation headline. Since then I've read every Nixon book and watched every Watergate documentary. I saw the film and the play Frost/Nixon.
When I got to Capitol Hill in 1986, I sought out people who were there when it happened. I'm no credentialed historian, but I'm about as close to an unofficial expert as a guy can get.
I could write a book about Nixon and Watergate, but that subject has been beaten to death.
Now, 50+ years later, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday night that Donald Trump's Justice Department is reviewing whether the Watergate special prosecutor's office committed misconduct. I first saw someone post about it on Threads, and I laughed. Is this the non-pictorial equivalent of AI slop?
Nope, it's for real, and I'm still laughing.
According to WSJ, Nixon aide turned revisionist historian Geoff Shepard gave a two-hour presentation at DOJ headquarters titled "Watergate as Lawfare." While Rome burns, the folks at Justice have nothing better to do than listen to an 82-year-old man talk about his glory days.
Shepard's theory is that Archibald Cox's and Leon Jaworski's special prosecutor teams met secretly with judges and withheld evidence.
The department told the WSJ that this isn't a formal investigation.
First, can I just say: Who cares? The DOJ should have had me in for 10 minutes to give them the top-line highlights and 1 hour and 50 minutes of their time back. I wouldn't need a presentation. I could do it off the top of my head.
There was a burglary at the Democratic National Committee. A cover-up. Nixon, desperate to keep Archibald Cox from getting his White House tapes, fires the special prosecutor in the Saturday Night Massacre, and his attorney general and deputy attorney general resign rather than carry out the order. An 18½-minute gap appears on a crucial tape that no one has ever credibly explained. The Supreme Court rules 8-0 that Nixon must hand over the recordings. And finally, Republican senators, including Barry Goldwater, go to the White House and tell Nixon he'll be convicted in the Senate if he stays. The next day, he announced he was leaving.
Ok, does anyone have any questions? No? I didn't think so.
Now, layer this on top of the absolute shambles the Justice Department has become. Pam Bondi presided over a brain drain that purged career prosecutors. Todd Blanche, Trump's former personal lawyer, now runs a department that functions as the president's retribution machine, going after his enemies while lawyers resign in protest.
This is the department that went after James Comey over an "86 47" seashell post, that has sat on the Epstein files, and that chased an Olympic athlete over damage to the Reflecting Pool, which might be the biggest joke in the history of federal law enforcement.
And, as crazy as all that is, they want to relitigate Watergate.
What could they possibly find? Watergate may be the most exhaustively examined episode in the history of the American presidency, right up there with the Kennedy assassination.
It has been investigated by the Senate, the House, grand juries and courts. It's been documented in thousands of pages of testimony, hours of tape, memoirs from nearly everyone involved and half a century of study at law schools.
Endless coverage turned the gravity of Watergate into a national farce, perfectly captured by the 1999 comedy Dick, starring Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams as two teenage dog-walkers who accidentally become "Deep Throat" and bring down the Nixon administration.
My grandfather used to say Nixon was as crooked as a coat hanger. For decades, if you said "Nixon," the word that came to mind was "crook." He even felt compelled to tell the country, "I am not a crook."
The irony is that today's president makes Nixon look like a Franciscan monk. The most corrupt administration in American history is now digging into another corrupt administration from half a century ago.
The only real link between Trump and Nixon is the morally sleazy Roger Stone, who started on Nixon's campaign and wears the former president's face tattooed on his back. Trump rarely owes anyone a favor, but maybe this is one for Roger. Laugh if you want, but in our warped world, it's not that far-fetched.
After all those books, documentaries and conversations, I thought I had learned everything there was to learn about Watergate. Now I don't care anymore, which means I won't be saving a copy of this week's Wall Street Journal.