JD Vance gave us a preview of this back in June. Now it appears Todd Blanche at Trump's corrupt DOJ is going to follow through on it.
As MS Now's Ali Velshi explained:
VELSHI: It seems as though President Trump's attempt to rewrite the history of the January 6th insurrection and his own other scandals and alleged crimes is no longer enough to amuse him.
He's now apparently intent on rewriting the history and legacy of another scandal-plagued president, Richard Nixon.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump's DOJ is, quote, reviewing whether the special prosecutor's office that investigated the famed Watergate break-in, committed misconduct, according to the people familiar with the matter, more than half a century after that scandal led to Nixon's resignation. Geoff Shepard, a former Nixon aide turned Watergate historian and revisionist, recently gave a two-hour presentation at Justice Department headquarters that laid out his theory that the deep state took Nixon down. The title of his 78-page slide deck, Watergate as lawfare, end quote.
Again, something I wasn't expecting to read, even out of this administration. That presentation was given to the DOJ's Office of Professional Responsibility, which is an internal watchdog that investigates allegations of misconduct and which ironically came out because of Watergate.
Vice President JD Vance seemed to preview this rehabilitation attempt of Nixon's legacy at an appearance at the Nixon Library back in June.
VANCE: If Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story. The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy. And by the way, if you look at the story of 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 and the first Trump administration. There is a parallel.
Which Velshi correctly called "bananas." Here's more on that White House meeting with Shepard:
There is no evidence that Nixon personally ordered the operation or was even aware of it in advance, but he participated in the cover-up.
What became known as the “smoking gun” tape, recorded by the White House’s voice-activated system, captured Nixon talking with his top aides about using the CIA to obstruct the FBI investigation.
Mr. Shepard’s theory revolves around the allegation that special prosecutors secretly met with judges overseeing the Watergate trial, violating due process rules for defendants. He also claims that they suppressed evidence from the defense.
It is generally accepted that the Watergate scandal was a genuine constitutional crisis and that Nixon’s actions in covering it up doomed his presidency, rather than any deep-state actors.
The former US president expressed remorse over the scandal three years after leaving office. “I let down my friends,” he told David Frost, the interviewer, in 1977. “I let down the country. I let down our system and the dreams of all those young people that ought to get into government but think it’s all too corrupt... I let the American people down, and I have to carry that burden with me for the rest of my life.”
And from The Daily Beast:
A DOJ spokeswoman confirmed the presentation in an email to the Daily Beast, but said it does not mean the department has opened a new probe into Watergate.
“OPR declined Mr. Shepherd’s [sic] request to open an investigation in 2022 under the previous administration,” the spokeswoman said. “Given his expertise and scholarship on Watergate, he was recently invited to give a presentation to OPR, but that presentation does not constitute an investigation. OPR remains focused on ensuring that Department attorneys meet the highest professional standards.”
Scrutinizing a special prosecutor’s probe into the president is eerily familiar to MAGA attacks on Jack Smith, the special counsel who probed Trump’s alleged crimes in the period between his presidential terms.
Don't believe the hedging for one minute. They have no "standards" under this administration, and Trump wants it, so it will happen.
