The shadow of Agnew
By Jeffrey Frank
4:15 P.M.
... Spiro Agnew, elected in 1968 as Richard Nixon’s Vice-President, was under investigation for tax evasion, bribery, and various corrupt practices, most dating back to 1967, when Agnew became the governor of Maryland. Agnew’s first reaction was a relatively restrained statement: “I am under investigation for possible violations of the criminal statutes,” he said, adding, “I am innocent of any wrongdoing.”
Then, at a press conference a day later, Agnew called the allegations “damned lies,” as well as “false and scurrilous and malicious”; he certainly wasn’t going to resign. A few days after that, he said, “I will fight, I will fight to prove my innocence,” and over the next sixty-five days he never stopped attacking leaks and fighting what he called “smear publicity” ...
A Trump lawyer .. told Bloomberg .. that Trump’s businesses lie beyond the bounds of Mueller’s mandate, but Mueller’s mandate is Russian collusion, and Trump’s companies have had ties to Russia for at least thirty years. While Trump has made a number of untrue statements on that subject .. Glenn Kessler, recounting that history, reminded readers that, in 2008, Donald Trump, Jr., said that “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets” ...
On September 29, 1973, Agnew flew to Los Angeles, where he played golf with Frank Sinatra, and gave a speech to a cheering crowd—a sort of West Virginia moment. He didn’t use the term “witch hunt” but he complained about “malicious leaks” and “perjured” testimony, and said that the Justice Department was trying to frame him. “I will not resign if indicted,” he said—twice—to loud applause. Eleven days later, Agnew pleaded no contest to tax evasion, saying that he did so to avoid a “long, divisive, and debilitating struggle in the Congress and the courts.” In a plea deal worked out with the Attorney General, Elliot Richardson, Agnew resigned the Vice-Presidency; in return, all other charges were dropped, he was fined ten thousand dollars, he was given three years of probation—and he avoided jail. As for a successor, Nixon chose the popular House Minority Leader, Gerald Ford, of Michigan, described by the Journal as “pleasant but plodding party wheelhorse who often speaks and apparently thinks in clichés”—in other words, not anyone’s first choice as a potential President. The Watergate scandal, meanwhile, continued for ten more months, ending with Nixon’s resignation, under threat of impeachment, on August 9, 1974—forty-three years ago this week—a narrative that’s become the template for removing Presidents who behave badly. In the age of Trump, the Agnew case, with its history of lies, greed, kickbacks, and the self-regard of its central actor, might seem the better predictor of what could come next. But then, as now, the constitutional question of whether a President, or a Vice-President, can be indicted was asked; it has never been answered.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/trump-falls-under-the-shadow-of-spiro-agnew
