A Familiar Pattern in Washington
The idea of putting a special prosecutor's work under the microscope will sound familiar to anyone following the current administration. The Trump White House has taken a similar interest in Jack Smith, the special counsel who investigated Donald Trump's alleged crimes during the years between his two terms. Smith appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week, where several of the president's allies tried to undermine his credibility.
Who Is Geoff Shepard?
Shepard, a former Nixon aide, has spent years building a case that Watergate was handled unfairly. The Wall Street Journal described him as a kind of godfather to the Watergate revisionists, a loose group of people who argue that the traditional account of the scandal is wrong.
That account is well settled among historians. Nixon resigned after people tied to his reelection campaign were arrested for breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters, and most scholars agree his departure was justified.
The Political Angle
The revisionist view has found supporters in high places. Vice President JD Vance has promoted the notion that Nixon's fall was the work of the so-called deep state, an effort to push a Republican president out of office. Many in the MAGA movement have drawn direct comparisons between the investigations of Nixon and those aimed at Trump.
Vance made the case in a statement over the summer. "If you look at the story of how the deep state took down Richard Nixon, it's not all that different from what the same groups of people—the same institutions—tried to do to Donald Trump in the first Trump administration," he said. "There is a parallel."
Trump's Own Interest in Nixon
The Journal also reported that the president has become more curious about his predecessor lately. People close to him say he has been asking former aides why they chose to resign rather than fight impeachment when Nixon's presidency collapsed.
What Happens Next
For now, the department's position is clear: the presentation was not an investigation. Whether it leads to a formal review of the Watergate prosecutors remains to be seen, but the fact that the meeting happened at all shows how much interest there is in reexamining one of the most studied political scandals in American history.
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