Comey's Memo Is the Smoking Gun of Donald Trumps Watergate [View all]

[workinclasszero]

Comey’s Memo Is the Smoking Gun of Donald Trump’s Watergate
By Jonathan Chait May 16, 2017 7:18 pm

On the morning of June 23, 1972, Richard Nixon instructed his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, to contact L. Patrick Gray, the acting director of the FBI, and ask him not to investigate the Watergate break-in. “That the way to handle this now is for us to have [CIA Deputy Director Vernon] Walters call Pat Gray and just say, ‘Stay the hell out of this … this is ah, business here we don’t want you to go any further on it,’” said the president. [Correction: Haldeman said this, Nixon concurred.]

The conversation remained secret until Nixon was forced to release a recording on the conversation on July 24, 1974. The recording, which became known as the “smoking gun tape,” had a seismic effect: Eleven Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee announced their support for impeachment.

The New York Times bombshell report that James Comey has a contemporaneous memo describing a conversation in which President Trump asked him to halt the bureau’s investigation of Michael Flynn, the national security adviser who had resigned the day before, follows a similar pattern.

Both episodes involve the president attempting to quash an FBI investigation into their associates. Both investigations pertain to crimes of which there is no proof the president had any involvement. Just as no conclusive proof ever found that Nixon ordered the break-in of Democratic headquarters during the 1972 election, there is not yet any clear proof that Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia’s electronic break-in to Democratic electronic records during the 2016 election. The attempted manipulation of justice is, in both cases, the more serious crime.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/05/comeys-memo-is-the-smoking-gun-of-donald-trumps-watergate.html