UPDATE: Sunday, Jan 1, 2023 · 6:18:46 PM +00:00
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Dem
I supported Merrick Garland until very recently, but I reached a point where I could no longer do so. There is substantial support for Merrick Garland on this site. There is one very big difference between Watergate and the insurrection. The insurrection was broadcast on television. The tweets were available for anybody to view. There is a great deal of publicly available evidence. Then there were the hearings from the January 6th Committee and those hearings provided evidence as well. There are some people who hold a different view than me on this matter whom I greatly respect, people who are friends on the site. As I have written many times before, I am not the fount of all wisdom. I don't claim to be such. That's why I pay attention to what other people smarter, or more informed or more educated than me say. No doubt, I am wrong about many things . But that is one of the great advantages of being a Kossack. There can be a polite exchange of ideas which allow me the opportunity to learn something new. By the way, I have read and even recommended a number of diaries defending Merrick Garland.
UPDATE: Sunday, Jan 1, 2023 · 6:00:28 PM +00:00
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Dem
I supported Merrick Garland until very recently, but eventually I could no longer support him. Since I compared Watergate and Nixon to the insurrection and Donald Trump, I will make the following simple observation. Yes, Watergate took quite some time to get to its final stages, but the burglary and the secret conversations are quite different than the public speech Donald Trump gave after the tweets and the insurrection and his tweets during the insurrection and final message Trump gave at the end of the day. The insurrection was televised. There is substantial evidence available to anybody who wants it. The two events differ greatly in that respect.
I am going to admit right now that this isn’t organized as well as I like it. Who am I kidding, it’s not organized at all. Still, some people may find value in it. Or I may just unpublish it. Nevertheless, here we go: As I think about Trump and Attorney General Merrick Garland’s apparent reticence (I know Jack Smith was appointed special prosecutor) to indict and pursue justice against Donald Trump, a private citizen who committed by my count at least 15 felonies, I am upset. Even if we limit it to the coup and the insurrection, I think that’s as serious a felony as we can possibly have. If you compare Donald Trump’s offenses with President Nixon and Watergate, then it’s impossible, in my judgment, to avoid the conclusion that the orange bigot’s offences are far more serious.
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What could possibly be more dangerous to this country than a coup and a direct assault on our democracy and our democratic processes? Even Minority Leader Mitch McConnell admitted that Donald Trump was both morally and practically guilty of inciting the insurrection and that he was the only one who could have called it off and he refused. The January 6 Committee has amassed mountains of evidence that condemns Donald Trump, that demonstrates his guilt for inciting the insurrection among other crimes. And we can watch short video clips demonstrating his guilt if we want to keep it simple. I think a review of President Nixon and Watergate is damning to Attorney General Merrick Garland and his reticence to pursue justice against Donald Trump.
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The “it will tear the country apart” bullshit has already been refuted by a republican in Nixon’s time who voted to impeach Nixon who, by the way, had won 49 states in his last election and won his previous presidential election handily. If pursuing justice against a president who won 49 states in his last presidential election would not tear the country apart, then pursuing justice against a private citizen out of office who lost the popular vote twice and lost the election in the last presidential election should not tear the country apart either. And despite the failure to achieve justice fully because of the presidential pardon by Gerald Ford whose name should remain in ignominy, at least President Nixon was chased out of office. There have been no consequences for the orange bigot, to my knowledge.
Representative Elizabeth Holtzman said, “I will never change my mind about that. I think it was wrong from the get go and I think, I think it’s wrong now, and I think the idea that we have unaccountable presidents has harmed the country.”
Her statement is as true today as it was when she spoke it about Watergate.
The Republican Party didn’t learn a damn thing from Watergate except to do whatever you want and protect each other as long as you can get away with it. The same arguments were made back then, that it would tear the country apart to hold a man who broke the law accountable for it. The only reason that republicans turned against President Nixon was that there were going to be serious political costs to them personally if they didn’t. The same electorate that had given President Nixon huge majorities in both 1968 and 1972 turned on him. Voters of both parties strongly opposed his actions. One poll had 15% in approval 76% in opposition and 9% undecided. Most Republicans then tried to defend and stand by the leader of their party, President Nixon.
Even when (republican) Senator Lowell Weicker tried to say that he thought that the pardon was wrong, he ended up defending it, “ I was against it and so were about 99% of the United States of America, but it was the right decision. The country had spent too much time on Watergate and the idea of spending another year or two … Richard Nixon wasn’t worth it. “ But this isn’t about Richard Nixon. It’s about defending Equal Justice Under the Law. Senator Sam Erwin said, “President Ford did infinite injury to the fundamental principle of good government embodied in the phrase, ‘Equal Justice Under the Law’. “
Now, we have had to deal with Donald Trump. Would a successful prosecution of Richard Nixon have slowed Donald Trump down? We don’t know and that’s not a good enough answer.
Republicans repeatedly tried to protect their president, then just like now.
Vice President Ford gave a speech in which he said, “And it’s my judgment that the evidence is overwhelming that he had nothing to do with the so-called cover-up. So, the president in my judgment is innocent and will be exonerated. “
However, a few republicans had begun to their credit to turn on Nixon by the beginning of the Fall of 1974. One conservative representing Chicago, Representative Robert McClory, said, “The only materials which we received have been-have come from the grand jury and the special prosecutor. It seems to me the president’s failure to comply threatens the integrity of our impeachment process itself. His action is a direct challenge to the Congress and the exercise of the solemn constitutional duty. “
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Still most republicans were very much defending Richard Nixon. House Democrat and graduate of Harvard Law School, Representative Elizabeth Holtzman said, “And how many of us have not quarreled with presidents in the past and Democrats or Republicans over agricultural policy or environmental policy or foreign policy or whatever, does that give any president the license to burglarize our homes? to wiretap our homes? To open our mail? I submit that if it does, then we have gone down the long road to tyranny and that the blessings of liberty that we formed this Constitution 200 years ago to preserve will vanish very quickly. And I would like to remind my colleagues that under the Constitution of the United States, we in the House of Representatives through the power of impeachment have been given the duty to preserve this Constitution.
It is during Nixon’s impeachment that we were given this gem from Representative Barbara Jordan, “I have finally been included in we the people. Today, I am an inquisitor and hyperbole would not be fictional and would not overstate the solemnous that I feel right now. My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total. and I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution!”
Representative James Mann was clear, “But if there be no accountability, another president will free to do as he chooses. But the next time, there may be no watchman in the night!”
Yet, weak republican Representative Trent Lott vainly tried to defend President Nixon, “We are faced with impeaching the president (tried to punctuate this with finger pointing). The line must be drawn directly to the president, clearly to the president. This has not been done. “
He was refuted by Representative Holtzman who pointed out, “The president discussed the matter of paying Hunt ten separate times in a conversation on March 21 with Dean and Haldeman and the last time the president discussed it, he said, and I quote, ‘That’s why for your immediate thing, you’ve got no choice with Hunt but the 120 or whatever it is, right? Would you agree that that’s a buy time thing, you better damn well get that done, but fast. Well, for Christ’s sake, get it!” She continued, ‘Perhaps some people find ambiguities in that conversation. I don't. ‘
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Notes from Dem- Then as now, republicans defended their president when his conduct was indefensible. They ignored the evidence and then claimed that there was none. That quote by Representative Holtzman was absolutely damning. And this before the three tapes from June 23. And despite that quote and with no fucking answer, Trent Lott voted no. Just like 147 Congressional Republicans, 139 House Republicans and 8 Senate Republicans, voted to support a written objection to counting the decisive electoral college votes which were already certified by the states and which gave Joe Biden the win in the 2020 presidential election. Just like when 211 House Republicans voted against impeachment and only ten House Republicans voted for impeachment and when 43 Senate Republicans voted to acquit him and only seven Senate Republicans voted to convict, even with video of him inciting the insurrectionists and telling them to go to the Capitol and riling them up with aggressive language.
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The thing that’s obvious to me is the only difference is that the electorate was united against President Nixon for committing his offences and the Trumpers who make up today’s Republican Party will support and defend President Trump no matter what he does. The republicans during Nixon’s time didn’t have much more integrity. They were the same sorry @#$@#$@#% as they are now with only a few exceptions, exceptions in that they at least supported democracy not that they were good people doing good things then or now.
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Representative Pete McCloskey said that what sealed Nixon’s doom was when four young republican congressmen came out and voted for the first article of impeachment. They included Hamilton Fish of New York who said ‘I am a republican. In these proceedings, I have attempted to discipline myself in partisan neutrality’ , Caldwell Butler of Virginia who stated ‘A power appears to have corrupted. It is a sad chapter in American history, but I cannot condone what I have heard, I cannot excuse it, and I cannot and will not stand still for it’ , Tom Railsback of Illinois who admitted, ‘We are considering impeaching a man, Richard Nixon who has been in my district twice campaigning for me that I regard as a friend’, and Bill Cohen of Maine who proclaimed, ‘It has been said that an impeachment proceeding will tear this country apart. And to say that it will tear the country apart to abide by the Constitution is a proposition that I cannot accept! I think what would tear the country apart would be to turn our backs on the facts and our responsibilities to ascertain them’.
The jurors who voted to indict the co-conspirators, the lower people, felt that it was unfair because no penalty was given to Nixon according to a Watergate documentary entitled “Watergate”. Assistant Special Prosecutor George Frampton said, “When the top guy has gotten away and has gone off to live on a beach in California, how zealous do we feel now about, you know, trying to put the people who work for him in jail?” This applies to today as well.
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Notes from Dem, the author of the diary follow,
Republicans then, like now, were nearly unanimous in support of their president. There were only four republicans in the House Judiciary Committee who voted for impeachment. While Lott later voted to impeach in the full House vote, Trent Lott was not among those republicans in committee who voted to impeach the president. All that was added between his no vote in committee and his affirmative vote for impeachment in the full House vote were three more extremely damning transcripts all from the same day, June 23, which President Nixon had withheld because he didn’t think he could survive them. However, although they were even more damning, there was more than sufficient damning evidence already. The vote was 27-11. Those four republican representatives’ affirmative votes were very important. As almost everybody on this board knows, a 2/3 majority in the Senate is required in order to convict. Let’s consider if the same proportion of republican votes to convict in the House applied to the Senate, what the outcome would be. 27-11means 27/38 is our fraction which is more than 2/3. On the other hand, if those four had not voted for impeachment, then the fraction would be 23/15 which isn’t close to 2/3. Or another way to think about it is that we would have to reach 2/3 without any republican votes and there were not 67 senators in the Senate who caucused with the Democratic Party.
Returning to the testimony
John Chancellor of NBC on August 5th, 1974, said, “President Nixon stunned the country today by admitting that he held back evidence from the House Judiciary Committee”
Dan Rather of CBS News said, “The president made public three new transcripts of meetings with his former chief aide H.R. Bob Haldeman, all June 23, 1972, “
From the June 23, 1972 tape:
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Aide ‘Now on the Democratic break-in, we’re back in the problem area because the FBI is not under control because Gray doesn’t exactly know how to control them. John Dean concurs now with Mitchell’s recommendation that the only way to solve this is to have Walters call Gray and just say, ‘Stay the Hell out of this! We don’t want you to go any further on this and that’s not unusual. ‘
Nixon, ‘Fine. Fine. ‘
Aide ‘And they say the only way to do that is from White House instructions. The proposal will be that Ehrlichman and I call him.’
Nixon, ‘Good. Play it tough. That’s the way they play it, that’s the way we’re going to play it. ‘
Aide, ‘Okay, then, we’ll do that. ‘
Nixon, ‘They should call the FBI in and say that for the the country, don’t go any further into this one, period. Tell ‘em, lay off .’
Aide, ‘Yeah, that’s that’s the basis we do it on. ‘
Nixon, ‘I don’t want them to get any ideas that we’re doing it because our concern is political.’
End of part of June 23, 1972 tape
Notes from diary author, Dem, follow
What led to the end wasn’t that there was a point beyond which loyalty ceased and righteousness took over; what led to the end was that an overwhelming majority of voters were already outraged by what they had learned and then a final bombshell felled him. Otherwise, it seems likely that there would not have been a sufficient number of votes to convict because there were only 56 Senate Democrats and the number of Senate Republicans ranged from 42 to 40 in the 93rd Congress, ending with 2 vacancies, 56 Senate Democrats, 1 conservative, 1 independent, and 40 Senate Republicans. 34 votes to acquit would have been sufficient. If he could have limited his defections to 6, then he would not have been impeached.
Pat Buchanan, ‘They had asked for some tapes. Nixon had called to review them in April. One of them was the tape of June 23. He had heard the tape and felt he couldn’t survive it, and that’s why he didn’t turn the tapes over. And we were all called up to Camp David early in August, Sunday, and I had felt Nixon couldn't survive And I said, ‘We don’t recommend Nixon resign.’ but we take this problematic tape and we simply drop it on the public. The revelation of the tape will be the thing that convinces Nixon’s people, his strong supporters, that they can’t even support him anymore. Then he has to resign. ‘
Fred Graham August 6. 1974 [newscaster] (at the time) : ‘Interfering with the FBI investigation can be Obstruction of Justice, a felony, but almost as damaging are other disclosures in that June 23rd conversation revealing a pattern of lies and distortion by Mr. Nixon and his men about Watergate.’
[Mr. Lott-No, Morehead-No, Mr. Marazini-No, Mr. Latta-No, — last 3 republicans No votes]
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Even so, republicans were likely motivated as much by the calendar and saving their own seats as they were by the evidence. Again, Jill Wine-Banks (Volner) speaks to the issue, “The Republicans wanted him out of office, just look at the timetable. If the impeachment had gone forward, there would have had to be a House vote, then there would have to be a trial that would be in September, October, in November there would be elections for the House and Senate; if that trial had taken place, the impeachment trial of Nixon, how many republicans do you think would have been elected to the House and Senate (laughs).”
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Senator Bob Dole said, “Jerry Ford by Labor Day would ease our work load.”
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Again, we see that their motivation wasn’t about doing what was right, but what was best for them politically individually. If the electorate at that time had been as
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I am more than alarmed about other aspects of the pardon:
Representative Holtzman, "I know that the people want to understand how you can explain having pardoned Richard Nixon without specifying any of the crimes for which he was pardoned and how can you explain pardoning Richard Nixon without obtaining any acknowledgment of guilt from him? How can this extraordinary haste with which the pardon was decide on and the secrecy with which it was carried out be explained? And how can you explain that the pardon of Richard Nixon was accompanied by an agreement with respect to the tapes which in essence in the public mind hampered the special prosecutor’s access to these materials?
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A final point by Dem in refutation of a stupid and reckless claim that Speaker Pelosi was attempting “a coup” (the Trumper’s words) by looking into safeguards against Trump doing something dangerous militarily, using nuclear weapons.
A Trumper tried to say that Speaker Pelosi’s expression of concern that Trump might try to order a nuclear strike, to burn the house down so to speak, was a coup which is stupid. She didn’t try to become president. She didn’t incite an insurrection. She was concerned about Trump doing something dangerous militarily and that fear was well-founded because Trump did push for some sudden, complete, and dangerous withdrawals as the January 6th committee discovered (see here ).
President Donald Trump ordered the Pentagon to rapidly pull all U.S. troops from Afghanistan and Somalia in the immediate aftermath of his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden, alarming senior aides who feared doing so would have “catastrophic” consequences, according to congressional testimony aired Thursday.
This is parallel to concerns at the time about what President Nixon might do in his tenuous circumstances. John Farrell, a Nixon biographer, said, “then you have the Defense Secretary James Schlesinger warning the Joint Chiefs of Staff that any orders, that any last minute crazy orders that come out of the White House are going to be vetted by the civilian leadership and the military before it’s instituted, basically if the president orders the Marines to come out of the barracks and to surround the White House and announces a coup, you know, don’t obey that presidential order. This is bordering on, on, treason, but this is the point that they were at and the fears that they had.”