DOJ Considering Whether Prosecutor's Office Committed Misconduct Against Nixon: Report
The Justice Department is reviewing whether the special prosecutor’s office that investigated the Watergate break-in committed misconduct more than 50 years after that scandal drove President Richard Nixon from office.
People familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal the review is preliminary. It is not clear whether it will become a full investigation.
A Justice Department spokeswoman confirmed that a presentation took place and said that presentation “does not constitute an investigation.”
Geoff Shepard, a former Nixon aide who has spent years arguing that Nixon and his associates were treated unfairly, gave a two-hour briefing at Justice Department headquarters. His 78-page slide deck was titled “Watergate As Lawfare.” Shepard’s account, as described by The Wall Street Journal, is that a permanent bureaucracy took Nixon down.
A senior department official invited him last month to make that case to the Office of Professional Responsibility, the internal unit that examines allegations of misconduct by department lawyers.
The office itself was created in the Watergate era as one of several changes meant to wall criminal investigations off from the White House.
The spokeswoman said Shepard was invited “given his expertise and scholarship on Watergate,” and that OPR “remains focused on ensuring that Department attorneys meet the highest professional standards.” She did not say the office had opened a case, named a target, or set a timetable.
Nixon resigned on Aug. 9, 1974, after the House Judiciary Committee approved articles of impeachment and Republican support in the Senate collapsed. He was never tried.
President Gerald Ford pardoned him the next month for any offenses he might have committed against the United States while in office. Several aides were convicted.
The Wall Street Journal placed the Nixon review next to a broader priority of the current department: investigations of people who previously investigated President Donald Trump.
The outlet did not say the Watergate file had been reopened as a criminal matter, or that any living prosecutor had been accused by name in a charging document.
Shepard has published books and a website arguing that Watergate prosecutors withheld evidence, held secret meetings with judges, and treated the case as a political prosecution. Those claims have circulated for years among Nixon defenders and have been rejected by the historians and journalists who built the standard account of the scandal. The Wall Street Journal described him as a revisionist.
A former White House aide was given two hours in front of the office that polices prosecutors. The department’s public line is that the visit was a briefing, not an investigation, but people familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal that the department is nonetheless reviewing whether the special prosecutor’s office committed misconduct.
No court can retry Nixon. Ford’s pardon closed the criminal exposure. Any OPR finding, if one is ever written, would be a historical judgment about lawyers who are long gone, not a case that can be undone.
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