[CharlesOConnell]

First Amendment Soldier

The reaction of the French to Watergate was interesting:

"Of course, when you get in power, you persecute your political opponents."

There were 6 liberal judges assigned to get Nixon en banc. The needn't have succeeded in getting Nixon, because he had sound constitutional grounds for the defense that he didn't know what the plumbers were doing—they were CIA—and didn't authorize it.

Four top legal scholars jointly researched the question, "Are Presidents responsible for the mis-deeds of their subordinates?"

They found that Presidents are not.

Hillary was dispatched by the Senate Watergate Committee to receive the legal scholars' finding.

She "disappeared" the opinion. Then she was fired by the Committee, "for cause".

But the scholars were so proud of their work, they paid to have it published.

That was 4 months after Nixon was scared into resigning.

But if he had fought, he would have won.

[No.6]

>They found that Presidents are not.

Provided that, as you noted in your post, the President did not authorize and did not know (so as not to be able to issue a countermand) about the misdeed.

or, more cynically, plausible deniability.

I would submit that Obama was quite aware of and ordered a number of illegal actions for which he’s liable, including many taken after his tenure as President and acted upon by remaining members of the executive branch. Plausible deniability falls apart when people have your emails and recordings of you telling them to do things.