That shall always remain one of History’s great mysteries.
WHY on Earth did Nixon decide to get cute with the Watergate stuff? He would have stomped the turf with McGovern without having to do hardly ANYTHING.
There are some excellent revisionist history books on the Watergate scandal.
Nixon was corrupt, and he was concerned that the Democrats had the Howard Hughes files—they were hard evidence Nixon had been paid millions over the years to steer military industrial complex contracts to Hughes companies.
Those files could have gotten Nixon impeached and jailed—regardless of who the Democrat nominee was.
The Deep State wanted Nixon under their thumb, so their agents on the Nixon team made sure there were lots of clues left for investigators to find.
Blackmail in DC is normally used to pressure the victim to do the Deep State’s bidding—if that is not successful they then move on to more “active measures” (up to and including murder if necessary).