I was a Watergate prosecutor. Here's what JD Vance missed. [View all]

[Uncle Joe]

Working on the Watergate case, I dealt with the onslaught of allegations that turned into a flood of criminality — all of it amounting to an ongoing news cycle that did not end even after Nixon left office.

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The nationally televised Senate committee hearings revealed the existence of a secret taping system in Nixon’s White House offices. After the Supreme Court unanimously ordered Nixon to release the tapes on July 24, 1974, Nixon proposed a compromise by which former Sen. John Stennis, who was partially deaf, would listen to the tapes to create summaries.

Cox refused to agree to this compromise since summaries of the tapes would not be admissible at the Watergate cover-up trial. Cox’s position resulted in the Saturday Night Massacre on Oct. 23, 1973, in which Nixon fired his attorney general and deputy attorney general, who refused to fire Cox. The solicitor general, the third highest member of the Justice Department, carried out Nixon’s order to fire Cox.

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Vance was also dead wrong that the “deep state took down” Nixon. It was just the opposite. The former FBI and CIA operatives who were involved in the Watergate burglary and the actions against Ellsberg were those typically considered part of the deep state, rather than those that helped hold all involved accountable.

Nixon himself attempted to use a deep state conspiracy to cover up the White House’s involvement in the burglary. On June 23, 1972, less than a week after the arrest of the Watergate burglars, Nixon is heard on tape directing his chief of staff to call the director and deputy director of the CIA to have them call the FBI to halt the investigation into the break-in for ostensibly national security reasons. That was the “smoking gun” tape that led to Nixon’s resignation.

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https://www.ms.now/opinion/jd-vance-nixon-watergate-trump-scandals