The Justice Department took steps to review the treatment of former President Richard Nixon as it seeks to root out the weaponization of the federal government against conservatives.
The review focuses on the conduct of the special prosecutor’s office established to investigate Nixon and the Watergate scandal, The Wall Street Journal reported. The outlet noted that the review is a preliminary stage and that a full investigation has not yet been launched.
The review included a presentation by former Nixon staffer and author Geoff Shepard before the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR). The Biden administration previously rejected a request from Shepard in 2022 for a similar review, a Justice Department spokesman told The Daily Wire.
“Given his expertise and scholarship on Watergate, he was recently invited to give a presentation to OPR, but that presentation does not constitute an investigation,” the spokesman said. “OPR remains focused on ensuring that Department attorneys meet the highest professional standards.”
The Office of Professional Responsibility was first established in 1975 in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal with the mission of ensuring that Justice Department “attorneys perform their duties in accordance with the high professional standards expected of the nation’s principal law enforcement agency.”
Nixon resigned from office amid an investigation into the break-in of the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. — just two years after he won 49 states in the 1972 election.
Shepard is the author of numerous books about Watergate and confirmed the review on his website. He said that OPR “was tasked with undertaking a fresh look at my allegations of wrongdoing by attorneys with the Watergate Special Prosecution Force.”
Shepard added that he met with two lawyers from OPR on September 21 and “spent two hours” with them discussing official documents he has “uncovered in the past twelve years of research.” He said he expects OPR to submit a report on his findings at some point.
“There is no telling what they might conclude, but at the very least there is a full, fresh DOJ review of what I’ve uncovered,” he said.
The presentation he gave to the officials was called “Watergate as Lawfare.” He posted his outline and the slides used during the presentation on his website.
Shepard argues that Nixon did not receive due process and that the prosecutors engaged in misconduct while pursuing the case. This included secret meetings between prosecutors and judges about the case and the fact that the special prosecutor’s office consisted of partisan actors opposed to Nixon.
Nixon’s popularity has increased in recent years as some conservatives have argued that he was one of the first victims of the deep state that relentlessly pursued President Donald Trump.
“If you look at the story of how the deep state took down Richard Nixon, it’s not all that different from what the same groups of people — the same institutions — tried to do to Donald Trump in the first Trump administration,” Vice President JD Vance said earlier this year. “There is a parallel.”
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