Word: agnew
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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That same afternoon, while the meeting went on in Albert's office, Scott received a phone call from the President, who had some special advice to pass along. Nixon cautioned Scott to warn his Republican Senators against discussing the Agnew case in public. If Agnew was impeached, the Senators would sit as the jurors at his trial. As he talked to Scott, Nixon was sympathetic to Agnew. "How sad the whole thing is," said the President...
Meanwhile, back in Albert's office, the more Agnew talked, the more skeptical the Democrats became. As they saw it, Agnew's arguments did not add up. The Vice President was claiming that a House committee controlled by Democrats would be fairer than a court ? yet until lately he had been arguing that Senator Sam Ervin's Watergate committee had been unfairly hounding the White House. Agnew was attacking the leaks of the prosecutors ? yet the example of Ervin's committee showed that leaks could also spring freely on the Hill...
...Agnew would be much better protected by the strict rules of evidence in a courtroom than by the comparatively lax procedures of a House hearing...
...Democrats began to turn more and more against the Agnew request, Jerry Ford and his fellow Republicans quickly picked up the danger signals. Ford tried to pin things down before they slipped away. Said he: "I think there ought to be a select committee and that we ought to act. He deserves an open, public hearing." But that only made the Democrats more skittish...
Precedents and Practices. After the meeting broke up at about 5:45, Peter Rodino and his staff on the Judiciary Committee set to work, at Albert's direction, to think through the implications of Agnew's request. The men worked late into the night, studying and restudying Agnew's carefully drafted letter and reviewing the House's precedents and practices. To support his request, Agnew had cited an 1827 investigation by a House committee that cleared Vice President John C. Calhoun of charges that he had illegally profited from a Government contract. But there was one key difference between...