Morgan Episode 47 Watergate

So, before we jump in, I'm going to see previously on, wait a couple seconds, and then I'll jump into introducing the episode. That way, it's already all done and I don't have to go back and do it later. Okay. Previously on Illequive History. Drink your tea. Okay. No, I don't, I still had a giggle in there that I needed to get out. I was trying to suppress it and I couldn't. I know, I, obviously. It's like a sneeze. Okay. Now I can't be serious. Welcome to Illequive History, where, I'm going to try that again. Oh my god. No, it's really not. This is probably one of the worst ones we've had. Oh my god. Sorry. I know, now I've got tears in my eyes because I'm a dummy. Oh, thanks, friend. All right. Welcome to Illequive History, where two best friends talk about this crazy moment in history. Oh, no one asked us to do that. I'm Morgan, here with my best friend, Emily. We are the dynamic duo. 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 coworkers 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. As we've established. It doesn't help that I'm a silly goose. Oh, boy. Well, we do. As you guys know, and I'm sure are ready to get into, we're covering Watergate Part 2 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? Okay, so in this case, you're orange. You're Maureen. No. Yeah, you're Maureen. 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. 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. 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? You're right, dear. Thank you for being here with me. Soon everyone will know the truth behind Watergate. Obviously that was a fictional account of that conversation. We were in the trees, like with the booms. Oh, no! Why did he go there? He was shot in the head. His head exploded. Yeah. No. Clickbait, like nonsense. I'm forever traumatized by seeing that video in high school of him being shot in the head. I know I saw it. I know people had seen it beforehand. I had somehow avoided seeing it until I was in high school. We can trace it back to the Z whatever video. Zoltan? I don't know. The Z. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yes. I have 100% agree. I don't think there's any age where that's a good thing to see. I don't know. Yes. 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. So if you haven't listened to part one, you should go do that. Because that will provide context to this entire situation. You will 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. 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 has allegedly sicked the IRS on his political enemies, which he also has a list of, of like over 800 names of like, these are my enemies. Yeah. No, this was the 70s. So, yeah. Corruption is as timeless as humanity. Next is John Dean III. He was Nixon's counsel. He was one of the orchestrators of the Watergate coverup. And at the end of episode one, we were talking about he, how he was set up with the coverup, with the lying. And he was willing to finally like come clean about everything. He was willing. He was set up to be the fall guy. So, if people were like, oh, this whole thing was a coverup, they'd be like, well, John Dean like orchestrated this entire coverup, which it was not just him. He was involved, but it was not just him, of course. We also have H.R. Haldeman, who is the White House chief of staff. Also one of Nixon's cronies, very involved in the coverup. We have John Ehrlichman, who's the assistant to the president for domestic affairs, another crony, also involved in the coverup. 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 the campaign manager for CREEP, which is the Committee for the Re-election of the President. Don't know why they chose CREEP as an acronym. For real, though. So, I will continue to call that organization by CREEP, even though no one else does, because I 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, like, get information to frame people, like, all kinds of shenanigans. And, actually, Gordon Liddy was a mastermind behind the Watergate break-in. Very, very mustache. Yes. 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 is being pressured by Nixon and Haldeman to fix this mess. And Dean has decided he has had enough. He is going to let all of America know what is really going on. He is 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. That one guy, yeah. And, again, this is bipartisan. 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 Carolinian accent. Yeah. 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 ago. Like, very thick southern North Carolinian accent. It was amazing. But he, so because, like, he has this very thick accent, he talks kind of slow. He portrayed himself as 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. They underestimate you. Mm-hmm. You're simple. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. But there is a reason he was chosen, for sure. 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 Tallmadge 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. Also, he is from, I think, California. I don't think I put down, like, when he was born because I didn't go into his life so much, but I think he was born on the West Coast-ish. Right. But, I mean, there was a senator from Hawaii, so influence. Right. Yeah, I'm pretty sure he grew up in a small town in California. Oh, I need to find my place. Also on the committee, Sam Dash was the chief counsel, and then 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 were like, why aren't you cooperating? What do you have to hide? Obviously you don't have anything to hide. Yes. Yes. And does he learn? No, he does not. Spoiler alert. In April of 1973, Dean, so we're not at the hearings yet. 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 told me about how we needed to raise $1 million to pay off people involved in Watergate? And Dean was like, yeah. And 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. He has to be recording himself. 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. Dean did not sign those papers. He is not an idiot, thankfully. He just left. He was like, I'm not signing these, and he left. 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. 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. Yeah. Yep. So now the new Attorney General is a man named Elliot Richardson. After this, Dean told his lawyer, because he still has his group, Charles Schaefer, the criminal attorney, he's like, okay, the Senate is getting 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. 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, okay, sure, right. And he was like, no, I really do. But I want immunity if I'm going to testify. And they're like, okay, 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 24-7 security for a year and a half. His bodyguards lived in his basement. Yeah, like right before. 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. Like at the end, you're just going to be like, what? So the committee's public hearings began on May 17, 1973. The hearings were televised. And this was basically the only thing on TV at the time. I think this is where the 24-hour news cycle emerged from, because 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 TV. Probably, yeah, it was the 70s. This was a pure media circus. The media was all over this shit. 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 stance is, like whatever your stance is, I know each side has their own stance about the corruption going on in the government. But at the time, this was not, this didn't happen. 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 were 51 televised hearing days. Ehrlichman, McCord, and Haldeman all testified, among others. So they had a lot of, and this was not a criminal proceeding. This was not a trial. This was an 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. 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 that was allowed to do that. And I think they let him do that because he had been reporting on it from the beginning. So he got like special privilege to do that. Conan O'Brien. He's like, yeah. For corruption. He would make jokes the entire time. I mean, I'm sure he would be serious, but Conan's very funny. And Dick Cavett treated this very seriously. There were 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. 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. 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 like sneaky motives in here. Like this is a man that will do the job as best he can. So, 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 Benveniste was the, or Benveniste, 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 this, again, was 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. So again, yeah, 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. So the day of John Dean's testimony came in front of not only the Senate committee, but the entire country on June 25th, 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 of the inside secrets. He was directly involved in this coverup of this illegal unconstitutional action. He broke the law multiple times, covering up everything that happened. And he is in front of not only the Senate hearing committee and all the people in this courtroom, but millions of people around, not just the U S 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, 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, like overwhelming majority. And so people were like, I don't know about this. Like this, some people didn't even care. They're like, ah, it's just the government. You know, it is what it is. Some people are like, no, this needs to be figured out. We can't have corruption in our government. And then some people are 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. And 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 there. And 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 coverup together minimum 35 times. So this was not just like a one-off thing. Like there was continued conversation about this coverup. 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. And they eventually like charges were eventually brought upon him, spoiler alert, because he was very guilty. And they nabbed him with all the clemency things going on with McCord. And that 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. So Nixon released a statement saying that he knew nothing about the break in or the coverup. 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. So you have that. But during his testimony, Dean 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. 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. So Butterfield was asked to testify. And he did. He said Nixon had asked Haldeman to install listening devices throughout the White House. Haldeman pushed that task onto Butterfield, who then like 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? You would never ever in a million years get it. 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. 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. 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, like, 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 told you you never would have gotten it. Nope. It's crazy. He did write a memoir in his older age. Yeah. I'm sure it wasn't quite as glowingly positive. I will say like Nixon was pretty retrospective. Like he's 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. Unique guy. 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? 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, Colson and Haldeman talking about how to like, how to take care of the Dick Cavett show. So again, was airing segments about the Watergate scandal and they're like, what can we do to like fix the situation with the Dick Cavett show? Thank you. So Nixon invoked executive privilege and refused to give the investigative committee the tapes that 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. Yeah. 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. And they're like, come on. And he's like, Nope. Yeah. So because they didn't get the tapes voluntarily, the committee subpoenaed the tapes. 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 Columbia court of appeals. So like, he's like, I'm, I'm trying to stop the subpoena and Sirica. And the court of appeals were 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. And I assume he did, but I don't think so. I don't think he ever, he actually did. I'll not. So we're jumping forward a bit. All this stuff is going on October 10th. The vice president Spiro Agnew resigns due to him pleading no contest to tax evasion. No. 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, you want, you're about to hear the biggest bunch of bullshit I have ever seen. 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 going to 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 is 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. Isn't that the biggest bunch of bullshit you've ever heard? Bless him. I don't even know if Stennis volunteered for the job. Richardson was just like, why don't we can have him do it. Yes. Yes. You're like 95 and deaf. You're perfect for the job. We'll just play in a dark room right here. Knock twice when you're done. Oh my God. So yeah. So Archibald Cox, who again is a special prosecutor, had a press conference about like responding to the Stennis compromise, called it bullshit. In much nicer, polite words than that, but called it 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. it sounds like someone, people died and no one died. So October 20th, 1973 is known as the Saturday Night Massacre. Nixon ordered Richardson, the Attorney General, to fire Archibald Cox. 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. The answers would be there. Well, 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. How did this happen? 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, 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 had FBI agents that were like helping them like collect documents and evidence, 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. The president's after me. I've got to hide the documents. And there's like FBI agents that are like making sure that no one's following them. You boys want some cookies too? They're the FBI grandma. Shit's so crazy. So, 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 the evidence must be strong against him. Yeah. Yeah. It's so wild. So after this, the American public is like, we need to impeach this guy. Impeached it. The only other, I think up to this point, there's only, there'd only been one president who had been impeached. That was 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. Cause I was like, what is impeachment? Anyway. 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, 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 Leon, like he did the shit. And because the public was so pissed off about what he did, Nixon finally like, like caved under the public outcry and released some of the tapes. And then November 17th, 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. Quote, 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. End quote. Yeah. Yeah. So the Senate committee listened to one of the tapes. 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. We got demons in the tapes. Oh my God. So the Watergate investigative committee eventually decided to listen to the presidency as 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 listened to Nixon agreeing to Dean with a plot to obstruct justice and pay off the burglars. It's 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 did 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 community is now given authorization by the house to investigate whether impeachment is warranted. So now I have a little bit of information about what impeachment specifically 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, the official may be removed from office end quote. So basically this is the power held by Congress against federal officials. So what the process is, cause it's kind of the process is we just witnessed a couple of impeachments over the last few years. So the house brings articles or charges of impeachment against the official in question. And the articles of impeachment are similar to like criminal charges. It's 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 U S 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 sound 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. So the impeachment is basically the process of moving for a trial. It's like the impeachment is we are bringing charges against you. And then there was a trial held to determine if they are guilty of the crime. It's basically like, it's a criminal trial that in way higher court and it's federal against federal officials. But like, 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, it could potentially move to like a criminal trial with the attorney general and a jury and stuff like that. So there has been three presidential impeachments, Andrew Johnson, and H. B. M. So there has been three presidential impeachments, Andrew Johnson in 1868, Bill Clinton in 1998, and then Donald Trump in 2019 and 2021, all of which continued to serve in office after being acquitted of all charges by the Senate. You'll note Nixon was not in this list and we will get to that. So the Senate committee hearing, like they're not receiving, 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, these three guys, they are 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. He's still trying. 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 the 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. 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 27th, 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, the Watergate.info website, which is a very helpful source. The second article of impeachment was adopted on July 29th 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. 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 I need to not pause, pause, there was a tape I was meaning to find for you and I forgot about it. So I'm going to try to share my, let me see if this is it. I don't know if it's playing. It's not. Hang on. Okay. I don't know why it's not playing sound. Give me a moment please. Share sound. Let's try that. Okay. 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. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. 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