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Decades After Watergate, Justice Department Reviews Whether Nixon Got a Raw Deal
The Wall Street Journal ^ | Updated Oct. 1, 2026 1:06 pm ET | Philip Wegmann and Sadie Gurman

Posted on 10/01/2026 11:12:53 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum

Revisionist historian went to DOJ headquarters to present his case that former president, his associates weren’t treated fairly

WASHINGTON—For nearly two years, the Justice Department has made it a priority to investigate people who previously investigated President Trump. Now it is reaching back in history to consider whether prosecutors mistreated an earlier Republican president: Richard Nixon.

The department is reviewing whether the special prosecutor’s office that investigated the famed Watergate break-in committed misconduct, according to people familiar with the matter, more than half a century after that scandal led to Nixon’s resignation. 

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Geoff Shepard, a former Nixon aide turned Watergate historian and revisionist, recently gave a two-hour presentation at Justice Department headquarters that laid out his theory that the deep state took Nixon down. The title of his 78-page slide deck: “Watergate As Lawfare.”

The review comes at a moment of renewed interest in the Nixon legacy. Republicans see in the combative former president, who was loathed by the press and besieged by investigations, a historical analogue for Trump. During remarks at the Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, Calif., this summer, Vice President JD Vance made the comparison explicit.

“If you look at the story of how the deep state took down Richard Nixon, it’s not all that different from what the same groups of people—the same institutions—tried to do to Donald Trump in the first Trump administration,” Vance said. “There is a parallel.”

A senior Justice Department official last month invited Shepard to come to Justice Department headquarters and make his case before the Office of Professional Responsibility, or OPR, an...


(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...


TOPICS: Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: abouttime; geoffshepard; nixon; philipwegmann; sadiegurman; watergate; wsj

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"Revisionist historians."

FYWSJ

1 posted on 10/01/2026 11:12:53 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
Bill Murray is right!


2 posted on 10/01/2026 11:15:32 AM PDT by dfwgator ("I am Charlie Kirk!")
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Too late. He can’t regain the presidency anymore.


3 posted on 10/01/2026 11:16:07 AM PDT by adorno ( )
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

I have always thought that Nixon’s ouster was a a journalist/leftist/establishment coup.


4 posted on 10/01/2026 11:17:24 AM PDT by SharpRightTurn (Giving money & power to government is like giving whiskey & car keys to teenage boys. P. J. O'Rourk)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Watergate was where the deep-state and leftist elements of the FBI/DOJ first used the “circular cycle” of FBI planted leaks to controlled media, sensationalist headlines, followed by congressional outrage, and lawfare traps.

It was optimized and perfected over the next 35 years, from Iran-Contra to Scooter Libby/Valerie Plame

they tried it on Trump with Russiagate, but by that time, enough Americans had learned to distrust controlled media, and Trump refused to be broken.


5 posted on 10/01/2026 11:19:03 AM PDT by PGR88
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
Don't forget a young Hillary working on the committee that brought impeachment charges against Nixon.


https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/09/16/hillary-clinton-impeachment-memo-trump-228107/

6 posted on 10/01/2026 11:20:44 AM PDT by Tell It Right (1 Thessalonians 5:21 -- Put everything to the test, hold fast to that which is true.)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

If it had been a Democrat, even back then, the consequences would have been vastly less consequential.


7 posted on 10/01/2026 11:21:34 AM PDT by traderrob6
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Revisionist historian “

WSJ=NYT. The WSJ transformation is complete now. A worthless leftist rag just like the rest of them.


8 posted on 10/01/2026 11:22:27 AM PDT by gibsonguy
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To: SharpRightTurn

Nixon made a veiled comment about his ‘knowing something about the JFK assassination’ whereby the CIA summarily tossed him overboard into the deep end without a life jacket.

Installing Ford whose only qualification was editing and whitewashing the Warren Commission Report.


9 posted on 10/01/2026 11:24:21 AM PDT by captmar-vell
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To: E. Pluribus Unum; piasa

““If you look at the story of how the deep state took down Richard Nixon, it’s not all that different from what the same groups of people—the same institutions—tried to do to Donald Trump in the first Trump administration,’ Vance said. ‘There is a parallel.’”

And it’s some of the same people, even: Carl Bernstein (on CNN’s earliest Russiagate coverage), Bob Woodward, John Dean, and Hillary Clinton among others. The playbook came from Ted Kennedy and his brothers’ “Get Hoffa Squad”, as Geoff Shepard documents extensively, and it was previously used for Iran-Contra and Plamegate and on targets like Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas.


10 posted on 10/01/2026 11:25:18 AM PDT by Fedora
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To: PGR88
Watergate was where the deep-state and leftist elements of the FBI/DOJ first used the “circular cycle” of FBI planted leaks to controlled media, sensationalist headlines, followed by congressional outrage, and lawfare traps.

The name has changed, but the process is the same.

Wrap-up smear


11 posted on 10/01/2026 11:25:30 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum (The right of the Democrats to embezzle elections shall not be infringed. )
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To: E. Pluribus Unum; lightman; Navy Patriot

What was done to Nixon was MUCH worse than what was done to Trump!

The Washington Post gang and their acolytes took down a great President, and did lots of damage. Fortunately, the Nixon administration was able to help Israel in her hour of need before succumbing to Watergate.

But then we had all the miseries of the 1970s, culminating in the Iranian revolution and the hostage crisis. We still live with the consequences today.


12 posted on 10/01/2026 11:25:37 AM PDT by Honorary Serb (Kosovo is Serbia! Free Srpska! Abolish ICTY!)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Nixon didn’t get a raw deal.

But he made it very easy for Deep State to remove him.


13 posted on 10/01/2026 11:26:31 AM PDT by mewzilla (Swing away, Mr. President, swing away! 🇺🇸 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Messed up the HTML link.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4785397/user-clip-pelosi-explains-the-wrap-smear


14 posted on 10/01/2026 11:28:48 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum (The right of the Democrats to embezzle elections shall not be infringed. )
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To: Tell It Right

Thee are still many people (mainly women) who mourn Hillary Rodham clinton’s losses to obama and Trump!

She is Wellesley’s shame!


15 posted on 10/01/2026 11:31:28 AM PDT by Honorary Serb (Kosovo is Serbia! Free Srpska! Abolish ICTY!)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Nixon had a network of spies against his “enemies” list. I don’t think he got a “raw deal”.

Of course it’s nothing compared to what they do now...


16 posted on 10/01/2026 11:32:26 AM PDT by Jim W N (MAGA "by restoring the Gospel of the Grace of Christ (Jude 3) and our Free Constitutional Republic!)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Nixon was the object of a successful plot to overturn the results of the 1972 election, where a relatively minor crime was overblown into an excuse for a silent coup. That being said, what is the purpose of officially reviewing events of more than a half century ago when Biden, Obama, and their respective attorneys general, FBI directors, and staff members go unpunished for far more recent actions against Trump that were far more egregious than what Nixon and his underlings did?


17 posted on 10/01/2026 11:32:29 AM PDT by Wallace T.
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To: SharpRightTurn

“I have always thought that Nixon’s ouster was a a journalist/leftist/establishment coup.”

Me, too. Nixon was the consummate commie-fighter in the 40s and 50s. He had lots of commie enemies as a result. They got his scalp for that.


18 posted on 10/01/2026 11:33:03 AM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
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To: Tell It Right
According to Jerry Zeifman, the general counsel and chief of staff for the House Judiciary Committee during the 1974 Watergate investigation, young staff attorney Hillary Rodham (later Hillary Clinton) helped write a staff memo or brief arguing that President Richard Nixon should not be granted the right to legal counsel.
19 posted on 10/01/2026 11:36:12 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum (The right of the Democrats to embezzle elections shall not be infringed. )
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

I read Chris Matthews book “Kennedy and Nixon. I liked it. It seemed to suggest Nixon had more class than the Kennedys and when it came to the enemies stuff RFK’s people went for the juggler. It also suggested Ford’s people did the same classless things when it came to Reagan in ‘76.


20 posted on 10/01/2026 11:36:47 AM PDT by DIRTYSECRET
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