By Rich Kozlovich
On July 5th, 2020 Henry P. Wickham, Jr. published this piece, Watergate and the Corruption of the DC Judiciary, filled with interesting insights from two books, Geoff Shepard's book, The Real Watergate Scandal and the just published book by Garrett Graff, Watergate, a New History.
I've decided to break this piece down into sections. The first dealt with John Dean and this next section deals with the federal judiciary, and Judge Sirica.
He goes on to say:
The handling of the criminal cases against "all the president's men"
was disgraceful as Shepard makes clear. What the president's men did was
criminal, but that shouldn't have been a pretext for denying them fair
trials and due process.
I remember those days and the nation pretty much thought Judge John Sirica was the nation's judicial giant who was going to make sure "justice" was served. When in reality acted in an illegal and unethical way as an investigator and prosecutor, he wasn't a judge, he was a bigger crook than Nixon, who I consider one of the worst Presidents of the 20th century. We'll come back to that.
Sirica used his power as a judge to manipulate the circumstance to be assured of a guilty verdict by making sure the case would be heard in Washington, and the article notes he apparently interfered with jury selection saying:
'"voir dire" of potential
jurors that guaranteed biased juries. He made prejudicial comments in front
of the jury. He sought to bolster John Dean's credibility by giving him a
long prison sentence following his guilty plea. He did so knowing that
Dean would never serve a day, and that he would commute or cancel this
sentence once Dean testified as Sirica wanted.
Apparently Sirica and his team of co-conspirators decided Dean needed credibility so he sentenced him to a lot of prison time, all knowing he would never serve out that time. Which must have been part of the conspiracy he and the prosecutors cooked up during one of the illegal private meetings regarding this case. No defense counsel was ever present at any of them. Meetings where tactics and strategies were discussed and:
Sirica even provided a list of more
persons he wanted the special counsel to indict. So much for due process
and trials overseen by an impartial judge.
Sirica wasn't the lone jurist in this criminal behavior:
In a blatantly unethical meeting, Archibald Cox met with Bazelon with no
defense counsel present. He was able to get Bazelon to agree that all
appeals from any Watergate case coming out of the DC District Court
would be heard "en banc," or before all nine judges. By so agreeing,
Bazelon guaranteed that there would never be a case where there could be
a three-judge panel with a Republican majority. The Democrats would
always have the majority and the prosecutors would win any appeal. Not
surprisingly, no appeals of Watergate defendants were successful.
The author goes on to state:
At
the very least, the actions in these Watergate criminal cases by
Sirica, Bazelon, and the prosecutors were unethical and prejudicial. Had
these meetings come to light at that time, they would have been grounds
for new trials or changes of venue outside the DC District Court. These
prejudicial actions could have led to impeachment of the judges and
even disbarment after an honest accounting of how these cases were
prosecuted. But these meetings were never disclosed when it mattered.
When it comes to the federal judiciary there are a number of things I've stated over and over again.
The federal judiciary is out of control acting in violation of their Constitutional boundaries. Congress has gutlessly allowed them to get away with it, and until SCOTUS overturned Roe v Wade, the Democrats rapturously defended their ability to find unstated "rights" from previously unknown and unrecognized "penumbras and emanations of the Constitution" Epiphanous visions only left wing political hacks masquerading as jurists could see.
Only now is the Congress talking about standing up for their Constitutionally defined rights in overturning that decision with legislation. It's sad when the Congress only discovered it's spine when a "right" that was a "wrong" has been overturned. They've decided it's time to stand up to SCOTUS because the court finally and actually stood up for the Constitution as intended, instead of corrupting it.
Finally, the federal system of justice is filled with corruption, from the prosecutors to the judiciary, both of which are filled with ideological political hacks, not impartial jurists. Political activists who have allowed power to corrupt them and corrupt their decisions. The federal judiciary is in serious need of age and term limits, along with Congress. Including U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan who was thought at times to be a courageous jurist standing against Mueller and his corrupt band, but in the end he overturned every ethical standard for impartiality there is.
We've seen this outrageous corruption, especially in the DC District, in dealing with these January 6 demonstrators, many of whom have been imprisoned illegally without bail or the right to counsel for many months, forcing guilty pleas just to be released or give light sentences. We saw this with General Michael Flynn, all part of an Obama motivated Deep State conspiracy, an American hero that was grievously wronged.
Back to Richard Nixon. I consider Nixon to be one of the four worst Presidents in American history.
First on my list is Teddy Roosevelt, because he gave
personality to the progressive movement. He laid the intellectual,
emotional and psychological groundwork which allowed the second worst President, Woodrow Wilson, called America's first fascist President, to impose his fascist dictatorial policies, using America's unnecessary involvement in
WWI as a justification, or excuse if you like, where he had opponents to his visions imprisoned without charge or trial, many of whom didn't get released until Harding became President. Sound familiar?
Both Roosevelt and Wilson believed the Constitution was an impediment to human progress and subscribed to the concept of L'état, c'est moi . I am the state. Next came Franklin D. Roosevelt, who wanted to pack the court to get his clearly unconstitutional New Deal policies passed, which wasn't a new deal at all, it was in fact a recycling of Wilson's fascist policies with many of the same people from that administration heading up Roosevelt's many agencies, all of whom were thoroughly infested with communists, socialists, Soviet agents and fellow travelers. His administration is considered the most enemy infiltrated government in the history of the world.
Then Nixon. We're still suffering the consequences of the Carter administration, but Nixon created long term negative consequences in more areas than Carter ever could have ever done. Nixon ended the gold standard, he opened China to the world in effect financing their efforts to defeat America. He created the EPA, passed the Endangered Species Act and a host of other laws that have been used as bludgeons by unelected and out of control bureaucrats redefining the laws to their personal liking and passing unwarranted regulations. Which now SCOTUS has decided doesn't really have the Constitutional authority to impose.
So, it's hard to bleed all over ourselves over what happened to Nixon and his band of crooks. But it's easy to bleed all over ourselves over the corrupt way the federal judiciary and corrupt prosecutors conducted themselves then and are conducting themselves now.
The author concludes with this statement:
Among many lessons, Watergate shows us how power can corrupt and how
investigations and legal processes can be abused. This is just what we
saw with the case of Michael Flynn, among many others, post 2016, and as
we now see with the selective and politically motivated prosecutions by
the Biden Justice Department; Attorney General, Merritt Garland being
every bit the light weight, political hack that John Sirica was.
America is in crisis.
