Post by Warrigal on Apr 21, 2018 7:36:15 GMT -5
The DNC's lawsuit against Trump, Russia and Wikileaks is making the parallels with Watergate hard to ignore
We may be short of reaching Watergate's 'size and scale', because we don’t yet have anything to match the so-called ‘Saturday Night Massacre’ moment of 1973. But it could be coming soon.
Why risk complicating the life of special counsel Robert Mueller just when he may be getting to the endgame of his own investigation into all these allegations? Where did such a crazy idea come from anyway?
Watergate, that’s where. In fact, scholars of that specially dark time, which eventually forced Richard Nixon from office, were asking a different question. How come the Democratic National Committee (DNC), which filed the suit against the Trump campaign, Wikileaks and the Russian Federation in a New York federal court on Friday, had taken so long about it?
The Steele dossier that Trump denounced keeps turning out to be true
They were a lot quicker off the mark last time. It was 17 June 1972 when burglars in business suits were arrested in the offices of the DNC at the Watergate complex in Washington DC, as they attempted to place bugging devices and photograph documents in hopes of gathering damaging information on Nixon’s opponents. Just four days later the DNC swung into legal attack mode.
On 21 June, then DNC Chairman, Lawrence O’Brien, announced a $1 million lawsuit against the Committee for the Re-Election of the President. It would be a full two years before Nixon boarded Marine One for the last time, yet O’Brien even then spoke of “a developing clear line to the White House,” from the arrest of the five burglars. “This is not partisan, it’s patriotic … It is our obligation to the American people,” he declared. Nixon's campaign chairman, John Mitchell, was, naturally, unimpressed and labelled the suit "another example of sheer demagoguery”.
This time the DNC is merely peddling “a left-wing conspiracy theory,” or so declared Roger Stone, a Trump associate and one of those named as defendants along with a now familiar cast of characters. They include former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner. “NO proof or evidence,” Stone wrote in a defiant email to Reuters.
We may be short of reaching Watergate's 'size and scale', because we don’t yet have anything to match the so-called ‘Saturday Night Massacre’ moment of 1973. But it could be coming soon.
Why risk complicating the life of special counsel Robert Mueller just when he may be getting to the endgame of his own investigation into all these allegations? Where did such a crazy idea come from anyway?
Watergate, that’s where. In fact, scholars of that specially dark time, which eventually forced Richard Nixon from office, were asking a different question. How come the Democratic National Committee (DNC), which filed the suit against the Trump campaign, Wikileaks and the Russian Federation in a New York federal court on Friday, had taken so long about it?
The Steele dossier that Trump denounced keeps turning out to be true
They were a lot quicker off the mark last time. It was 17 June 1972 when burglars in business suits were arrested in the offices of the DNC at the Watergate complex in Washington DC, as they attempted to place bugging devices and photograph documents in hopes of gathering damaging information on Nixon’s opponents. Just four days later the DNC swung into legal attack mode.
On 21 June, then DNC Chairman, Lawrence O’Brien, announced a $1 million lawsuit against the Committee for the Re-Election of the President. It would be a full two years before Nixon boarded Marine One for the last time, yet O’Brien even then spoke of “a developing clear line to the White House,” from the arrest of the five burglars. “This is not partisan, it’s patriotic … It is our obligation to the American people,” he declared. Nixon's campaign chairman, John Mitchell, was, naturally, unimpressed and labelled the suit "another example of sheer demagoguery”.
This time the DNC is merely peddling “a left-wing conspiracy theory,” or so declared Roger Stone, a Trump associate and one of those named as defendants along with a now familiar cast of characters. They include former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner. “NO proof or evidence,” Stone wrote in a defiant email to Reuters.
More here: www.independent.co.uk/voices/donald-trump-democrats-lawsuit-sue-russia-wikileaks-republicans-dnc-watergate-a8315111.html
Rachel Maddow has jumped onto this comparison and explains what it is designed to do.
