Watergate(s) on Steroids

by Don Surber Aug 09, 2024

50 years and one day ago, Richard Nixon resigned as president less than two years after being the first man to sweep 49 of the 50 states in his landslide to re-election. Washington forced out of office a man who had received more than 60% of the votes.

He left to the cries of no man is above the law, and the coverup is worse than the crime. Both are untrue in the World of DC where a government too big and too powerful has been a magnet for crooks and traitors.

The crime in Watergate was the press, the deep state and Judge Sirica conspired to make a third-rate burglary a presidential scandal. I wrote about it on Monday, but the truth seldom makes it to the mainstream.

50 years after Nixon’s resignation, Democrats have learned what they can get away with Watergate on Steroids over and over again. Under Obama, they spun their powers of the deep state into overdrive. As Chuck Schumer bragged days before Trump took office, “Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”

The deep state and Democrats already were getting back at him.

Spying. NYT greeted Trump’s inauguration in 2017 with a front-page story headlined, “Wiretapped data used in inquiry of Trump aides.” That was false. His phone was not tapped. His entire penthouse was as the FBI listened in on every conversation he had, not just his phones. Bernstein defended this.

The FBI used the FISA law, designed to spy on terrorists, to gain permission to stake Trump out. Incredibly, the court turned the request down — making it only the 12th request out of nearly 34,000 requests to be denied.

Days later, Russian pop star, Emin Agalarov, who just happens to be a son of Aras Agalarov, a Russian oligarch, just happened to arrange a meeting with Trump officials at Trump Tower, which led to new FISA requests that were approved.

It was a setup, plain and simple.

Fake scandal. To rationalize the spying and election interference by intelligence agencies, Democrats hired Fusion GPS to concoct the Russian Hoax. This was illegal and six years after the election, the bureaucracy finally fined Hillary. She was not charged in New York state, where she lives, with 34 felony counts.

Five years after breaking the story, CNN admitted in its story on the fine, “The dossier was compiled by retired British spy Christopher Steele. It contained unverified and salacious allegations about Donald Trump, including claims that his campaign colluded with the Kremlin to win the 2016 election. Trump’s campaign had numerous contacts with Russian agents, and embraced Russian help, but no one was ever formally accused of conspiring with Russia.”

Insurrection. The Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post bragged early in 2017, “Resistance from within: Federal workers push back against Trump.”

The story said, “Less than two weeks into Trump’s administration, federal workers are in regular consultation with recently departed Obama-era political appointees about what they can do to push back against the new president’s initiatives. Some federal employees have set up social media accounts to anonymously leak word of changes that Trump appointees are trying to make.”

This was immoral, unprecedented and unconstitutional. The press acted like not graciously accepting defeat was a good thing. 

FBI harassment. Agents had a friendly conversation with General Michael Flynn and later charged him with felony lying to the FBI. I don’t see how this law passes constitutional muster and the Fifth Amendment.

The FBI then leaned on Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who recused himself from Russiagate, allowing the appointment of an unconstitutional special counsel named Bob Mueller who (dramatic pause) was the FBI director (another dramatic pause) on 9/11.

Apparently the intelligence community has six ways till Sunday to get back at its critics but cannot stop 19 hijackers. Why Bush kept Mueller and CIA Director George J. Tenet on after the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans is beyond me.

I will note that the first thing the government did in the wake of 9/11 was to create a new bureaucracy. Never let a serious crisis go to waste.

Jailing opponents. The FBI investigated dozens of Trump supporters. The Department of Justice bragged, “The guilty plea former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort entered Friday marks a milestone in the Department of Justice’s efforts to enforce the Foreign Agents Registration Act more vigorously.”

The efforts ended when it came to charging Tony Podesta, the brother of Hillary’s campaign chairman.

Raids. CNN bragged, “The rare, dramatic video from CNN Friday capturing the early morning FBI raid of longtime Donald Trump confidante Roger Stone’s Florida home was the product of good instincts, some key clues, more than a year of observing comings at the DC federal courthouse and the special counsel’s office — and a little luck on the timing.”

Bullshit. The FBI tipped them off about SWAT-ing him in the wee hours of the morning.

Ignoring Democrat lawbreaking. In July 2016, FBI Director Jimmy Comey announced he had enough evidence to indict Hillary for national security violations — but he refused to. While no man us above the law, Hillary is a woman.

But wait. There’s more. The FBI verified the veracity of Hunter’s laptop which provided a mother lode of evidence in November 2019 — and never pursued those multiple felonies.

Censorship. The federal government paid Twitter to censor Trump and his supporters. Twitter blocked the New York Post from publicizing its true reports on Hunter’s laptop, while allowing other media outlets to lie about it.

Eventually, Twitter banned President Trump permanently.

Jailing protesters. AP reported, “More than 1,230 people have been charged with federal crimes in the [January 6] riot, ranging from misdemeanor offenses like trespassing to felonies like assaulting police officers and seditious conspiracy. Roughly 730 people have pleaded guilty to charges, while another roughly 170 have been convicted of at least one charge at a trial decided by a judge or a jury, according to an Associated Press database.”

That’s more than twice the number of people who were at the Capitol, where protesters previously faced no more than an arrest and a dismissal of the case.

Lawfare. Democrats pursued four criminal prosecutions and a couple of civil lawsuits in an effort to bankrupt Donald Trump. This backfired as this injustice has become a rallying point for him.

Many of his supporters face prosecution. This bankrupted Rudy Giuliani. At the same time, Democrats have tried to disbar Trump’s lawyers.

Donald Trump has bent but he has not been broken.

There was only one tool left for Democrats.

Assassination. The Secret Service did nothing to stop a sniper in Butler, Pennsylvania, from coming within an inch of killing President Trump. Social media censored the photo of Trump rising from the attack with his fist in the air and yelling, “Fight, fight, fight.”

The nomination of Looney Tunes Tim Walz, the mindless and gutless governor of Minnesota for vice president, seems to be a white flag.

As Sean Trende noted, “If Minnesota — a state the GOP has not won in a presidential election since 1972 — is in play, the election is over. Might he have crossover appeal in Wisconsin? Maybe some, but the track record of vice-presidential picks trying to deliver states beyond where they reside is not terribly impressive. Frankly, Walz’s gubernatorial campaigns in Minnesota weren’t particularly strong either, and by 2022 his support had mostly dried up outside of urban areas (which in Minnesota is enough to win).”

Or maybe putting an out-and-out commie on the ticket is a sign that the fix is in.

Nixon resigned because he had the decency not to put the nation through an impeachment.

Democrats and their deep state have no such decency.