Book: Bag Man

NoCoPilot wrote:

I heard this weekend and then she confirmed it last night, Rachel Maddow is going on hiatus this Thursday, for at least two months.  She's going to be working on a movie based on her book about Spiro Agnew, and also developing some kind of special multi-part podcast/report thingy.

My favorite local bookstore had a used hardback copy of "Bag Man: The Wild Crimes, Audacious Coverup & Spectacular Downfall of a Brazen Crook in the White House" (2020) by Rachel Maddow. It's my next read.

I knew, as certainly as I knew anything, from the very first that Nixon was as crooked as a dog's hind leg, but I admit his VP just seemed like a particularly nasty little man to me.  I had no idea, until he was indicted and removed from office, that he led a huge bribery scandal in Maryland.

Maddow makes the case that he was one of the earliest proponents of character assassination as political theater, using William Safire and Pat Buchanan to write such classics as "nattering nabobs of negativism" and "hopeless hysterical hypochondriacs of history." She blames him for introducing thinly-veiled anti-Semitic hate speech into modern Republican discourse.

She might be right.  It certainly seems ol' Ted Agnew was a piece of work.

In England, he was best known for "grow a penis".

The case against Agnew was developing in parallel with and at the same time as Watergate.  It took on new urgency when it became clear Nixon's case was heading toward impeachment.

Nobody wanted to see a petty crook like Agnew ascend to the throne when the big crook was removed from office.

Mike Pence, for all his mouth-breathing reptilian nature, was never as nakedly venal as Agnew.

The intermediary that Richard Nixon and Alexander Haig used to try to shut down the investigation of Spiro Agnew was none other than George H.W. Bush.  The tapes and notes that reveal this were under seal for the past 40 years, but recently became public record.

Nobody knew about this when he became head of the CIA.  Nobody knew about this when he became Vice President under Reagan.  Nobody knew about this when he became President himself.

Quote :

George H.W. Bush would be no stranger to scandal in his time: as Ronald Reagan's vice president, he would have a front row seat to the Iran-Contra scandal that nearly crippled that presidency.  Weeks before the end of his own presidency, Bush unexpectedly pardoned five Reagan administration officials who had been convicted of crimes related to Iran-Contra, including perjury and obstruction of justice.  He issued those controversial pardons in consultation with his attorney general at the time,  William Barr.

Nixon was so disaffected with Agnew that he considered giving him a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court to entice him out of the White House.

Didja ever notice, a very good 'tell' for when a politician is corrupt is when they have an antagonistic relationship with the press. When they have a lot to hide. When they view transparency as dangerous to themselves.

Agnew's legal team developed the theory -- untested, and based on a peculiar reading of the Constitution -- that a sitting Vice President (and by extension President) could not be indicted.

When they met absolute resistance to that by Elliott Richardson, they switched to "resignation with dignity" -- allowing Agnew to choose the crimes he would plead to, and giving him a guarantee of "no jail time."  Arguably then Nixon and Agnew are the genesis of the broken imperial presidency which has given us a succession of Republican crooks.

Rachel's book is extremely relevant to the current January 6 panel and Tish James' investigation of TTO. I'm sure she knows this, and that was why she wrote it. Trump's situation isn't really unprecedented -- just the wrong resolution was applied last time... leading to THIS time.

Nixon offered Richardson a deal: he would not resist the prosecution of Agnew if Richardson would make the Watergate investigation go away.

No honor among thieves.

A couple factors the OLC considered, in agreeing that a sitting president could not be indicted, were 1.) the President appoints the top law enforcement official in the country, the Attorney General, and 2.) the President's pardon power is widely considered to be unfettered, and could even conceivably extend to pardoning himself.

Kinda hard to believe adult men thought this made sense.

The investigation into Agnew's history of bribe-taking was to some extent carried out in public.  Agnew was immensely popular with the base of the GOP, and in order to lower his profile and prepare the public for his inevitable indictment, prosecutors leaked key findings to the press.

Agnew vowed revenge.  He promised to have all the leakers fired from their government jobs, and barred from future federal employment.  He attacked his attackers, seeking to flip the narrative.

This is why, today, the various investigations into Trump and his droogs are being carried out in tight security, with no public indications of what's been learned or where it might be leading.  Trump's base might see this as vindication, but in reality what it is is not giving the other side any targets to aim at.

Elliott Richardson wrote:

In light of the serious wrongdoing shown by its evidence, the government might have insisted, if permitted by the Court to do so, on pressing forward with an indictment charging bribery and extortion. To have done this, however, would have likely inflicted upon the Nation serious and permanent scars.  On the basis of these considerations I am satisfied that the public interest is better served by this Court's acceptance of the defendant's plea of nolo contendre to a single count charging income tax evasion.

Bull-fucking-shit.  How could grown sentient men have been so blind to the terrible precedent they were establishing???  "Permanent scars" my ass.