Episode 47 Watergate Part 2

Previously on Ill-Equipped History, he literally had a list of people he considered his enemies, and this pissed off Nixon. He created a task force known as the Plumbers. If you're gonna be sneaky, don't call your group creep. Five guys break into the Watergate headquarters. Police found the intruders at 2 30 a.m. Dean learns this happened. He's like, what the fuck? I told you guys not to do this. So there's these two journalists named Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, two reporters for the Washington Post. A few days after the investigation starts, seven people are indicted. They start getting information from an inside source, Deep Throat. We have a cancer close to pregnancy. For the love of Christ, would you just look at reason and how they're all implicated in it? So Nixon called Deep and was like, the exact thing that you predicted would happen has happened. This is the final straw for Dean. He's got to come clean about everything. Welcome to Ill-Equipped History, where two best friends talk about this crazy moment in history. So no one asked us to do that. I'm Morgan, here with my best friend, Emily. Hey, y'all, we are the Dynamic Duo. We are Giggleboxes today. Y'all, we've had a rough start today. We had to do this a couple times because I had two margaritas, or as Emily would say, maggaritas, before recording with some co-workers of mine, and now I'm having a glass of wine, because why not? I'm an adult and I can do what I want. I'm just laughing because she's laughing, and I'm a sympathy laugher. As we've established. Yeah, the moment anyone laughs around me, I too am laughing. I don't even know. It doesn't help that I am a silly goose. Yeah, quit goosin'. You're just goosin' around. Oh, boy. Okay, and we have such a serious topic today. We do. As you guys know, and I'm sure are ready to get into, we're covering Watergate Part Two today. We're covering the hearings. We're covering all the scandals that emerged. We're covering the trials that happened, and it's just a lot of nonsense today, so why don't we just go ahead and jump on into it, Emily? Yeah, let's do it. It's Easter weekend of 1973. John Dean III is enjoying a walk in the woods with his wife. However, there's something on his mind that he cannot shake. Dear, you're tensing up again. You seem very conflicted about this decision. Are you sure you want to go through with it? Maureen, we've talked about this. I have to come clean. The American people deserve to know the truth about their president. This cover-up has to end. I know, and I'm here to support you, but you look unsure. Dammit, Maureen, what am I supposed to do? I know what I did was wrong, and I'm trying to make it right, but I'm worried about you. I'll probably end up in jail, and there's no telling if they'll try to retaliate. What if you're in danger? John, my love, I'll be okay. We have a plan, and we will be protected. Trust that this will all work out in the end. You're right, dear. Thank you for being here with me. Soon, everyone will know the truth behind Watergate. Bum, bum, bum, boo. Obviously, that was a fictional account of that conversation. No, we were there. We were there with microphones. We were in the trees, like, with the booms. You said we were in the trees. You know what I thought of? We were the second shooters on the grassy knoll. Oh, my God. Why did my brain go there? Why did it go there? I don't know. Okay, I did see something earlier while looking at Diana, and it was like one of those little videos. You know how they have the little thumbnails that are like, this one said, and it had a picture of JFK, and it said, why JFK had a closed casket at his funeral? Why do you think? He was shot in the head. His head exploded. Half of his head was gone. Would you have an open casket? No, I didn't even click on it. I was like, that's the dumbest clickbait, like, nonsense. Why do you think he had a closed casket? My God. I'm forever traumatized by seeing that video in high school of him being shot in the head. I don't even think it was high school. I'm pretty sure it was earlier than that. I know I saw it. I know people had seen it beforehand. I somehow avoided seeing it until I was in high school. I unfortunately did not, and then I wonder why I have anxiety. We can trace it back to the, what is it, the Z, Z, whatever video, Zoltan. I don't know. It starts with a Z. Yeah, whatever video. I don't know why, but I feel like I saw it. It was either, like, late elementary or maybe freshman year, and that might be why I'm getting them confused, because freshman year, we did stay at the junior high. I don't know, but it was way too young in my life to see the president's head get blown off. Yes. I have 100% agree. I don't think there's any age where that's a good thing to see. Why are things like that just out there? I don't know. Okay. We're talking about a different president. Sorry about my little pitch. Yes. This takes place after the unfortunate assassination of John F. Kennedy. Today, we are talking about part two of Watergate, so just to kind of make sure everyone's on the same page. Also, if you haven't listened to part one, you should go do that, because that will provide context to this entire situation. You'll probably be very confused if you do not listen to part one, because that's why everything that's about to happen in part two happens. But I'm just, because there's a lot of people I'm going to be talking about, so I'm just going to do a little refresher for everyone, because it's been a week. Yes. So the players in this game that we're talking about, first is Richard Nixon. He's the president of the United States. He has a group of cronies willing to do whatever they can to protect him and his unconstitutional shenanigans. He's willing to do whatever it takes to stay in power, is known to be sneaky and influence ill opinions of his political opponents. He's allegedly sick to the IRS on his political enemies, which he also has a list of like over 800 names. I was like, these are my enemies. It's giving, it's giving Cantrell vibes. Yeah, giving. Yeah. I mean, what was it about this era? Because remind me, what years were these? This was the 80s? No, this was the 70s. So 70s. Yeah. Only 30 years after the Battle of Athens and stuff like this is still going on. Corruption is as timeless as humanity. True, true, true. Next is John Dean III. He was Nixon's counsel. He was one of the orchestrators of the Watergate cover up. And at the end of episode one, we were talking about how he was set up with the cover up with the lying and he was willing to finally like come clean about everything. Sorry, you were also hinting last episode that he was starting to become framed for it. Is that correct? Am I remembering that right? He was set up to be the fall guy. Got it. So if people were like, oh, this whole thing was a cover up, they'd be like, well, John Dean like orchestrated this entire cover up, which it was not just him. He was involved, but it was not just him. Of course. We also have H.R. Haldeman, who was the White House Chief of Staff, also one of Nixon's cronies, very involved in the cover up. We have John Ehrlichman, who's the Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs, another crony also involved in the cover up. And Emily, if you want to scroll down below the skit, I have pictures of a lot of these guys, because it's, again, a lot of names. John Mitchell, he was a campaign manager for C.R.E.A.P., which is the Committee for the Re-election of the President. Don't know why they chose C.R.E.A.P. as an acronym. I'm a C.R.E.A.P. I'm a weirdo. For real, though. I will continue to call that organization by C.R.E.A.P., even though no one else does, because they can. And John Mitchell was a former Attorney General. We have G. Gordon Liddy, E. Howard Hunt, and Chuck Colson. They were all White House plumbers who were, the plumbers were a group of guys who were tasked to track down leaks and solve the President's problems, essentially. They would try to infiltrate areas and get information to frame people, like all kinds of shenanigans. And actually, Gordon Liddy was a mastermind behind the Watergate break-in. He looks like he is a mastermind because of the mustache. Very, very mustache. Very villain mustache. Yes. Okay. Liddy and Hunt were convicted in the Watergate scandal, and Hunt was the one that was wanting clemency and hush money after he was convicted. We have James McCord. He was kind of the point of the Watergate break-in. He worked for the CIA. I don't think he was a plumber, but he was associated with Hunt pretty closely. He wrote a letter to the presiding judge, Judge Sirica, in his trial and said there was more to the story. And he implicated Dean in the cover-up. We have Bernstein and Woodward. They are two Washington Post journalists who are working to make sure the American public knows the story. And then we have Dick Cavett. I watched a documentary about him in this time. He's an American talk show host who was also trying to get the story out. He's not as much of a player, but I do bring him up a few times. So where we left off last week, the Watergate 7 had been tried. McCord and Liddy were convicted. Howard, Hunt, and the four other burglars besides McCord had all pled guilty, so they didn't have any trials. The heat is starting to come down onto Dean, and he's being pressured by Nixon and Haldeman to fix this mess. And Dean has decided he has had enough. He's going to let all of America know what's really going on. He's ready to whistleblow. So a week after the trials, in January of 1973, the Senate voted to establish a bipartisan committee to investigate Watergate. 77 to 0. Unanimous decision to establish a Senate hearing committee. I'd be suspicious if it was like 76 to 1. Like, what's that guy? That one guy, yeah. And again, this is bipartisan. That is insane. Yes. So the committee was established through Resolution 60, which was presented by Senator Edward Kennedy. I don't know what Resolution 60 is. I think it's just like a proposal from the Senate. The majority leader, who is Mike Mansfield, wanted to make sure no accusations of bias could be thrown at the committee. Edward Kennedy was a Democrat, and the Kennedys and Nixon did not like each other. So instead of having Kennedy leading the committee, which normally he would because he's the one that proposed the whole thing, Mansfield chose a man named Sam Ervin as the chair of the hearing committee. So Sam Ervin, he was also a Democrat. He was a senator from North Carolina. He portrayed himself as just a simple Southern lawyer. Like, he literally sounds like Foghorn Leghorn. Very thick North Carolina accent. Oh, it just it fits how he looks too. Like, I was watching a bunch of clips from the hearings and just him going like, now you see here, sir, why don't you reconvene what you were talking about just a few minutes like very thick Southern North Carolina accent. It was amazing. Oh, I want to hear this man's voice. But he so because like, he has this very thick accent. He talks kind of slow. He portrayed himself as a very simple lawyer, a very simple lawyer. But he was sharp as a tack. He was brilliant. He went to Harvard Law School, and he was considered the Senate's constitutional expert. Listen, country accent can get you out of a lot of things. In my case, a speeding ticket. So I believe that I believe that wholeheartedly, because people look at you funny. When you have an accent, they underestimate you, they absolutely underestimate you. It's like you could have so much going on up here. But because you got a draw, they don't take you seriously. Yeah, I could definitely see that how he kind of slid under the radar like that a little bit. But there is a reason he was chosen for sure. Of course, of course. Also on the committee, there were three other Democratic members and three Republican members. The Democratic members were Daniel Inouye from Hawaii, Joseph Montoya from New Mexico and Herman Talmadge from Georgia. We also have Howard Baker from the Republican members were Howard Baker from Tennessee, Edward Kearney from Florida and Lowell Weaker from Connecticut. And remind me where Nixon is from. He is from, I think, California. I don't think I put down like when he was born, because I didn't go into life so much. But I think he was born on the West Coast ish. OK, so the areas you were talking about were very much not in his area. Right. So I mean, there was a senator from Hawaii. So, yeah, I was just thinking of like less likely that he has influence. Right. Yes, that's what I was thinking. Yeah, I'm pretty sure he grew up in a small town in California. OK, cool. Also on the committee, Sam Dash was the chief counsel and Fred Thompson was the minority counsel. So there's nine members of the Senate Hearing Committee and their only job is to investigate Watergate. The committee would have a little bit more than a year to conduct the investigation and complete a report on the findings. So they were looking to start their hearings by March 1973. But Nixon was working to keep his aides from testifying because duh. But Nixon was pressured by his own fellow Republican Party members and his constituents to cooperate with the Senate Hearing Committee. They're like, why aren't you cooperating? What do you have to hide? Obviously, you don't have anything to hide. It looks super sus. Yes. If you get all defensive right now. Yes. Like, don't don't be like that. And does he learn? No, he does not. Spoiler alert. Richard Nixon and he does what he wants. In April of 1973, Dean. So we're not at the hearings yet. They're they're underway, but they haven't started yet. But in April, Dean pleaded with Ehrlichman like we need to stop this. We need to end this. Please stop. We need to stop. And Ehrlichman did not listen. And Dean was even like, we need to hire a lawyer. Like, we need to get our shit together so we can stop this. So Dean went on his own and hired Charles Schaefer, who's a criminal attorney to help him out, get his ducks in a row, make sure that he was protected, all that stuff. So Dean met with Nixon on April 15th at 9 p.m. to try once again to get him to stop the cover up. They're talking. They're having a conversation. Nixon's asking him a bunch of questions. And he's like, Dean is thinking, Nixon's asking these questions in a very strange way. He's like being very descriptive about everything in the documentary. It was like he was like, do you remember on this day at this time you asked you told me about how we needed to raise one million dollars to pay off people involved in Watergate? And he was like, yeah, he was like, that was a joke. It was just very weird. And Dean was like, I think he's recording this conversation. I think he is recording himself to make it sound like he had nothing involved in this. Of course, he didn't have proof, but he was just like, he's just talking so weird, so strangely. It has to be, he has to be recording himself. Sometimes you just get a vibe like that. You're just like, something's off. Yeah. Yeah. So the next day, Dean walks into the Oval Office as Haldeman and Ehrlichman leave, and they're laughing as they leave. Very sus. Nixon hands him two pieces of paper. They are two very vague, unsigned resignation notices. Basically, they're vague enough where if Dean signed those resignation letters, they would be able to pin whatever they wanted onto him because it was basically like a blanket acknowledgement of wrongdoing. No, Dean did not sign those papers. Thank God. He is not an idiot. He just left. He's like, I'm not signing these. And he left. Good. And he also finally came to the conclusion. He was like, I am not going to convince these guys to end this thing. I have to do this on my own. Yeah. So Dean composed a letter trying to get ahead of everything. He was like, recording everything to his memory. He was trying to like gain evidence. And then he was fired by Nixon because he was still working for Nixon at this time. On April 30th, Nixon had like a public statement announcing that Dean was let go and that Haldeman and Ehrlichman resigned. So they resigned the same day that Dean was fired. And then Nixie's attorney general, Richard Kleindienst, also resigned. Oh, they're dropping like flies. Yeah. Oh, my God. The new attorney general is a man named Elliot Richardson. After this, Dean told his lawyer because he still has his Charles Schaefer, the criminal attorney. He's like, OK, the Senate is getting this test, this hearing committee going. I need to testify at it. But I like want to make sure that I'm safe and my wife is safe. And Schaefer was like, I want you to have immunity. I don't want you're going to be a whistleblower. You need protection. Yes. So Dean worked privately with one of the members of the committee. I can't remember which one he said, but it wasn't like formal investigations. He was basically like, hey, this one guy from the committee may have been Howard Baker. I'm not sure. But he was like, I have evidence of Watergate. And they're like, OK, sure. Right. And he was like, no, I really do. But I want immunity if I'm going to testify. OK, let's review this evidence. And so they kind of worked secretly off the record to make sure that all of the evidence that Dean had was legit and that they would be able to grant not immunity, but they would be able to provide some protections for Dean. And this was extremely dangerous for Dean, as you can probably imagine. He was terrified. Dean said he had 24 seven security for a year and a half. His bodyguards lived in his basement. Oh, God. And he had just gotten married, too. Yeah. Like right before. Oh, my God. Yeah. He was scared shitless. But this is a story of people doing the wrong thing, but a lot of people doing the right thing. Oh, good. Like at the end, you're going to be like, what? I can't wait. So the committee's public hearings began on May 17th, 1973. The hearings were televised. And this is basically the only thing on TV at the time it ran. I think this is where the 24 hour news cycle emerged from, because probably they aired the hearings live, and then they would rerun the hearings for people that weren't able to watch them during the day because of work. So it was basically the only thing that was on. Yeah. Also, there were probably only like four channels to probably Yeah, it was the 70s. This was a pure media circus. The media was all over the shit. I can only imagine everything that was talked about was just about these hearings about intense government corruption, potentially from the president. Unheard of at the time, which is crazy to think it's unheard of at the time. Whatever your your stances, like whatever your stances, I know each side has their own stance about the corruption going on in the government. But at the time, this was not what this didn't happen. Yes. Wild. So the Senate hearings aired for 51 days from May to November. So it wasn't in a row. It wasn't consecutive. But there are 51 televised hearing days. Good Lord above. Ehrlichman, McCord and Haldeman all testified among others. They had a lot of and this was not a criminal proceeding. This was not a trial. This was investigative. This was an investigative investigative hearings for people to come in, give their testimony, give evidence, and then they would all like sit with the evidence and try to figure out what's going on. Right. And Dick Cavett, the television show host, he was allowed to film his show from inside the Senate hearing room. He was like the only talk show host I was allowed to do that. I think they let him do that because he had been reporting on it from the beginning. Oh, so he got like special privilege to do that. I just couldn't imagine. Like, I'm just imagining. I don't know, name a talk show host. I forgot all their names currently. Conan O'Brien. Could you imagine Conan O'Brien just being in a hearing and just like cameras pointed at him and he's like in the background? Yeah. They're having an investigative hearing for corruption, making a joke. He would make jokes the entire time. I mean, I'm sure he would be serious, but Conan's very funny. Yeah. And Dick Cavett treated this very seriously. He was like, there are clips from his show that were airing and he made jokes here and there because he was a funny guy. But like during the hearings, he was very somber. Okay, good. He didn't interrupt the hearings with his shenanigans. He made jokes after everyone had left. So, I was trying to figure this out, like why this happened. So, typically when a case is being prosecuted federally, the attorney general is involved. But I think because there's a conflict of interest because the attorney general was basically appointed by Nixon, who could potentially be put under trial. They were like, we can't have the attorney general be the prosecutor. Right. We have to have a special prosecutor, like literally the title of special prosecutor. And that went to a man named Archibald Cox, who was nominated by Elliot Richardson. He was a constitutional law professor at Harvard Law who had worked for the Kennedys, who again, Nixon hated. He had no experience as a prosecutor, but he was a highly regarded lawyer with, quote, impeccable integrity. And that's from, the quote is from constitutionalcenter.org. So, everyone's like, there's no sneaky motives in here. This is a man that will do the job as best he can. Yeah, wonderful. That's what we like to hear. Yes. And he did. Even though a lot of people didn't agree with his methods, and he may have made mistakes, he did do what he thought was right. Richard Ben-Veniste was the, or Veniste, was the assistant special prosecutor and the head of the Watergate task force, which was, and he was joined by George Brampton. And they don't really come up, but getting all the facts out. Cox's role was to consider evidence given in the hearings, from what I gather, because I was trying to figure out what a special prosecutor was because it's, again, it's not a criminal trial. So, I assume what his position and role was, was to listen to the evidence gathered at the hearings. And then he was going to use that information to eventually go, like, prosecute in individual trials later on. I assume, because I could not, I looked in many different sources, no one ever explained what special prosecutor was. So, anyway, he actually wanted to shut down the televised hearings, because he believed that, like, all of America is tuning into these hearings. And whenever the people, whenever, or if ever, there's a trial that happens, there's no way there can be a fair jury that's not already biased against the defendants, because they already, like, they were watching the televised hearings. Right. So, again, honestly, yeah, which no one listened to him. They're like, no, we're going to keep televising the hearing. So, I do understand his point of view. Absolutely. He wanted to make sure if they went to trial, his the defendants would have a fair trial. Again, man of impeccable integrity. Yes. So, the day of John Dean's testimony came in front of not only the Senate committee, but the entire country on June 25 1973. Again, like, this is a man that worked for the President. He was one of the closest people to the President. He had all the inside secrets. He was directly involved in this cover up of this illegal unconstitutional action. He broke the law multiple times, covering up everything that happened. And he is in front of not only a Senate hearing committee and all the people in this courtroom, but millions of people around, not just the US, but the world saying, what happened? Like, I can't like, I cannot imagine the amount of bravery and courage and fear that this guy was feeling. Yeah. Oh, my God. That's terrifying. But he did it. He did it. And the documentary Dean was saying that he was going to defy a president and lay bare the blatant misconduct that was going on. So, in general, before Dean testified, the public was very divided because, again, Nixon won in a landslide. He had way the popular vote, overwhelming majority. And so people were like, I don't know about this. Like, some people didn't even care. They were like, ah, it's just the government. You know, it is what it is. Some people were like, no, this needs to be figured out. We can't have corruption in our government. And then some people like, there's no way Nixon could do it. Like, there's a lot of sides. But when Dean started his testimony, everyone was like, fuck. This is so blatant. Yeah. All while this is going on, the White House was continuing to try to, like, discredit him, undermine him, say, like, oh, like, he doesn't know what he's talking about. He was behind the whole thing, blah, blah, blah. But Dean gave an honest testimony to the best of his ability. He was truthful about the acts he engaged in, however bad that looked. And he knew, like, a lot of it looked bad. And he, like, even talked about destroying Hunt's journals that he found, like, that had evidence about Watergate. And he was like, I destroyed them because I didn't want them to be found. So he was really laying it all bare. Wow. So before Dean started testifying, he had talked with the Washington Post, who were one of the forerunners of getting this out to the American public. Apparently, Dean told them that he and Nixon had spoken about the cover-up together minimum 35 times. Wow. So this was not just, like, a one-off thing. Like, there was continued conversation about this cover-up. Wow. So while Dean was testifying, he had use immunity. And this meant that whatever he used for his testimony could not be used against him in a court of law. This did not absolve him of responsibility. This did not mean he couldn't be charged later. This wasn't saying he was granted permanent immunity from crime. This is saying his testimony could not be used against him if he was charged with criminal wrongdoing. That would be its own separate investigation. Okay. And they eventually, like, charges were eventually brought upon him, spoiler alert, because he was very guilty. And they've nabbed him with all the clemency things going on with McCord. And but Dean had already decided he was going to plead guilty. He was like, they don't have to bother going to court. Like, I'm fully admitting that I was involved in everything. I'm just going to go and plead guilty whenever I'm charged. And but they weren't going to do any kind of criminal investigation or trial until the Senate hearings had been wrapped up. Right. So Nixon released a statement saying that he knew nothing about the break in or the cover up. So now you have, like, to the public, you have this random guy, Dean, what's his face and the president and the president saying, no, I'm not involved. And this other guy is saying, like, yes, he is. You have that. But during his testimony, he said he thought he had been recorded by Nixon while meeting privately on that day in April, where Nixon was asking the strange questions. So we're going back to Deepthroat, who is closely involved with Woodward and Bernstein, the reporters of The Washington Post. And Deepthroat, if you don't remember or you weren't here, Deepthroat was an undercover agent who had worked for the FBI, but no one knew who he was. He was a man of mystery. He was working with the reporters to get information about Watergate out. Right. So Deepthroat told Woodward to talk to Alex Butterfield. He was the director of internal security at the White House and the deputy chief of staff. He was basically in charge of wiretapping. Oh, no. So Butterfield was asked to testify, and he did. Oh, he said Nixon had asked Haldeman to install listening devices throughout the White House. Haldeman pushed that task on to Butterfield, who then got the Secret Service to install the bugs. Only conversations with Nixon were recorded. And whenever Nixon went into a room with a listening device, the Secret Service agent would flip the switch on and begin recording. And then when he left, they would switch it off. Do you know why Nixon wanted recording devices all throughout the White House? Why? I always wondered. You would never, ever in a million years get it. Uh, okay. Hit me with it. I don't know. You're going to lose your shit. He wanted to record everything about his own administration that he could because he wanted to write a really good memoir. What? What? He was so fucking full of himself that he recorded himself conducting illegal actions on the reg because he was really into memoirs and he wanted to write his own really good memoir. Oh, but the people need to know what good I've done. And I think it was even just like he wanted to make sure like he didn't leave anything out. So he's like, Oh, put in there. I broke the law 20 times. I don't know. I have no idea because he was so sneaky and conniving. I mean, again, like we talked about in episode one, like there were things that he did that were good. Like he passed some laws. He established some agencies that have done a lot of good. He worked with welfare and tried to increase mental health supports and stuff like that. So not everything he did was bad, but he was conniving as fuck. And he recorded all of that. I never in my life that would never even cross my mind to do that. I told you, you never would have gotten it. No, I was like, I don't know if he think his wife's cheating on him. Like, no, no. Wow. It's crazy. I hope he wrote that memoir. He did write a memoir. Probably not. And his older age. Yeah. I'm sure it wasn't quite as glowingly positive. I will say like Nixon was pretty retrospective, like he still like later in life decline that he actually did anything wrong. But he was also weirdly introspective at the same time and was like, I don't know. He's a very interesting character. You need to like maybe maybe I could have handled things differently. Yeah. Yeah. It was like that. And then just like he was he was able to acknowledge like his faults, but not that he like broke the law. You know what I mean? Yeah. I don't know. Again, complicated. So Nixon ordered Haldeman and Butterfield to keep the wiretapping a secret, of course. And there was and they talked about this on the Dick Cavett documentary I watched. There is a recording of Nixon, Coulson and Haldeman and Haldeman talking about how to like how to take care of the Dick Cavett show, who again was airing segments about the Watergate scandal. And they're like, what can we do to fix the situation with the Dick Cavett show? Nothing, buddy. Maybe don't break the law. That's what you. So Nixon invoked executive privilege and refused to give the investigative committee the tapes that the now they were demanding. They're like, we have testimony that the tapes exist. Give us the tapes. And he was like, no, I'm the president. And this is confidential. For my memoir. Yeah. So executive privilege means that the president has which executive executive privilege is a thing. It means the president basically has privacy and confidentiality with his staff while fulfilling executive duties. That does not mean that physical evidence of crimes falls under executive privilege. I'm just imagining they're like, hand them over. And he's like, no. And they're like, come on. And he's like, nope, nope, like trying to get something out of a dog's mouth that they know they're not supposed to have. Yeah. Because they didn't get the tapes voluntarily, the committee subpoenaed the tapes. Lovely. And then Nixon tried to stop the subpoena. But that was withheld by Judge Sirica, who was a judge over the Watergate seven, who was like something fishy here. There's more to this than just these seven guys. And also got the ball rolling on investigating the Watergate scandal. And the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. So like, he's like, I'm trying to stop the subpoena and Sirica and the Court of Appeals are like, no, you can't stop this appeal. So Sirica himself ordered Nixon to turn in nine tapes for him to review himself. So Sirica was like, I'm going to look at these tapes by myself in a room all alone, hand them over. Yeah. And I assume he did. But I don't think so. I don't think he ever he actually did. So we're jumping forward a bit. All this stuff is going on. October 10, the Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned due to him pleading no contest to tax evasion. Oh, my God. Don't you think they weren't doing? No. Okay. And then two days after that, Nixon nominates Gerald Ford, who is a Republican minority leader in the House as Vice President. So Gerald Ford will be coming back later. You're about to hear the biggest bunch of bullshit I have ever seen. Okay, I'm ready for the bunch of bullshit. So there's this back and forth between Nixon and the committee. The committee wants the tapes Nixon is refusing to give them. So Elliot Richardson, who again, is the current Attorney General. He's like, I have an idea. Great idea. Everyone's gonna love this idea. We'll get this guy named John Stennis. He's a senator from Mississippi. He will listen to the tapes while reading the transcript from the tapes, make sure that they match, and then we'll pinky swear that they're the same. And then you guys can have the transcripts. This was called the Stennis Compromise. The problem was that Stennis was elderly, partially deaf, and was recovering from a gunshot wound after recent mugging and was heavily medicated. I don't even know what to say. Just external screaming. That's the biggest bunch of bullshit. What the fuck? The man can't hear. He's barely alive. He's like, let me recover. And they're like, you've got a job to do. I'm equally like feel bad for him. And at the same time, I'm very angry that that even like to happen. I don't even know if Stennis volunteered for the job. Richardson was just like, why don't we can have him do it. He probably overlooked about five healthy, healthy young people with good hearing. Yes. Who hadn't been recently shot. And then he was like, you, you with the bad hearing. Knock it on deaf door. 95 and deaf. You're perfect for the job. Come listen to these tapes and I'm gonna let you read this. Take your glasses off too. Might as well. We'll just play in this dark room right here. Does it sound right? Knock twice when you're done. Oh my God. Yeah. So Archibald Cox, who again is a special prosecutor had a press conference about like responding to the Stennis compromise called a bullshit and much nicer polite words than that, but called a bullshit and said that Nixon was not complying with the court ordered subpoena October 20th. Oh my gosh, it just keeps getting wilder. So this is going to sound really bad. It's not as bad as it sounds, but it's still really bad. This whole thing sounds bad. So, well, it sounds like someone people died and no one died. Oh, okay. Okay. So October 20th, 1973 is known as the Saturday night massacre. How would they name it that if no one died? Nixon ordered Richardson, the attorney general to fire Archibald Cox. Richard Richardson refused to do so and quit. Then the deputy attorney general, William Ruckelshaus also quit. So he wouldn't have to fire Cox. Then the next guy down, Robert Bork, solicitor general finally did fire Cox. Why? Why did I look around my closet? Like my clothes were going to give me the air. Obviously this was a huge constitutional violation by the president firing the special prosecutor where he wasn't even indicted, but he could have been implicated. You know, it was just a huge mess. The public outcry was tremendous. Like people are already getting frustrated. They're already getting angry. They're already thinking like this isn't right. And then this happened, everyone turned against Nixon. Everyone was like, fuck this guy. He is a tyrant. He's a dictator. He's thinking he can do whatever the hell he wants. And that is not right. No, that's not how this country works at all. No, not supposed to anyway. So, and then like the Watergate committee started freaking out and they're like, Oh my God, like, what if they break in and like get all of our files? Because like all this shit is happening, who knows, they're not going to like storm the hearing, like place. So they're like, they have FBI agents that were like helping them like collect documents and evidence and like get it out of the courtroom and hide the evidence. One guy had like went to his grandma's basement in like Virginia and like hid documents there. It was a nightmare. If you're not just busting down your grandma's door with a box of documents, like, sorry, grandma, the president's after me. And she's like, I'll bring you some cookies. And there's like FBI agents that are like making sure that no one's following them. You boys want some cookies too. Who are your friends, Jimmy? We're the FBI grandma. Well, that's a funny name. Come on in, boys. I'll get you some milk. John Dean in the documentary said it was one of the worst decisions Nixon made as president. Again, major constitutional violation. And it was so obvious to everyone what he was doing. They're like, he's trying to cover his tracks. He's trying to make sure he's not indicted. This means that evidence must be strong against him. This is the same vibe that I get when my son tries to sneak into a room just by walking with a blanket over his head. It's giving. It's giving six year old. Yeah, it's so wild. So after this, the American public is like, we need to impeach this guy. They're like, bro, impeach this. And the only other, I think up to this point, there's only there had only been one president who had been impeached. Andrew Johnson. And I go into it a little bit later. When I talk about the impeachment process, because I do go into that a little bit more. So like, what is impeachment? Anyway, yeah. So this is a new special prosecutor had to be selected, because the previous one has gotten fired for all the bullshit. So a man named Leon Jaworski was selected to be the new special prosecutor by Nixon himself, which you would conflict of interest, you would think in the documentary I was watching, they said that Leon was selected because everyone believed he was a yes man. Everyone believed he like, just kind of went with the flow. He didn't have independent thoughts. But like, we all like he did the shit good. And because the public was so pissed off that what he did, Nixon finally caved under the public outcry and released some of the tapes. And then November 17 1973 was the date of this infamous I'm not a crook speech, which I have a small segment here that I will quote for you. Okay, please. I made my mistakes, but in all of my years of public life, I have never profited, never profited from public service, I earned every cent. And in all of my years of public life, I have never obstructed justice. And I think too, that I could say that in my years of public life, that I welcome this kind of examination, because people have got to know whether or not the president is a crook. Well, I am not a crook. I have earned everything I got. And quote, by being a crook. You earned it. Yeah. Yeah. So the Senate committee listened to one of the tapes, who realized there were 18 and a half minutes missing from a recording between Nixon and Haldeman that took place in 1972. Tech experts analyzed the tapes and realized there were five different erasures in this tape. And then the new chief of staff Alexander Hague, because remember, Haldeman resigned. So Alexander Hague said it must have been caused by some quote, some sinister force. The devil did it. There's a demon in the White House. He's erasing the tape. Oh, my God. The Watergate investigative committee eventually decided to listen to the presidency is a cancer tape, which we listened to last week. And it's where or there's a cancer on the presidency. That's actually what the tape is called. But basically, Dean is saying to Nixon, there's a cancer on the presidency like this has to be resolved. People are going to start like not supporting you anymore with all of this bullshit happening with the cover up. And they listen to Nixon agreeing to Dean with a plot to obstruct justice and pay off the burglars in the tape. So now they're like, okay, we got him boys. Now we're heading into 1974. Because the investigation, the Senate hearing committee, how do I say the Senate hearing committee stopped their investigations in November. So 1974, the House of Representatives agreed to consider impeachment on February 6, 1974, with a 410 to four decision. The House Judiciary Committee is now given authorization by the House to investigate whether impeachment is warranted. Wow, okay. So now I have a little bit of information about what impeachment specifically is. And this is from the USA.gov website. So quote, impeachment is the process of bringing charges against a government official for wrongdoing, the trial may be held in the official may be removed from office, and quote. So basically, this is a power held by Congress against federal officials. Okay, so what the process is, because it's kind of the process, because we just witnessed a couple impeachments over the last few years. So the House brings articles or charges of impeachment against the official in question. And articles of impeachment are similar to like criminal charges. If a simple majority vote by the House is reached to adopt the articles of impeachment, the official has been impeached, then the Senate holds an impeachment trial. And if the person in question is the President, the US Supreme Court Chief Justice provides. So now it turns into an actual like trial. If the defendant is found guilty, they were they are removed from office and are barred from holding elected office ever again. If found not guilty, they can continue to serve in office. I don't know if it's that particular office, or they just can continue to serve in public office after if they're found not guilty. But they still carry the title of being impeached. So the impeachment is basically the process of moving for a trial. Okay. It's like, the impeachment is we are bringing charges against you. And then there's a trial held to determine if they're guilty of the crime. Okay. It's basically like, it's a criminal trial that in way higher court, and it's federal against federal officials. But it's not a criminal trial, because they're not jailed. If they're found guilty, they're just removed from office. And then I think, at that point, it could potentially move to like a criminal trial with the Attorney General and a jury and stuff like that. So there have been three presidential impeachments, Andrew Johnson in 1868, Bill Clinton in 1998, and then Donald Trump in 2019 and 2021, all of which continue to serve in office after being acquitted of all charges by the Senate. Okay, you'll note, Nixon was not in this list. And we will get to that. Okay. So the Senate committee hearing, they're not investigating anymore. So now it's up to Leon Jaworski to continue like, investigating. And now he's moving, starting to move towards indictments when he starts collecting evidence. So they had received nine tapes. And after hearing the tapes that they got, they subpoenaed 64 more tapes to use in the trials against Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Mitchell. So now these three guys, they're being indicted. And they're collecting evidence against these three guys. So instead of giving the tapes, Nixon, again, released only the transcripts, but this time released them to the public in a book. And this contained carefully selected and even inaccurate transcripts of the tapes. Buddy, it's over. Like, you still trying? Why? So Jaworski went all the way to the Supreme Court to make Nixon hand over the tapes. Like he obviously, he was not listening to subpoenas, which again, are court ordered, you have to listen to a subpoena. So the Supreme Court unanimously cited against Nixon in the case United States versus Nixon, which asked the question, quote, does the President have an absolute unqualified privilege to keep his conversations confidential? They answered no, eight to zero. Damn. And I think one judge abstained, but they're all like, no, he does not have this right. And they ordered Nixon to comply with the subpoena. So now he's got, the President has Congress up his ass, and he's got the Supreme Court up his ass. On July 27, 1974, quote, the House Judiciary Committee adopts the first article of impeachment by a vote of 27 to 11, with six Republicans voting with the Democrats. The article charges Nixon with obstruction of the investigation of the Watergate break-in, end quote. And that is from the Watergate.info website, which is a very helpful source. The second article of impeachment was adopted on July 29, stating Nixon misused his power as President and violated his oath of office. And the third article of impeachment was adopted the following day, charging him with, quote, failure to comply with the House subpoenas. Wow. So those are the charges that were brought against him. Obstruction of justice, or obstruction of the investigation, misuse of power, and failure to comply with subpoenas. Okay, so this is a tape that's known as the smoking gun tape. And this is a conversation between Richard Nixon and Bob Haldeman. That's funny. Now, on the investigation of the Democratic break-in thing, we're not good in the problem area, because the FBI is not under control. The district is exactly not under control. And they have, their investigation is now leading into some productive areas, because they've been able to trace the money, not to the money itself, but to the bank, you know, sources in the bank itself. And it goes in some directions we don't want it to go. Also, there have been some things like an informant came in off the street to the FBI in Miami with a photographer who has a friend who's a photographer who developed some films for this guy, Parker. And the films had pictures of Democratic National Committee letter and documents. So there's things like that that are filtering in. Mitchell came up with yesterday, and John Dean analyzed very carefully last night and concludes, encouraged now with Mitchell's recommendation, that the only way to solve this, and we're set up beautifully to do it. In fact, the only effort that paid attention to last night was NBC, a massive story on the Cuban thing. But the way to handle this now is for us to have Walters call Pat Gray and just say, stay the hell out of this. This is, there's some business here we don't want you. That's not an unusual development. And that would take a long time. Pat doesn't want to, he doesn't know how to, and he doesn't have any basis. Given this, he will then have the basis, he'll call Mark Bell, and the two of them, and Mark Bell wants to cooperate because he's ambitious, he'll call him in and say, we've got a signal across the river to put bubbles on this. And that'll fit rather well because the FBI agents who are working the case at this point feel that's what it is. So I'm going to pause it right there. It goes on for a few more minutes. But did you hear all the incriminating shit that was happening in that just very, very short? He's like, we've got this coming in, and we've got this filtering in and we've got this and this one guy doesn't know how to control the Congress. And so we can't get him involved. And holy shit, that was like a minute and a half, two minutes of just a bullet pointed. That's why it's called the smoking gun tape. It was the smoking gun that they were able to use. As evidence, I can't believe that he still maintains his innocence. There have been 11 Republicans who did not vote for impeachment. But after the smoking gun tape release, they said they would change their votes. So here we are, before the issue could be presented to the Senate on whether to vote for impeachment again, like the Senate had to like agree to go to trial. Nixon announced he was resigning on August 8, 1974. And it went into effect August 9 at noon. So before he could be impeached, he resigned. And Gerald Ford, the vice president was sworn in afterwards. So now Gerald Ford is the new president. And then no one knew what to do about the impeachment. They're like, well, he's no longer president. And there's no precedent for to impeaching a president who had resigned. No one knew what to do. Yeah. And by all accounts, Dean said that Nixon bowed out graciously without any drama. He resigned. And then he left with no song and dance. Anyway, so I'm about to piss you off. Oh, God. So in both documentaries, this was mentioned. Again, I'm going back to Woodward and Bernstein, the Washington Post journalists. Woodward recalls how one morning he gets a call from Bernstein, who only said, the son of a bitch pardoned the son of a bitch. Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon, which I will get into his thought process for that. But Gerald Ford gave a presidential pardon to Nixon before he could even be formally indicted on any charges. The son of a bitch pardoned the son of a bitch. I like that. I love Woodward and Bernstein. I want to write that down. That's like all he said. And then he hung up. He didn't even say hello. Woodward was just like, hello, the son of a bitch, pardoned the son of a bitch. And Woodward knew exactly what he meant. Woodward was like, that son of a bitch. Dean in the documentary says like there were multiple reasons why Gerald Ford decided to do this. One reason Dean said is it may have been done not to overshadow Ford's presidency. Because Nixon, it would have taken years for him to be indicted for it to go to trial for the trial, like the trial probably last like almost a year at least, then the sentencing and that would just be what the only thing that was in the news the entire time. But it did set forth a horrible precedent. How do you prosecute a president? How do you convict a president in a court of law? Because it still hasn't happened. In the Dick Cavett documentary, I was watching Dick Cavett, Bernstein and Woodward all were pretty convinced about Gerald Ford's reasoning that he kind of came out with. So Ford said he had counseled with his advisors and Leon Jaworski, who again was the new special prosecutor. And they estimated the indictment, like I said, would take at least a year, the next two to six years, every headline and breaking story would be about Nixon and the trial. Ford said he wanted to move past it focus on the country itself. And there was a precedent to this. In 1915, the Supreme Court ruled that a presidential pardon could be granted to someone who had not yet been convicted or indicted. And Ford's quoting of this Supreme Court case that quote, the granting of a pardon is an imputation of guilt, and the acceptance, the confession of it. So because he pardoned him, he was basically saying, you can't convict him. But he's basically saying, he did. He did. Yeah, he did it. Yes. Okay. And Nixon actually did not want to accept the pardon because of those implications that he did agree to it. Yeah, because he was going to go to prison. Yeah. Okay. Which, honestly, like, and I'm going to go into the sentences here in a minute, probably wouldn't have been for that long, honestly. So John Dean, like we talked about, he was sentenced because he was guilty of a lot of stuff. But during his sentencing, and like, I think maybe while he was in prison, because he did go to prison, because he was guilty of a lot of things. He actually was saved near the DC area. So he could testify in the cases against Ehrlichman, Haldeman, and Mitchell. Oh, yeah. And then my note before I get into the sentences, the Senate Committee's report was released June 27, 1974. So I have got, I don't have every sentence because there were some people that I didn't really talk about a lot that also had charges. I try to stick to because there's a lot of people. Yeah. So it's trying to stick to what we know. So the burglars, James McCord, who, again, was kind of like the leader of the five that were caught. He was originally sentenced to one to five years on charges of burglary, conspiracy and wiretapping. But he served four months as he was quote, as he quote, implicated White House officials in the cover up. And that was a quote from history.com, because he wrote that letter to Judge Sirica. So his sentence was reduced. And he died in 2017 at 93 years old. I only found this about one of the burglars. I couldn't find anything about the other three. But Virgilio Gonzalez, he pled guilty and he spent one year in prison. He died in 2021 at 98 years old. Holy crap. Then the inner circle of guys, E. Howard Hunt was sentenced to 33 months in prison after being convicted of conspiracy, burglary and wiretapping. He died in 2007 at 88 years old. G. Gordon Liddy, who masterminded the whole Watergate break in. He served the longest sentence out of anyone. He served four and a half years in prison after being convicted of conspiracy, burglary and wiretapping. He died in 2021 at 90 years old. Charles Colson, who was another plumber guy and involved in the cover up. He pled guilty to obstruction of justice in the Ellsberg case, which if you don't remember, the Ellsberg case was one of the guys that was involved in the Pentagon Papers, which is another whistleblowing thing about the Vietnam War. Nixon wanted the plumbers to break into Ellsberg psychiatrist's office to like get dirt on him to discredit him. So Charles Colson pled guilty to that case and he spent seven months in prison. Okay. And he died in 2012 at 80 years old. John Ehrlichman served 18 months in prison after being convicted of perjury and conspiracy to obstruct justice. He died in 1999 at 73 years old. John Dean, he served four months after pleading guilty to obstruction of justice. Okay, four months isn't that bad, isn't that bad? It's really not that bad. And John Dean is still alive. He's currently 85 years old. HR Bob Haldeman served 18 months in prison after being convicted of perjury, conspiracy and obstruction of justice. He died in 1993 at 67 years old. John Mitchell served 19 months after being convicted of conspiracy. He died in 1988 at 75 years old. And the I got this all this information from history.com talks about like, where are they now? And it goes into a lot more detail about what they did with their lives after they served their jail sentences and stuff. They all live pretty quiet lives afterwards. I mean, all of them except Liddy only served like a few months or a little over a year, year and a half or so. So they're able to kind of go on living life as normal. Some of them wrote books. Some of them continue to work in politics. Some people just live quiet lives. Nothing was I saw that was really like remarkable or extraordinary. They just kept living. And then Richard Nixon, he never was tried for his actions during Watergate or any of his other shenanigans. He fell ill shortly after his resignation with phlebitis, which is like, um, like an issue with the veins in your legs. And he needed surgery to correct those. In 1976, he was disbarred because of Watergate, because he was a lawyer before he became president. Yeah. And but he did continue political presence, though he did not hold any political offices. So he was still like going other countries, doing political things. And on April 18 1994, Nixon suffered a stroke and eventually passed away four days later on April 22 at the age of 81. He and his wife, Pat are buried on the grounds of the Nixon Library in California. Wow. And that is all I have on Watergate. Like once the smoking gun tape was released, just crumbled. It ended. Everything ended. Like the trials happened. Nixon was pardoned. And that was it. Like nothing else happened after that. You know, no wonder he didn't want to give him give the tapes over. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. He was so guilty. He recorded everything. Anytime he was in a room, his conversation was being recorded. It was all for the memoir, Morgan. I will never, ever, ever be able to get over that in my life. Never, ever. I might actually be able to remember some stuff. If I started recording myself. That's not a bad idea. Honestly, I know. Right. Right. So as far as sources go, I have a lot. I'm not going to go into all of them, because I would add like another 20 minutes. Cool. They're in the show notes. I'm exhausted. Oh, we ran there. Oh, I have like over two pages of notes between both episodes. Shit's crazy. Just I'm flabbergasted at the clusterfuck that happened. Like, just like the mentality that you can do whatever you want. And then that mentality gets you in so much trouble that you instead of just like stopping and coming clean, you just double down on your efforts. Yeah, it's just, it's just crazy, man. And the fact that it happened in the first place, like he was so paranoid. He was so vindictive. He was like, Hey, guys, like, I love your idea about breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters and spying on them. So we could probably blackmail them. Seems logical. That's fine. It's fine. This is fine. Everything's nothing wrong with some political espionage. Yeah, right. I am very thankful that what's his face? The whistleblower? Dean. I'm very glad he only spent like four months in prison. He seemed very reluctant to break the law anyway, and was just trying to keep his job. And then when he realized it was too far, he was in over his head, just... And he did the right thing. He did the right thing. And in the documentaries I watched, which I will talk about the documentaries, because you guys should watch them, let me find. So there's a, the main one I watched, it's on Discovery Plus, which if you don't have Discovery Plus, you should get it because I keep going there to watch documentaries about stuff. But it's called Watergate Blueprint for a Scandal. It's a series by CNN. It was released in 2022. So it's pretty recent, but it has John Dean, it has Alex Butterfield. It's got Woodward and Bernstein, some other people that are still alive that were around and some other like investigative journalists and reporters and people who are just historians talking about the trial. And then like Dean was talking about like, how like, to this day, he still really regrets his role in this. And he was like, if I like, if I had known, I wouldn't have even taken the job. Yeah, like, I would have quit when I had, or if you didn't, he was like, I would have quit when I had that gut feeling that this wasn't right, before any of this happened, and he would have gotten a job somewhere else. Yeah. But again, like, if he hadn't taken the job, and there was someone else involved, you may never know, have known about this may have never come to light, this may have just continued to be a cover up. And the corruption would have been a lot of fester. Well, think about this. Remember, the only reason that they got caught in that building was because one guy turned down the radio. So we didn't know that the cops were coming. Yeah. And that one action can spread and like multiply into other, like, things. So I think it's really interesting that let's just say he had turned the radio up, they had gotten out in time. And they no one would have no one would have known or they never would have caught who was in there. Yeah, because there's tape on a lot of the doors. So they knew something was up. But yeah, they could have somehow and why was there tape on the doors, so they wouldn't lock. The tables on the latch, so they wouldn't lock. Got it. That makes sense. So if they needed to make a quick escape, or if they needed to go to another floor, because they have like a lock picker with them. So he just unlocked all the doors leading like into the stairwell. Yeah, up the floors. So they could like get in and out from between floors pretty quickly. Wow. Oh, that's creepy. Just the thought of like, yeah, being that night guard. And then like that happening, like seeing tape, taking it off coming back 10 minutes later and seeing more tape on the door. Nope, nope, nope, nope. I absolutely would have called the police immediately to gotten the fuck out of there. Hello, police help. Thank you. I need a hero. I would be running out to the beat of that song just don't even matter if anyone's chasing me. I'm not fucking around with that. It's either or a poltergeist. And I don't fuck with either of those. No, no, no. And this is like 233 in the morning. No, that's, that's like late. Nothing's going on, except maybe drunk people walking home. What is a scary thought? What is there in there? Drunk person? Yeah. Oh, God. Let's let's just let them sleep them off. It's fine. Give them a blanket. They'll be all right. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, that's what I got in Watergate. I'm glad that I felt a lot better after doing episode one because I was finally able to like get most of it out of my brain. But then like part two, I was still like, Oh, my God. Well, I can finally like get it all out of my brain. We're about to record another podcast because again, patch recording, batch recording. And I feel like I can speak for both of us when I say that's kind of how we're both feeling about this bonus episode we're about to record. So y'all tune in to Patreon for what's next month March for March, because it's gonna be a doozy. I think this one's airing in March. So this month, we're recording this in the past. So this month bonus episode, and you've already mentioned it earlier. We should just tell them we're doing Princess Diana. Oh, yeah. And you guys should subscribe to Patreon so you can listen to us cover the life and times and death of one of the coolest fucking ladies I've ever like researched. Yes. Oh, God, I'm kind of dreading. I'm kind of dreading it. Honestly. I'm so excited. I'm also like, I'm so excited. But I'm also like, if we if you hear us crying, it's for good damn reason. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So you guys should subscribe to Patreon so you guys can check out our Princess Diana episode and all around our bonus episodes. We've got war animals. We've got inventions. What else have we done? New Orleans, New Orleans, and the Bellwitch Cave, which is also available in our regular feed as a little Yes, you know, bonus for you a little free bonus. But all the other bonus episodes are $5 a month. Very reasonable. We try to make them very high quality for you and you get to hear more of our bullshit, which is great. And yeah, if you can imagine this podcast being more unhinged than it normally is, that's, that's our bonus episodes. Yes, but we still we still get shit done. We still talk about what we need to talk about. We're just a little more loosey goosey. A little more loosey goosey. Just goosen. Have you seen the sweatshirts that say silly goose and they got a goose with a hat on it? I want one so bad. I want one too. We need matching sweaters. That say just goosen. Just goosen. Okay. Yeah. Is that some, is that some podcast merch? I was about to say, if you guys want to buy a sweatshirt that says just goosen, and it'll be like an officially licensed, uh, uh, ill equipped history podcast hoodie or sweatshirt. We'll make it. Let us know. Yeah, we'll make it happen. We'll do it. Yes. Oh my God. We have to do this now. Ah, merch. Okay. Yeah. Let us know. Um, let's get to socials real quick. Yeah. We should probably do that. Um, you can find us on Facebook page and ill equipped history podcast, Instagram at ill equipped history, tick tock history. Emily's much better at making tech talks in the, um, did I say Instagram already? Yes. Oh shit. Uh, Gmail, Gmail, that's the one ill equipped history at gmail.com. Send us your suggestions and comments and or corrections. Just be nice. And we love hearing from you. So even if you just want to be like, hi, cool. Um, yeah, we love it. When you comment on our social media posts, we love the engagement. We love the likes and please leave us reviews on your listening platform of your choice because that just gives us a little warm fuzzies and fives and tell a friend, you know, you don't have to shout us from the rooftops, but if you know somebody who likes to laugh and is kind of a history nerd like we are, yeah. Tell them about us. You'd be cooler if you did. You would be cooler if you did. Okay. Um, so if somebody tells you to give them the tapes, give them the tapes, maybe, especially if you're, you have a court ordered subpoena, do that. Listen to the subpoena. Actually. Yes. Don't ignore subpoenas. That's the, or just to just throwing this out, shot in the dark. Don't break the law. Yeah. Don't, don't, don't break the law. Don't do crimes. Don't do crimes. If you don't want to do the times. Okay. Well, let's all go now. Okay. Bye. Bye.