Rachel Maddow brilliantly used Watergate tapes on Thursday to show how Donald Trump is likely guilty of the same behavior that sank Richard Nixon.
In the recordings played on Maddow’s show, Nixon was heard discussing a possible pardon of his then Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman as a way to protect himself from criminal liability.
That conservation alone, the MSNBC host pointed out, was obstruction of justice and grounds for impeachment, even though the tape didn’t come out at the time.
Trump appears to be going down the same path with his personal lawyer Michael Cohen.
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Maddow connected the dots between Watergate and Trump’s scandals:
The prosecution of the president’s long-time personal lawyer is going ahead in the southern district of New York. Today the president randomly issued a full pardon to this guy who was convicted by prosecutors in the southern district of New York. The president also randomly today decided to dangle the prospect of a whole bunch of other pardons for people you might have heard of. Maybe Martha Stewart. Maybe that Illinois Democratic governor who tried to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat and said it was golden. Maybe others. All of this is completely outside the established process for presidential pardons. That is a process this president is not using. Psychologically the president has used the pardon power in a way that is not just contemptuous of existing channels by which these things are supposed to be pursued fairly and without favor. Psychologically the president has started using the pardon power in a way that is designed to showcase his ability to pardon people, to showcase his own power to arbitrarily pardon whoever he wants outside of any system. To act on a whim, to do it whenever he feels like it. … The problem is, even with the President of the United States, even with presidential power as broad as the pardon power, you can’t just do it for anybody in any circumstances. You can’t even just offer to do it for anybody in any circumstances. Not in the case of a Bob Haldeman, you couldn’t. At least that’s what they thought during Watergate. And if you couldn’t with Watergate, why would anybody think a president could do this with Michael Cohen?
Trump appears to be going down that same path with his personal lawyer Michael Cohen that Nixon took with his corrupt chief of staff.
As the case against Cohen continues to build – which threatens the president – Trump is signaling that he is willing to offer pardons to whoever he sees as an ally.
This isn’t just a dangerous use of his power to pardon, as Maddow pointed out. It’s also an indication that Trump is terrified of what Cohen will spill to investigators if and when they get him to flip.
Instead of flipping on Trump and incriminating him, today’s presidential pardons indicate to Cohen that he should remain loyal and a pardon will be waiting for him on the other side.
But as Maddow noted on Thursday, the president may have broad power to issue pardons, but using one – or even dangling one – to avoid criminal liability is obstruction of justice.
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