Roll Over, HST — The Horse;s A$$ In The Oval Office Is Feelin' The Heat In His Kitchen (The Oval Office)

Several times each week this blogger receives an e-mail from an old friend, now living at great distance in the state of Washington. The e-mails usually express the anguish that this friend experiences with each news blast that features the latest outrage that spews ouf the Oval Office that is occupied by the worst president in the history of the United States. This blogger hopes that his friend visits the blog and reads this latest post from two specialists in modern US history.They make an excellent case for the likely impeachment of the Horse's A$$ in the Oval Office. The Horse's A$$ is behaving like a rat caught in a trap that virtually will chew off the trapped leg to escape. The virtual leg that the Horse's A$$ will chew off is the Oval Office itself. So long, Horse's A$$ and don't let the door hit you in your fat a$$ as you leave. If this is a (fair & balanced) mental health message to all of the suffering citizens of the United States, so be it.

[x The Atlantic]
Worse Than Watergate
By Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer


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accused administration affair alleged campaign case charges Clinton Congress countries crimes crook debate decades effort evade evidence faces family far foreign former foundation government insisted investigators Iran-Contra large money Nixon obstruction officials personal practices president presidential public Reagan reckoning report scandal serious shut tax Trump turn violated Washington Watergate York

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For decades, Watergate has served as the benchmark against which all other presidential scandals are measured. One sign of its continuing importance in the popular imagination is the use of the “-gate” suffix to indicate scandal: “Billygate,” “Lewinskygate,” “Plamegate,” and far too many others to mention here.

But Watergate’s time as the gold standard of presidential malfeasance might well be coming to an end. If the multiple charges against President Donald Trump prove out, he’ll easily displace Richard Nixon at the top of the Crooked Modern Presidents list. Here’s why.

The Original Sin: The underlying crime in Watergate was a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters, part of a plot to steal documents that might have offered a slight edge in what turned out to be a landslide victory for Nixon. The closest post-Nixon, pre-Trump scandal in terms of severity was surely Iran-Contra, in which high-level officials in the Ronald Reagan administration circumvented Congress to secure military assistance to Nicaraguan rebels. The legal violations were considerable but, as partisans insisted and much of the public believed, the scandal stemmed from a sincere policy position held by the administration rather than the self-interest of individuals. President Bill Clinton’s scandal seemed the inverse: It was deeply personal—an extramarital affair with a White House intern—but the crimes that resulted from it were small-bore.

Although the allegations against Trump are still just that—allegations—they’re far more serious. At the heart of the matter is the possibility that his campaign conspired with a foreign government to influence the 2016 presidential election.

Congressional investigators are also looking into whether the president has made policy decisions based on campaign favors. The president’s critics are suspicious of his relationship with Vladimir Putin and wonder if his financial ties to countries in the Middle East—including Saudi Arabia—affected the administration’s positions on serious matters such as the brutal murder of the Washington Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi.

The attorneys general of Maryland and Washington, DC, have now piled on by filing a suit against the administration for having violated the Emoluments Clause. They argue that Trump has accepted foreign money through his hotels, where countries such as the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have been renting large blocks of rooms at considerable costs.

Personal Crimes: In addition to the alleged original sin of foreign influence, Trump now faces serious accusations that he personally broke the law. Nixon, too, was accused of numerous crimes, including violating campaign-finance rules, evading taxes, and using federal monies for personal gain. These charges were serious enough to warrant a full-throated response from Nixon, including his infamous insistence that “I am not a crook” and his release of his tax returns, a precedent that every succeeding presidential candidate followed (until Trump). But Trump’s alleged personal crimes seem even more substantial. The president is now suspected of committing a felony by directing campaign payments to the adult-film star Stormy Daniels and the former Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal to keep them quiet about sexual affairs.

That’s not all. The New York Times uncovered a long history of corrupt tax practices in which a younger Trump and his father, Fred Trump, attempted to evade their tax obligations through false assessments of properties and other shell games to protect their money. According to the report, these actions went far beyond the normal mechanisms wealthier families have long used to protect their assets and strayed into criminal territory.

What’s more, the US Attorney of the Southern District of New York, the prime mover behind the campaign-finance investigations, is also looking into the practices of the Trump Foundation. Here the scent of wrongdoing is extremely strong, with evidence mounting that the tax-exempt foundation misused funds for the personal benefit of the family, and even for the purposes of the 2016 campaign. Facing such serious charges, the Trump Foundation has shut down its operations, but the reckoning over its spending practices will likely continue.

Obstruction: One of the chief conclusions of the Watergate scandal—“It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up”—has been repeated so many times that it’s become a cliché. But like many clichés, it has the ring of truth.

A cover-up has stood at the center of all modern presidential scandals. The “smoking gun” in Watergate was recorded evidence that Nixon secretly ordered the CIA to shut down the FBI’s investigation. Reagan officials such as Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger were charged with lying and hiding information in an effort to block the inquiry into the Iran-Contra scandal by Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh. Likewise, Clinton was accused of turning to his friend Vernon Jordan to employ Monica Lewinsky and coaching his secretary about how to answer questions.

To varying degrees, all three of these presidents found obstruction of justice looming large in debates over their potential impeachment. That debate fizzled out in Reagan’s case, but both Nixon and Clinton faced an article of impeachment based on that charge.

Trump and his advisers are being investigated for obstruction now, too. Indeed, some officials, such as former National-Security Adviser Michael Flynn, have already confessed to misleading investigators. This administration’s pattern of obstruction is especially shocking because it has been so obvious and open. Trump has harassed investigators and undermined the public standing of every single person—including members of his own Justice Department—who has been trying to get the story straight.

The Watergate investigation ultimately boiled down to the famous question that Republican Senator Howard Baker asked: “What did the president know, and when did he know it?” When the secrets came to light, Nixon’s fate was sealed. Conversely, in Iran-Contra, the president’s aides insisted that Reagan had never known of their scheme to subvert Congress; no counter-evidence ever surfaced, and Reagan escaped unscathed. In this case, the president has actually bragged—on television and on Twitter—about his efforts to shut down the investigation into his relationship with Russia. Investigators don’t need a “smoking gun” tape in 2019, because everything has played out on the public stage.

The country is entering a fraught new legislative session. America spent decades recovering from the wreckage of Watergate, which shattered public trust in government. If the charges against the current administration turn out to be true, an even more drastic reckoning lies ahead. ###

[Kevin M. Kruse is a Professor of History at Princeton University. He specializes in the political, social, and urban/suburban history of twentieth-century America, with a particular interest in conflicts over race, rights and religion and the making of modern conservatism. Kruse is the co-author (with Julian Zelizer of Fault Lines: A History of the United States since 1974 (2019). See other books by Kevin Kruse here. He received a BA (history) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and both an MA and PhD (history) from Cornelll University (NY).

Julian E. Zelizer is the Malcolm Forbes Stevenson (Class of 1941) Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University and a fellow at New America. In addition to Fault Lines with Kevin Kruse, Zelizer's most significant book to date is The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society (2015). See other Zelizer books here. Zelizer received a BA (history) from Brandeis University (MA) and both an (MA) and a PhD (both history) from The Johns Hopkins University (MD).]

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