Author Robert Reich commented on the progress the United States has made since the Watergate scandal of the days of former President Richard Nixon, and what is happening now under President Donald Trump with the saying of writer Mark Twain, "History does not repeat itself but sometimes it is in harmony."
In his Newsweek magazine article, he noted that in the years leading up to his resignation Nixon had converted the Justice Department and the FBI to his own fiefdom, enlisting his political aides to reward his friends and punish his enemies, and reports of just how much the Justice Department was at risk From public anger over the imposition of the appointment of the first special prosecutor in the Watergate Archibald Cox case.
Before Nixon's chaos ended, his first prosecutors were mired in legal trouble, as John Mitchell spent 19 months in prison, and the third resigned instead of implementing Nixon's demand to fire Cox.
The writer mentioned that Watergate also included in politics a young man named Roger Stone who helped invent lies and conspiracy theories to harm the Democrats. After Nixon's resignation, Watergate's "muddy" mess generated a series of reforms, and regulations were put in place to isolate the FBI and Justice Department from political interference.
He sees that America is now back to what it was 50 years ago, noting that in the 2016 Trump campaign, Stone returned to his "dirty" games by spreading lies and conspiracy theories directed against the Democratic opponent.
The writer mentioned that Trump outperformed Nixon by sacking FBI director James Comey after he was asked to abandon the investigation into the transactions of the former National Security Adviser with Russian officials, and he repeatedly described the Russian investigation as a "defamation campaign" and launched an attack on the investigation of special lawyer Robert Mueller appointed a "obedient" prosecutor, William Barr, to do whatever the president wanted.
Barr also criticized that he outperformed Nixon Prosecutor (John Mitchell) by hiding Mueller's conclusions and defending Trump's call to Ukraine to contaminate former Vice President Joe Biden and continuing to respond to every "whim" of Trump, including his suggestion last week that Stone should get A more moderate ruling than the prosecution recommended, after it was recently convicted of obstructing Congress and seeking to intimidate witnesses.
The author commented on such actions now that they are wrong as they were when Nixon was holding the same opinion, and that if the president can punish enemies and reward friends through the Justice Department there will be no justice because justice requires impartial and equal treatment under the law, bias or inequality in deciding Who should be prosecuted and how to punish it encourages "tyranny".
His article concluded that what happened during the Nixon era is repeated again, just the same as Trump usurping the independence of the Justice Department for his own interests, and unlike Nixon, Trump will not resign because he has a lot of possible people for him, not only a "shameless" prosecutor but also deceiving Republicans in Congress, giving less priority. To justice in order to please this most vengeful and "skeptical" person who has been in the White House since Nixon.