Free Republic

John Dean, former White House counsel for the Nixon administration, said he believes former President Nixon “would have survived” the Watergate scandal if the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling issued Monday, which largely shields former presidents from criminal prosecution for actions in office, existed at the time. Asked what would’ve happened with Nixon if the immunity ruling was in place during the fallout from Watergate, Dean pointed to Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who split from the other conservative justices on a portion of the majority opinion regarding the use of president’s official acts as evidence in criminal prosecution against a former...

Carl Bernstein claims Biden White House insiders have told him that the president's visibly ailing health at the first debate Thursday has been seen on numerous occasions in the past 18 months. The torturous 90-minute debate saw the president frequently lose his train of thought, trail off mid-sentence and mix up topics, prompting a cacophony of calls from politicians and pundits for the 81-year-old to step down. The performance has sparked an unprecedented panic in the party, leading many to wonder if Biden, 81, should drop out or even resign. Bernstein, 80, is a longtime journalistic icon in Washington, having...

VIDEOBob Woodward was in a state of SHOCK over how horrible Joe Biden's debate performance was. "A political hydrogen bomb," he called it. You just know he would have also called it WORSE THAN WATERGATE if Carl Bernstein had not already beaten that phrase to death. Okay, if he didn't actually say it out loud he was definitely thinking it. Oh, and getting hit with a hydrogen bomb is definitely WORSE THAN WATERGATE.

As the 50th anniversary of Richard Nixon’s unprecedented resignation approaches, Americans would do well to re-examine the Watergate scandal before the Washington Post’sjournalistic fraud becomes inalterably ossified as historical fact. Watergate involved a massive cover-up, to be sure, but it was a campaign of concealment by Washington’s paper of record, not by the Nixon administration, the true victim of Watergate. We should recall that what had originally appeared in the aftermath of the arrests to have been a “rogue” burglary caper, bungled by bit players, eventually morphed, per sensational Post reporting, into a deliberately planned campaign scheme to influence an...

Former Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman said Wednesday that the gag order recently imposed on former President Trump in his New York hush money trial is “so unusual.” “I think what the viewers have to understand is, this is so unusual,” Akerman told CNN’s Fredricka Whitfield in an interview. “This never happens, in over 50 years of law practice, both as a prosecutor, a defense lawyer. Akerman emphasized the unprecedented nature of how Trump’s case has unfolded, and that his attacks on Judge Juan Merchan could get the former president in “harm’s way.” Not only is the gag order itself unusual,...

When Clay T. (Tom) Whitehead arrived at the Old Executive Office Building on August 7, 1974, dressed as a cowboy, he surely didn’t want to run into Henry Kissinger. Whitehead was supposed to be on vacation in the Rockies, but a last-minute emergency meant he had to stay in D.C. “Well, you know, I got tied up for a little while,” he explained to President Richard Nixon’s powerful National Security Advisor. Kissinger, ever paranoid about being out of the loop, protested: “What is going on here? Something is going on here.” What was going on had started three months earlier...

3 (THREE) Boxes Pistachio Pudding (3.5 oz approx. - often 3.4) 1 can Crushed Pineapple (20 oz. approx.) 3/4-1 cup milk (I prefer whole milk) 2 bags Pecan pieces (or about 4 oz) 1 bag Mini Marshmallows (I like the colored / flavored ones yellow/green/pink/orange) 2 tubs Cool-Whip or similar whipped topping In a large cake mixing bowl, 1) Empty the whole can of Pineapple AND juice 2) put in 2 (TWO) of the contents of Pistachio Pudding 3) put in the milk 4) put in the pecan pieces 5) (optional) - put in about 1/2 can of fruit cocktail...

The Post & Email has received tonight a decclassified FBI report admitted in evidence in the case brought against W. Mark Felt and Edward S. Miller by President Jimmy Carter’s U.S. Attorney General, Mr. Griffin B. Bell. This document was obtained by an American citizen, who wished to remain anonymous, via a FOIA request. Mr. W. Mark  Felt is none other than the informant who spoke with reporters from the Washington Post, exposing the Watergate Scandal:  who went by the name “Deep Throat” a fact that points to his political neutrality in American politics.What is not know about Mr. Felt...

I remember when Richard Nixon resigned. Even though I was only 12 at the time, I had a general understanding that our country’s president had done something wrong, got caught, and needed to step aside. “By taking this action,” Nixon said in his national address on August 8, 1974, “I hope that I will have hastened the start of the process of healing which is so desperately needed in America.” Fast forward to 2023: A former president faces 91 felony charges for crimes ranging from falsifying business records to the “willful retention of national defense information,” from violating the Georgia...

Given that his grandfather, Joseph P. Kennedy, was one of the most notorious appeasers of the last century, you'd think Robert F. Kennedy Jr. might refrain from maligning anyone else as a Nazi sympathizer. Turns out it wasn't just Grampa Joe with a soft spot for Der Fuhrer -- so did his second eldest son and future president John F. Kennedy during trips to Germany as a young man, according to a new book, "John F. Kennedy -- Among the Germans: Travel Diaries and Letters, 1937-1945." (Audio after the jump) Excerpts from the book were published last month in the...

n the final morning of his presidency, America’s 37th president spoke to a gathering of young White House staffers. It was the lowest point in his career—and arguably, his life—yet still Richard Nixon sought to impart one final piece of wisdom to those assembled: It is only a beginning, always. The young must know it; the old must know it. It must always sustain us, because the greatness comes not when things go always good for you, but the greatness comes and you are really tested, when you take some knocks, some disappointments, when sadness comes, because only if you...

John Dean, former President Nixon’s White House counsel, said Monday night that former President Trump’s latest indictment in Georgia over efforts to overturn the 2020 election is “much bigger than Watergate.” Dean made the comment on CNN, when asked by anchor Kaitlan Collins whether he sees echoes of the Nixon-era scandal in the Georgia indictment. “It’s much bigger than Watergate,” said Dean, who gave key congressional testimony during the Nixon scandal. “It’s of a whole different dimension. It goes to the very foundation of democracy. Nixon abused some powers, he exceeded his authority when he shouldn’t, but he wasn’t taking...

According to this Daniel Calabrese article, Hillary Clinton was fired from her job as a staff attorney for the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate investigations for, among other things, lying: Jerry Zeifman, a lifelong Democrat, supervised the work of 27-year-old Hillary Rodham on the committee. Hillary got a job working on the investigation at the behest of her former law professor, Burke Marshall, who was also Sen. Ted Kennedy’s chief counsel in the Chappaquiddick affair. When the investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation – one of...

John Dean, former White House counsel to Richard Nixon, said Thursday on “CNN News Central” if former President Donald Trump is not convicted in the January 6 case, then “we don’t have the democracy we believe we have.” Anchor Erin Burnett asked, “John, as you sit here on this day appeared we watch a former president of the United States heading to Washington to be arraigned, charged formally in a federal courthouse for undermining the U.S. Constitution, how do you even put this in context?” Dean said, “It does not fit in the context because it is bigger and more...

Dialing the time machine back to 1972, we find a previous presidential scandal. Though not directly involved, Richard Nixon was the focus of blame. A handful of operatives in Nixon's campaign and administration performed a "third-rate burglary" at the opposition's headquarters. Several of those involved avoided using their first names. Instead, they were G. Gordon Liddy, E. Howard Hunt, and L. Patrick Gray. Most curious in this affair was the lack of a serious motive. Nixon's re-election was a solid inevitability. Not all that long after the Watergate break-in hit the news, Nixon carried 49 states, and McGovern didn't even...

No admission in former President Richard Nixon's Watergate tapes was "as clearly illegal" as that of Donald Trump in audio first published by CNN where the latter describes having "highly confidential" papers in his possession, a leading historian of the period has said. The audio, in which Trump appeared to admit some of the documents in his possession hadn't been declassified, was published on Monday. In response, a Trump campaign spokesperson said the former president had been "speaking rhetorically and also quite humorously," and hadn't committed any wrongdoing. Earlier this month, Trump was charged with 37 counts related to his...

Monday on FNC’s “The Ingraham Angle,” host Laura Ingraham called the findings of the Durham probe into the investigation of Donald Trump and alleged Russian collusion to be “arguable” worse than the Watergate scandal that plagued former President Richard Nixon.

Donald Trump on Tuesday reiterated his claims that the Bidens are a “crime family” and likened their suspected wrongdoings to “Watergate times 10.” Trump’s withering criticism of President Biden and his clan came just days after House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, a Republican, claimed in a Fox News interview that at least 12 members of the first family were involved in an “influence-peddling scheme.” “What Congressmen James Comer and Jim Jordan have revealed about the ‘Biden Crime Family’ would be Watergate times 10, if this news was revealed just 10 years ago,” Trump said in the video posted to...

The greatest scandal in American political history has its roots in room 214 of The Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. The famed room still exists and can be booked for overnight stays for an average nightly rate of about $1,600. That's right: You, too, can sleep in the room where, in 1972, E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy stationed themselves while orchestrating the break-in at the Democratic National Committee's (DNC) headquarters. The fallout from the break-in led to President Richard Nixon resigning in disgrace. To date, Nixon remains the only U.S. president to ever resign from office. The DNC's...

Former President Donald Trump revealed today that Richard Nixon’s “biggest regret” was giving in to GOP pressure to resign during the Watergate impeachment crisis, a move the 45th president said he wouldn’t have made. “His daughter actually told me that his biggest regret was that he didn't fight, he should have fought,” Trump said, without identifying which daughter. But, he added, Nixon lacked the public support needed to carry on. “I'm not sure that that had an impact one way or the other,” he said, had Nixon resisted. In a media roundtable to discuss the April 25 release of the...