Watergate
A political scandal after the illegal behavior of the United States government during the 1972 presidential election was exposed. On June 17, 1972, five people, led by J.M. McChord, a member of the R.M. Nixon campaign team, were arrested while sneaking into the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate Building in Washington to install a bug. For the first few months, under the cover of the masterminds, the defendants denied that anyone else was involved. In June 165438 of the same year, Nixon was re-elected in an overwhelming majority. On March 23, 1973, Washington District Court Judge J. Sirica, who was presiding over the case, released a letter from McCord who was threatened with severe punishment. McCord said he and the other defendants remained silent under political pressure to plead guilty. In fact, both the White House and the President's Reelection Committee were involved in Watergate. On April 30, Nixon was forced to announce that E. Richardson would succeed the former Attorney General and agreed that he should appoint A. Cox as a special prosecutor to handle the case at the request of the Senate. During this period, the Senate with a Democratic majority established the Watergate Committee on February 7, headed by Democrat S. Irving. Starting on May 17, the committee held a series of hearings, revealing many illegal acts since the Nixon administration came to power. Before July 2016, White House staff revealed that all conversations in the Oval Office were recorded. On July 23, the Irving Committee and Cox asked Nixon to hand over nine tapes, but Nixon refused, citing "executive privilege." At Cox's insistence, Judge Sirica and the District Court of Appeal separately ordered Nixon to comply. June 5438 In October, Nixon asked Richardson to fire Cox. Richardson angrily resigned. Later, although Cox was removed from office, it immediately aroused national anger, and many people asked Congress to consider impeaching the president. As the case develops, calls for the president's resignation and impeachment have grown louder.
At the beginning of 1974, Nixon refused to cooperate after handing over several tapes handed over by the new special prosecutor L. Jaworski. Starting in May 2015, the House Judiciary Committee also obtained various White House documents and 105 tapes, but Nixon still resisted. On July 24, the Federal Supreme Court announced that it supported Javorski's request to retrieve 64 tapes. One of them records a conversation between the President and White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman on June 23, 1972, confirming that Nixon had instructed the latter to have the CIA prevent the FBI from participating in the Watergate investigation. This shows that Nixon not only participated in the cover-up, but also abused his power and obstructed the work of justice, and can be impeached. On July 30, the House Judiciary Committee submitted three articles of impeachment to the House of Representatives based on the evidence collected. Articles 1 and 2 accused Nixon of obstructing justice and abusing his power, and received support from both parties.