President Donald Trump speaks during a dinner with the leaders of the C5+1Central Asian countries in the East Room of the White House. (REUTERS)
President Donald Trump and his administration have a renewed obsession with changing the official story on Richard Nixon, prompting a fierce rebuke from one of the first members of Congress to back his impeachment over Watergate, saying in a recent appearance on MS NOW, "They can’t be that stupid."
Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump's Justice Department was pursuing a new effort to prove that the Watergate scandal investigation that led to Nixon's infamous resignation was the result of prosecutorial "misconduct." Sources close to the investigation within the administration have reportedly argued that Nixon — who directed operatives to spy on the DNC headquarters at the Watergate complex in 1972 — was forced out of office by a "coup" from the "deep state."
Democrat Elizabeth Holtzman previously served in the House of Representatives from 1973 to 1981, and gained notoriety as one of the first members of Congress to back an impeachment inquiry into Nixon. She also later wrote Article IV of the impeachment charges brought against him later that year. On Sunday, she appeared as a guest on MS NOW, where she told host Jacob Soboroff that this new initiative by the Trump administration is "just beyond stupid" and "makes no sense."
"They can’t be that stupid," Holtzman said when asked what her first reaction to the news had been. "I was the district attorney of Kings County, Brooklyn, New York, so I know a little bit about prosecuting. And I was on the House Judiciary Committee. The one thing I think it's really important to tell the American people is that the impeachment of Richard Nixon, after an extremely arduous and thorough and fair study and investigation, both first by the prosecutors but then by the House Judiciary Committee itself, the vote for his impeachment ultimately was unanimous."
She added later: "For someone to say that somehow Richard Nixon was railroaded, it’s just beyond stupid and beyond absurd, because you’d have to say that everybody was duped — that the Republicans were duped, that the Supreme Court was duped, that everybody was duped except this guy and Trump."
Holtzman also questioned the timing of the decision to press ahead with this initiative, considering that Trump is already staring down a brutal rejection by voters in the upcoming midterms.
“President Trump likes to talk about the worst of the worst,” Holtzman said. “Richard Nixon was — until him — the worst of all of our presidents. And now why would Trump, in the middle of a midterm election, try to align himself with the worst of the worst?”
She also added: "It was a high moment in American history that we held a powerful person, a president, accountable. And Trump wants to take that down and say to the American people, ‘That didn’t really work, that was dishonest.’ But he’s being dishonest about it, and his people are being dishonest about it.”