What Trump learned from Watergate
Several commenters, including Joe, recommended over the last few days an excellent article by Geoff Shepard:
New Watergate evidence suggests that presidential resignation is a mistake — then and now.
I'm half way through it, but I've previously read basically identical accounts by Shepard. It's an eye opener that everyone needs to read.
Today Don Surber riffs off Shepard's article in What Trump learned from Watergate . I like Surber's choice of quotes from Shepard--it's a great tease to get people to read Shepard:
"There is documented proof of a series of secret meetings between Chief Judge John Sirica and Watergate prosecutors. I don’t know which is the bigger surprise: that they were secretly meeting to resolve issues in advance of trial or that they were documenting their agreements in memos to their files. The mother lode of these documents, improperly removed in 1974 when Jaworski left office, first came to light in 2013 in response to my FOIA requests.
"At one point, Cox became so worried about the sustainability of Judge Sirica’s one-sided rulings in favor of the prosecutors that he feared their conviction verdicts would be overturned on appeal. He secretly approached Chief Appellate Judge David Bazelon to explain how the judicial panels could be stacked to maintain Bazelon’s slim one-vote liberal majority. Sure enough, each of the 12 appeals from Sirica’s criminal trials was heard by the full nine-judge appellate court, sitting en banc — a circumstance unprecedented in any federal appellate court anywhere in the country, before or since."
Archibald Cox in retrospect made Jimmy the Weasel Comey look honest.
The deep state won.
However, Surber goes on to make what could be an important point in his conclusion:
Donald Trump prepared for impeachment all along. He kept his nose clean and gave Democrats plenty of room [sic: rope?] to hang themselves with the Mueller Report. And they did. They had one shot at President Trump and Russian collusion was the shot they decided to take.
...
President Trump learned from Nixon's firing of Cox, which created a backlash. He kept Mueller, which avoided an obstruction of justice claim.
The president has needled and ridiculed the hapless Democrats, but he also has given them everything they asked for. When they objected to his July 25 phone call to Ukraine, President Trump released the transcript. There will be no nonsense about the cover-up being worse than the crime on his watch.
That transcript should have ended the controversy, but Adam Schiff is insane, Jerry Nadler is a fool, and the press is corrupt. Down the rabbit hole of impeachment they dove.
Public sentiment, the law, and the facts are in President Donald John Trump's favor. He learned from Nixon. it is not paranoia when they really are out to kill you.
In fairness, and to give credit where it's due, Trump has had some excellent lawyers--after a few initial miscues. And he's followed their advice.
Read it all. It's excellent.