#us-v-nixon
2 entries with this tag
The Trump Justice Department Is Relitigating Watergate — Opening a Review of Whether the Prosecutors Who Brought Down Richard Nixon Committed "Misconduct," and Recasting the Most Thoroughly Proven Presidential Crime in American History as a "Deep State" Plot Against an Innocent Man — in a Transparent Bid to Delegitimize Accountability Itself and Lay Groundwork to Excuse Trump; a Member of the Committee That Voted to Impeach Nixon Called It "Beyond Stupid"
In early October 2026, it was reported that the Trump Justice Department has opened a preliminary review of whether the Watergate special prosecutors — the ones who held Richard Nixon accountable in the 1970s — committed misconduct. The review follows a presentation by Geoff Shepard, a former Nixon aide and longtime Watergate revisionist who argues the prosecutors violated defendants' rights and that Nixon was treated unfairly. The purpose is not subtle. It is the latest move to recast Nixon as a victim of the "deep state," and to yoke his case to Trump's: Vice President JD Vance has said that "how the deep state took down Richard Nixon, it's not all that different from what the same groups of people, the same institutions tried to do to Donald Trump." In other words, if Watergate can be reframed as a frame-up, then so, by extension, can every investigation of Trump. Elizabeth Holtzman — who as a member of the House Judiciary Committee voted to impeach Nixon — called the effort "just beyond stupid and beyond absurd," because to believe Nixon was railroaded, "you'd have to say that everybody was duped — that the Republicans were duped, that the Supreme Court was duped, that everybody was duped except this guy and Trump." Watergate is not a contested historical question. It is the best-documented presidential crime in American history, ended by Nixon's own tape-recorded voice. Using the Justice Department to pretend otherwise is not scholarship. It is the weaponization of law enforcement against the historical record, in the service of the current president.
Trump's Own Justice Department Issued a Memo Declaring He Can Hide His Conversations With Private, Outside Advisers — Billionaires, Fixers, Private Lawyers, Even State Officials — Under "Executive Privilege," Stretching a Doctrine the Supreme Court Already Ruled Isn't Absolute, to Wall Off His Shadow Advisers From Congress Right Before the Midterms
On August 11, 2026, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel published a 21-page opinion, signed by Assistant Attorney General T. Elliot Gaiser, declaring that executive privilege can shield the president's communications with "private advisers" — a category the memo defines to include essentially anyone Trump consults outside the executive branch, "whether they be members of the public, state officials, or employees of other branches of the federal government." It is the first time the Justice Department has explicitly extended executive privilege beyond the president and his immediate White House staff to private citizens. Historically the privilege reached only official advisers, and the Supreme Court held in United States v. Nixon (1974) that it is not absolute and yields in criminal cases. The immediate beneficiary is Boris Epshteyn — the outside Trump adviser and "fixer" whom the American Bar Association subpoenaed, and who coordinated the campaign of pressure that produced nearly $1 billion in pledged free legal work from law firms, and who helped steer the lawyers in Trump's sham IRS-immunity litigation. The memo would let all of that stay hidden. OLC opinions are not binding on courts, but they govern how the executive branch behaves, and this one is transparently timed: issued months before the midterms, it is pre-emptive armor to defeat the wave of congressional investigations the White House expects if Democrats retake the House. It converts a narrow, court-limited doctrine into a blanket secrecy cloak for government-by-crony — a way to keep the public from ever learning which unelected billionaires and operatives are shaping official decisions, and what they said.