Word: subpoena
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Republican Baker's independence of the White House. The stage, at any rate, was set for Ervin to meet Nixon, after the President leaves the hospital. Ervin said, however, that the committee would not take the issue to court if the President were to refuse to honor a subpoena for the documents. Rather, he explained, the committee would "simply allow the President to take the adverse inference that would be drawn from his action...
Mitchell opened his 2½ days of testimony forcefully. Appearing under subpoena and against his will, he presented no overall statement and fielded the initial questions of Chief Counsel Samuel Dash briskly and pointedly. As expected, Mitchell admitted sitting through three meetings, the first two as Attorney General, at which the bizarre and illegal political espionage plans of G. Gordon Liddy, then the Nixon re-election committee's chief counsel, were presented. Indignantly, Mitchell said he was "angered" and "aghast" at these plans. They were "a complete horror story" and "beyond the pale." Each time, he said, he clearly...
...helped keep the investigation confined to those functionaries. About the same time, Dean said, the President ordered his staff to apply pressure to the House Banking and Currency Committee to abort its plans to hold Watergate hearings. The hearings were canceled when the committee voted against seeking subpoena power to compel testimony...
...avoid unnecessarily disturbing him "in the performance of his duties," as one court decision put it. But this leads to a counterargument. As Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz observes, "When the President's conduct is the key issue, the President has the least viable excuse for ignoring a subpoena. This is especially true if the conduct in question is unrelated to his Executive duties. With Watergate, Nixon's action might well be construed to be unrelated to performing the duties of the President. Rather, he was acting as a candidate...
Nice as these distinctions may be, the crux of the matter is that if the President does not want to comply with a subpoena, there is precious little that can be done. Underlying the whole problem is the question of whether and how much the law applies to the President at all. In ordinary matters, of course, it does. He must pay his taxes and catch no more than the legal limit of trout (though Eisenhower used to break that one). "If the President shot the Chief Justice," says Harvard Legal Historian Raoul Berger, "he could be tried in ordinary...