Opinion | James M. Banner Jr.: From Nixon to Trump, the historical arc of presidential misconduct is deeply troubling. - NBCNewsTHINK
, urged them on and joined in efforts to obstruct justice by covering up their illegal acts. For that, Nixon was the first president to be named an un-indicted co-conspirator in a legal filing. The Watergate break-in and associated scandals — which included warrantless wiretapping, break-ins, surreptitious surveillance and secret plotting among White House staff members — ultimately cost Nixon his presidency.
But the revelation of the Nixon administration’s wrongdoings and the punishments of those involved failed to deter others. Under Reagan in the 1980s, a second serious departure in the modern annals of presidential behavior emerged. Members of Reagan’s administration devised a secret operation — the— in defiance of Congress’s explicit ban against transferring funds authorized for one purpose to an unauthorized one.
The revelation of the Nixon administration’s wrongdoings and the punishments of those involved failed to deter others. Yet even these criminal misdeeds have been surpassed today in two respects. First, plotting to skirt public policy and engage in foreign policy outside official State Department and intelligence channels has now involved private individuals as well as plotters within the White House. Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani,without congressional confirmation, is their embodiment.
Second, and more deeply troubling, our current crisis unites the wrongdoing of the Nixon and Reagan administrations as they have never been combined before.
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