Donald Trump is obsessed with what he considers political and judicial maneuvers to end him and all his allies for over a decade. "Russia, Russia, Russia" is the formula with which the president dismisses as a conspiracy and fake anything related to suspicions of Russian interference in the 2016 elections and subsequent investigations, which revealed irregular behaviors of several of his top advisors, some of whom were convicted. For him, it is all a "hoax" invented by his adversaries to delegitimize his victory and undermine his presidency. Just as he has never admitted his defeat in 2020, he has never admitted anything problematic in his circle, and that is why if something has characterized this second term, it has been his attempts to 'compensate.' Through continuous complaints, presidential pardons for convicts, and even attempting to establish a fund endowed with billions of dollars to compensate those who felt persecuted and harassed by the Democrats, potentially including the Capitol rioters.
But now, the administration is considering something even more surreal. According to The Wall Street Journal, the Department of Justice is contemplating opening an in-depth investigation to study if the special prosecutor who investigated the Watergate break-in, which led to Richard Nixon's resignation, "committed irregularities." The newspaper explains, for example, that Geoff Shepard, a former Nixon advisor turned "historian and Watergate revisionist," recently gave a two-hour talk at the Department of Justice headquarters, where he presented his theory that the "Deep State" overthrew the Republican Nixon. "The title of his 78-slide presentation was 'Watergate as lawfare,'" explains the Journal.
The timing is not coincidental. The newspaper highlights how a faction of the Republican Party sees "in the combative former president, despised by the press and besieged by investigations," a more than evident parallel with Trump. During a speech at the Nixon Presidential Library in California this summer, Vice President JD Vance made precisely that comparison. The most famous phrase from that speech is the one where Vance said, most likely rightly, that something like Watergate today would be seen as minor and would not in any way bring down a president. But he went further.
"I believe his historical legacy is experiencing a resurgence, and it seems deserved," Vance said about Nixon. "As I joked backstage, if the Watergate scandal were to happen tomorrow, it would be front-page news. It's crazy to think it could have brought down a presidency (...) And, by the way, if we analyze how the hidden power ended Richard Nixon, it's not so different from what the same groups —the same institutions— tried to do to Donald Trump during his first term. There is a parallel," he declared.
This Thursday, Republican Congressman Riley Moore from West Virginia maintained the same thesis as the revisionists. "Richard Nixon was absolutely ousted from office through a coup and was incriminated. All of this was false. Today we know much more about the Deep State and its power," he said in a statement. "An interesting aspect of this is that Nixon knew everything. He knew it and kept silent about it. Because he didn't want to undermine the American people's trust in our system of government and our institutions. Now that the truth has come to light, I think people feel a little more free to talk about Richard Nixon and the extraordinary president he was for this country," he concluded.
It's not just that. Last week, Trump's allies and Vance (including a senator who is rumored as a possible vice president for Vance if he runs for president) harshly attacked Jack Smith, the special prosecutor who investigated Trump but had to stop his work and lost his job at the Department of Justice when Trump won re-election.
The parallel is clear once again. The Watergate Special Investigation Group was initially led by special prosecutor Archibald Cox, but Leon Jaworski took over the investigation after Nixon ordered Cox's dismissal in what is known as the Saturday Night Massacre. Cox, upon learning of its existence, demanded Nixon's tapes of the conversations recorded in the Oval Office. Nixon refused, invoking executive privilege, and offered, instead, a summary prepared by his own advisors. Additionally, Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Cox. Richardson refused and resigned. Nixon gave the same order to the number two, William Ruckelshaus, who also refused and was dismissed. In the end, Attorney General Robert Bork complied and closed the special prosecutor's office. It was to no avail. The truth eventually came out, and the president resigned and was pardoned by his successor to avoid trials and convictions.
Sources from the New York newspaper explain that last month, a senior official from the Department of Justice invited Shepard to present himself at the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), an internal oversight body that investigates misconduct allegations. An office that was born precisely as a result of the Watergate scandal. Four years ago, under President Joe Biden, Justice rejected Shepard's request for an investigation, arguing that too many years had passed since the events in question for them to do anything. But "according to sources close to the matter, current officials wanted to hear his version. The review is preliminary, and it is not clear if it will lead to a thorough investigation," says the WSJ.
"Given his experience and knowledge of the Watergate case, he was recently invited to give a presentation," acknowledged a Department of Justice spokesperson, "but such a presentation does not constitute an investigation. The Office of Professional Responsibility remains focused on ensuring that Department lawyers adhere to the highest professional standards."