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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31095 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023

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"The intelligence community orchestrated a criminal conspiracy among high level Republicans and cabinet members therefore Nixon had to use the powers of the presidency to corruptly obstruct that investigation!"

Via Geoff Shepard, think of the problem from Nixon's point of view. He was in a total bind. He actually had no prior knowledge of the break-in, and he actually wanted those responsible for the break-in investigated and prosecuted. But the special prosecutor, Cox, was giving a sweetheart plea deal to the guy more responsible (Dean) who was spinning myths in order to falsely implicate Nixon. So Cox was not doing his job properly. Furthermore, Cox's team is full of partisan attack dog prosecutors champing at the bit to take down Nixon. So from Nixon's point-of-view, it is the special prosecutor who has gone rogue, and as the head of DoJ, Nixon is constitutionally responsible for removing the rogue prosecutor and putting the investigation in the hands of a more fair-minded person.

I am not sure why I should care about Nixon's state of mind. I am sure lots of people who corruptly obstructed federal investigations thought they were doing the right thing. What matters is what was actually the case. Had Cox actually gone rogue? What, specifically, were the "myths" in Dean's testimony? As far as I can tell Nixon's replacement pick for Special Prosecutor (Leon Jaworski) picked up exactly where Cox left off, subpoenaing Nixon for his taped conversations in the Oval Office.

I think that Shepard makes a pretty strong case that Cox had gone rogue, and he talks about Dean's falsehoods, you can read his book for yourself if you are interested -- http://library.lol/main/D7EDF03090D53D36483E1CC991D23836

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