Trump and Jack Smith are both citing Richard Nixon. Here’s why. – The Washington Post

In U.S. v. Nixon, the Supreme Court ruled that a president does not have "an absolute immunity from prosecution." But in another case, Nixon v. Fitzgerald, the high court ruled that sitting presidents do have absolute immunity from personal liability for ordering the presumably unjust firing of a federal employee in the Air Force. https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/12/14/richard-nixon-trump-supreme-court/

How The Legal Nightmare of Donald Trump Will End

With the news that Trump prosecutor Jack Smith has asked the US Supreme Court to decide Trump's claim that he is immune from any and all criminal prosecution for anything he did while in office, MSNBC is reporting that Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, appointed by Trump, nearly three decades ago wrote a 30+ page …

How Nixon Led to Trump

This is a "seismic moment" in American political and legal history, says presidential historian Tim Naftali, a Canadian-American historian who was director of the Richard Nixon presidential library and is now a clinical associate professor of public service at New York University. He told CNN that a major question for the nation: "Is someone above …

1974-77: The Brief But Significant Presidency of Gerald R. Ford

He spent most of his political career -- 23 years -- in the US House of Representatives, but Gerald R. Ford of Grand Rapids, MI suddenly became president after, first, the resignation of Vice President Spiro T. Agnew in October 1973, followed by the resignation of President Richard Nixon on August 9, 1974. I had …

Betty Ford Broke the Mold As First Lady

PBS News Hour: Gwen Ifill introduces an excerpt of a documentary that examined the life, work, struggles and advocacy of President Gerald Ford's wife, Betty, who was one of the nation's most-admired first ladies, very outspoken and candid in saying she had breast cancer, a mastectomy; a pro-choice Republican; and drug and alcohol abuse. The …

Remembering VP Spiro Agnew, Who Pleaded No Contest to Felony Tax Evasion

Old-timers like myself can vividly remember Spiro T. Agnew, Richard Nixon's vice president, but most Americans cannot. His story has parallels to a certain politician today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0inmWPg-OBA A Republican governor of Maryland in the 1960s, he became a prominent national politician from 1968, when he was selected to run on a ticket with Nixon, through …

How Watergate and the Citizens United Supreme Court Ruling Shaped Campaign Finance

Retro Report: "The Watergate campaign finance scandals led to a landmark law designed to limit the influence of money in politics. Decades later, some say the scandal isn’t what’s illegal, it’s what’s legal." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uUFTwaMiow&t=519s Lesson plan for educators: https://bit.ly/RR-watergate More on Campaign Finance. More on the Supreme Court's Citizens United v. Federal Elections decision of …

Top Aide Describes a Mentally-Unstable Donald Trump Who Thought VP Pence Deserved to be Killed

History was made Tuesday, June 28, 2022 when Cassidy Hutchinson, a former top aide to Donald Trump's Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, testifying under oath as a surprise witness before the House Committee investigating the January 6, 2021 riot. She described what was going on behind the scenes in the White House entourage. She said …

50 Years After Watergate, What Have We Learned? 3

Columbia Journalism Review's Jon Alsop, in his Media Today newsletter, examines myths about Watergate and offers a round-up of major anniversary stories. He links to an article in Bloomberg taking issue "with the assumption that Nixon would have survived if Watergate had happened today." It wasn't media that broke open the story, but prosecutors and …

50 Years After Watergate, What Have We Learned? 2

The British publication History Today asks four historians to assess the afterlife of the June 17th, 1972 break-in at Democratic National Committee Headquarters in the Watergate Hotel. Click. Younger readers who don't know much about the scandal will find it particularly useful. To sum up, the scandal: led to a permanently adversarial media in relation …