Like Watergate, but fast-forward
WHEN the President fires a man investigating the White House it is an extraordinary event. The only precedent is Richard Nixon’s firing of the Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox in 1973.
The first article of impeachment against Nixon included the charge he deliberately impeded the FBI’s investigation of his administration.
Now, if Donald Trump fired James Comey to impede the FBI’s investigation of the 2016 election that is obstruction of justice and could be regarded as impeachable.
We are watching what looks like a fast-forward re-run of Watergate.
Nixon was in the fifth year of his presidency when he fired the special prosecutor. We are in only Trump’s fourth month. Nixon was clever, calculating and a skilled politician who kept his thoughts to himself – with the devastating exception of his tapes. They exposed what he really thought.
Trump doesn’t have tapes, he has Twitter. With every tweet he seems to expose the inner workings of his mind. They reveal a man who is impulsive and vindictive.
There is another difference. Nixon faced a Democratic Congress and a Supreme Court intensely interested in the balance of power. Trump has a Republican Congress and a Supreme Court that seems intensely interested in preserving the power of the executive.
We will see whether Trump’s conduct compels the Republicans in Congress to put country over party.