FACDL IS CATCHING UP & SLAMS RENIER DIAZ DE LA PORTILLA

 As the late great  Judge Ed Cowart would say about the FACDL  "Bless their soul."

They are catching up and, bless their soul, want to be relevant. 

This weekend they issued two very relevant press releases. First, noting the shocking crimes the President is accused of, including the Watergate break-in, they called on President Nixon to resign. Well done. A bit late- but well done. 

The FACDL also, late to the party, weighed in on everyone's favourite totalitarian judicial candidate Renier Diaz  De La I DON'T BELIEVE IN THE PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE Portilla. 

As Bruce Willis said in Die Hard: "Welcome to the party, Pal." 

Better late than never. We mean, Nixon has to go, right?

Statement by the FACDL-Miami Board of Directors by Anonymous PbHV4H on Scribd

 

QUERRY: Let's assume this two-bit politico wins. Where does Judge Sayfie stick him? Bond hearings? Nope- everyone is guilty and won't get a bond. And speaking of bond hearings, boy is there a bruhaha brewing between our chief judge and our SAO over revamping bond hearings. Talk about your NASTY emails....coming real soon on the blog. Back to Renier I won't follow the law and will do anything to win, so where does he go? Civil won't take him- the big firms won't let someone with his legal provenance in their milieu. DV? Criminal. Can't have that. Seems like the stepping stone to the US Supreme Court is the only place- Hialeah Branch Civil!  (And our apologies to the robed readers laboring away in Hialeah civil- you're doing the lord's work and we do not mean to demean you. But NS has to dump his butt somewhere. 

We are sure NS would send him to the Crimea branch court if she could, but with the whole Putin/Ukraine thing, that's iffy at best.)

PRESIDENT PARDONED FOR CRIMES!

 President Ford pardoned President Nixon September 8, 1974. It may have cost him the election in 1976, but historians judge his action as brave and presidential. You know what would be the worst punishment to Trump? If President Biden pardoned Trump. That would be the ultimate FU. 

In any event, you probably were expecting a Constitutional Calendar from your favourite circuit court judge on the Nixon pardon, and he did not disappoint: 

Article II sec. 2 of the Constitution vests in the president the power to grant “reprieves and pardons” (but not dispensations).  The most famous, or infamous, exercise of the presidential pardon power in modern times occurred on September 8, 1974:

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION
Richard Nixon became the thirty-seventh President of the United States on January 20, 1969 and was reelected in 1972 for a second term by the electors of forty-nine of the fifty states. His term in office continued until his resignation on August 9, 1974.

Pursuant to resolutions of the House of Representatives, its Committee on the Judiciary conducted an inquiry and investigation on the impeachment of the President extending over more than eight months. The hearings of the Committee and its deliberations, which received wide national publicity over television, radio, and in printed media, resulted in votes adverse to Richard Nixon on recommended Articles of Impeachment.

As a result of certain acts or omissions occurring before his resignation from the Office of President, Richard Nixon has become liable to possible indictment and trial for offenses against the United States. Whether or not he shall be so prosecuted depends on findings of the appropriate grand jury and on the discretion of the authorized prosecutor. Should an indictment ensue, the accused shall then be entitled to a fair trial by an impartial jury, as guaranteed to every individual by the Constitution.

It is believed that a trial of Richard Nixon, if it became necessary, could not fairly begin until a year or more has elapsed. In the meantime, the tranquility to which this nation has been restored by the events of recent weeks could be irreparably lost by the prospects of bringing to trial a former President of the United States. The prospects of such trial will cause prolonged and divisive debate over the propriety of exposing to further punishment and degradation a man who has already paid the unprecedented penalty of relinquishing the highest elective office of the United States.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GERALD R. FORD, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, pursuant to the pardon power conferred upon me by Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, have granted and by these presents do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9, 1974.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this eighth day of September, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and seventy-four, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and ninety-ninth.

President Ford was bitterly criticized for his pardon of Nixon, some critics going so far as to suggest that Nixon and Ford had made a deal pursuant to which Ford would become vice-president upon Spiro Agnew’s resignation, in exchange for which he would guarantee Nixon a pardon if and when Nixon was forced from office.  After Ford left the White House in 1977, he privately justified his pardon of Nixon by carrying in his wallet a portion of the text of Burdick v. United States, 236 U.S. 79, a 1915 U.S. Supreme Court decision that suggests that a pardon carries an imputation of guilt and that acceptance of a pardon carries a confession of guilt. 

CONSTITUTIONAL CALENDAR WATERGATE EDITION

As August approaches, a Constitutonal Historian's attention turns to President Richard Milhous Nixon, Watergate, the senate hearings, impeachment, and ultimately the "R" word- resignation. 

With those thoughts in mind, we present the ever popular Constitutional Calendar by that noted Constitutional Historian the right and honourable Judge M Hirsch. 

In mid-July, 1973, Senate Watergate-committee staffers found evidence that President Nixon had been taping conversations in the oval office. Committee lawyers Scott Armstrong and Don Sanders confirmed the discovery during their secret pre-testimony interview on Friday, July 13, with a very unwilling Alexander Butterfield, former deputy assistant to the president. Armstrong and Sanders handed Butterfield a transcript. Looking at the document, Butterfield understood immediately that they knew this was the transcript of a conversation that had been taped. “I thought to myself that this had to come from the tapes – the very thing I’m worrying so much about. So, I just hemmed and hawed,” Butterfield later remembered. Sanders then asked Butterfield directly if there were any listening devices in the Oval Office. Butterfield did not feel comfortable lying to them and feared ending up in jail. “I’m sorry you asked that question,” he told them. “Yes, there was, and that’s where this document had to come from.” On July 16, Butterfield repeated his testimony before the Senate Watergate Committee.

The committee chief legal counsel Samuel Dash – my first criminal procedure professor at Georgetown Law School, whose autographed photo still hangs in my chambers – announced to the press: “We now know there are records of those meetings. I don’t have to draw the line underneath and add it up.”

On July 24, 1974, the Supreme Court ruled 8–0 (Justice William Rehnquist recused himself) that the president had to turn over the tapes. Despite an intense investigation that had lasted for over a year, it was the ability of members of Congress to hear Nixon asking the CIA to stop the FBI investigation that had an impact unlike anything else. It had not actually been clear before then that the constitutional system would work. Fifteen days later, Nixon left office.

THE WAR ON CANCER

This is a history lesson for the legions of millennial blog readers who, when asked about the Nixon presidency, postulate that it occurred sometime just before or after Abe Lincoln was president.*
And digressing for a moment about our best President, Monday March 4 is the anniversary of Lincoln's first inauguration in 1861, and we are certain we can all expect a monograph from the estimable Judge Milton Hirsch on the subject. 

Back to the war on cancer. In the NY Times today, John Dean, counselor for President Nixon writes  about his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee that brought down President Nixon. Dean writes about the similarities between his situation and Michael Cohen's and what Cohen can expect as the years go by. 

Dean famously brought down Nixon when he testified that he had told Nixon that there was a cancer growing on the presidency.  Like Cohen producing the check Trump wrote as president to reimburse 
him for payments to a woman to remain silent about a sleazy assignation, Dean's testimony was backed up by the tape of the conversation which we include for your listening edification. 




But that was not the final straw. The final straw for Nixon came on August 7, 1974  when he was visited by a coterie of Republican leaders - Senator Barry Goldwater, (R-Ariz), Senator Minority Leader Hugh Scott (R-PA) and House Minority leader John Rhodes (R-Ariz) - who told the embattled President  that he had lost support of his party and the country. 

It was the integrity of those men and their placing country over politics that arguably saved our nation and in a Rumpolian sense won the war on cancer. 

Where do we find these men and women today? Senator McCain had the right stuff, but he has passed on. We though Senator Lindsey Graham had the right stuff, but he has become a whimpering sycophant to the power of the presidency. 

You know who has it? You know who needs to step forward and lead? None other than the junior Senator from Utah, Mitt Romney. 
Romney is underrated as a man and politician. He was roundly mocked for stating in a debate with President Obama that Russia was presented our greatest threat on the international front. Romney was right; just ask the Clintons. 
Romney blasted candidate Trump as a liar and a charlatan and he was right again. He has the right stuff and the time is now for him to lead. 

Dean worked for a brilliant politician who was a flawed man who saw enemies and conspiracies everywhere. 
Cohen worked for a flawed man who has no brilliance who believes in nothing other than acquiring and holding power and will promote false conspiracies ("the media is the enemy of the people") to serve his own purposes. 

Nixon opened relations with China and successfully defused a potential third Israeli-Arab war during his Watergate crisis. 
Trump cozied up to a murderous dictator and pandered to Russia and China while alienating our closest allies in England,  France, and Germany.

Our system worked in 1974 because we had politicians of courage and integrity. 
We, and the world are watching to see if our system of government which we champion as the best, can work again. 

The whole world is watching our shame. 

* There was a 107 years between Lincoln's presidency and Nixon's presidency.

ONLY NIXON COULD GO TO CHINA

"The problem with vice is not so much the sin, as the character of the people one meets to practice it."
Len Garment, counselor to President Nixon, quoting Oscar Wilde on Nixon's involvement with the coverup of the Watergate Burglars.

Rumpole has read "Richard Nixon The Life" by John A Farrell and pronounces it a very satisfactory, if a bit too short biography of the 37th POTUS. Farrell's distinction is that this is the first major biography after the successful lawsuit in 2007 to release over 37,000 hours of white house tapes. The writing is crisp and at times superb. For example: "It was that spring, with little note, that Truman dismissed Franklin Roosevelt's qualms about aligning the US on the wrong side of an anti-colonial war of independence and approved the first multimillion dollar aid package for French Indochina." 
Thusly, the spectre of Vietnam, which came to define Nixon, was subtly introduced. 
And...
"Nixon moved to New York in June 1963 to lay him down and bleed awhile" in discussing Nixon's loss of the 1962 race for governor in California. 

And ... in discussing 1968...
"As the world went mad around him, Nixon had shown touch and timing in his campaign to claim the Republican nomination." 

All of this relevant to those of us who believe (unlike the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue)  that those who forget the lessons of history are condemned to repeat them.

And while we remember but do not honor the birth of the greatest war criminal of the 20th century on April 20th- a man who under the banner of German nationalism led his nation to ruin and a world to war, we also remember on April 22, the death of Richard Milhous Nixon- who in 1994 ended a remarkable life with a career filled with Shakespearean or Grecian like tragedies, triumphs, defeats, and ultimately a comeback of sorts and some peace. 

The 37th POTUS was a remarkable and complex man whose life is well worth much study. 

From Occupied America,  where "Only Nixon could go to China", and a deposed president once, incredibly,  told David Frost "If the President does it, it means that it is not illlegal", Fight The Power.