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Richard Nixon was the only president in U.S. history to resign from office doing so on Aug. 9, 1974, amid the Watergate scandal but he was not, as is often stated, impeached by the House of Representatives.

The issue has become current again withgrowing comparisons being made between Nixons obstruction of justice in the Watergate scandal and President Trumps efforts to get law enforcement authorities to end an FBI probe into whether members of his campaign had colluded withRussia during the 2016 election.

Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton said in a commencement speech at Wellesley College last week that Nixon was impeached. Sen. Tim Kaine (Va.), her running mate inthe presidential campaign, said the same thing during a September 2016 interview with CBSs This Morning show. The Telegraph, a British newspaper, had this headline on a May 20, 2017, report: What was Watergate and why was Nixon impeached? The story says in part:

In July [1974] the Supreme Court ordered Nixon to turn over the remaining tapes, which he again tried to resist.

The House of Representatives lost patience, voting to impeach Nixon for obstruction of justice, abuse of power, criminal cover-up and several violations of the Constitution.

Clinton who served on the staff of the House Judiciary Committee during its investigation of Nixon said this in her recent Wellesley speech, referring to her graduation from the same school in 1969:

We didnt trust government, authority figures or really anyone over 30, in large part thanks to years of heavy casualties and dishonest official statements about Vietnam, and deep differences over civil rights and poverty here at home. We were asking urgent questions about whether women, people of color, religious minorities, immigrants, would ever be treated with dignity and respect.

And, by the way, we were furious about the past presidential election of a man [Nixon] whose presidency would eventually end in disgrace with his impeachment for obstruction of justice after firing the person running the investigation into him at the Department of Justice.

No, the House did not impeach Nixon. The House Judiciary Committee, in July 1974, approved three articles of impeachment (see below) and sent them to the full House. But Nixon resigned before there was a trial in the House.

The two presidents who were impeached by the House were Clintons husband, Bill Clinton, in 1998, and Andrew Johnson in 1868 though both were acquitted by the Senate.

Impeachment is the job of the full House, not a committee. The impeachment process against Nixon did lead to his resignation, but he wasnt formally impeached. Heres how Joy Hakim, author of the American history series A History of US, explained it in the last volume, All the People:

In the House of Representatives, articles of impeachment were prepared. President Nixon was charged with lying, obstructing justice, and using the Internal Revenue Service (the tax office) and other government agencies illegally. Nixon was going to be impeached. After that, he would face a trial in the Senate for high crimes and misdemeanors. He chose to leave the presidency instead. He resigned as president of the United States (the only man ever to do so).

In England, an editor of the London Spectator wrote that the U.S. presidency had gone from George Washington, who could not tell a lie, to Richard Nixon, who could not tell the truth.

Here are the three articles of impeachment approved by the House Judiciary Committee in July 1974:

Article 1

RESOLVED, That Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States, is impeached for high crimes and misdemeanours, and that the following articles of impeachment to be exhibited to the Senate:

ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT EXHIBITED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IN THE NAME OF ITSELF AND OF ALL OF THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AGAINST RICHARD M. NIXON, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, IN MAINTENANCE AND SUPPORT OF ITS IMPEACHMENT AGAINST HIM FOR HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANOURS.

Article 1

In his conduct of the office of President of the United States, Richard M. Nixon, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has prevented, obstructed, and impeded the administration of justice, in that:

On June 17, 1972, and prior thereto, agents of the Committee for the Re-election of the President committed unlawful entry of the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in Washington, District of Columbia, for the purpose of securing political intelligence. Subsequent thereto, Richard M. Nixon, using the powers of his high office, engaged personally and through his close subordinates and agents, in a course of conduct or plan designed to delay, impede, and obstruct the investigation of such illegal entry; to cover up, conceal and protect those responsible; and to conceal the existence and scope of other unlawful covert activities.

The means used to implement this course of conduct or plan included one or more of the following:

In all of this, Richard M. Nixon has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.

Wherefore Richard M. Nixon, by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office.

Article 2

Using the powers of the office of President of the United States, Richard M. Nixon, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in disregard of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has repeatedly engaged in conduct violating the constitutional rights of citizens, impairing the due and proper administration of justice and the conduct of lawful inquiries, or contravening the laws governing agencies of the executive branch and the purposed of these agencies.

This conduct has included one or more of the following:

In all of this, Richard M. Nixon has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.

Wherefore Richard M. Nixon, by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office.

Article 3

In his conduct of the office of President of the United States, Richard M. Nixon, contrary to his oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has failed without lawful cause or excuse to produce papers and things as directed by duly authorized subpoenas issued by the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives on April 11, 1974, May 15, 1974, May 30, 1974, and June 24, 1974, and willfully disobeyed such subpoenas. The subpoenaed papers and things were deemed necessary by the Committee in order to resolve by direct evidence fundamental, factual questions relating to Presidential direction, knowledge or approval of actions demonstrated by other evidence to be substantial grounds for impeachment of the President. In refusing to produce these papers and things Richard M. Nixon, substituting his judgment as to what materials were necessary for the inquiry, interposed the powers of the Presidency against the lawful subpoenas of the House of Representatives, thereby assuming to himself functions and judgments necessary to the exercise of the sole power of impeachment vested by the Constitution in the House of Representatives.

In all of this, Richard M. Nixon has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice, and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.

Wherefore, Richard M. Nixon, by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office.

Read the rest here:
Richard Nixon was not impeached, despite what Hillary Clinton and others say - Washington Post

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MANCHESTERIs Prime Minister Theresa May a British Hillary Clinton? Is Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn a sort of left-wing Donald Trump?

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Britain votes next week in a general election that was supposed to be effectively a coronation for May, the unlikely prime minister who came to power last summer as a result of Britains surprise decision last June to vote to leave the European Union. But instead of the Brexit Election, as May called it, strengthening her hand as she heads into tough negotiations with the European Union over the terms of their divorce, May now finds herself in a real contest on June 8 with a Labour leader previously seen as utterly unelectable.

For an American columnist fresh off the 2016 election, there are some striking similarities to ponder. Both leading candidates seem to have taken their cues from the U.S. in ways that could prove risky. Like Clinton when faced with Trump, May has chosen to turn the contest into a referendum on her opponent, the hard-left Corbyn, whose views are far outside the British mainstream and whose party members in parliament voted 80 percent in favor of dumping him as their leader. As a top May adviser put it to me, Any day were talking about May versus Corbyn, were winning. Anything else, and we are not.

But many days lately they have not been talking about Corbynor even much about the future of Britain at all.

It was going to be the Brexit Election but it seems that other concerns were dominating, says Steve Hilton, who served as the Conservatives top strategist in the last British general election before falling out with his close friend, Mays predecessor David Cameron, over Brexit. In a new interview for The Global Politico, Hilton says May has not followed through on the political revolution that brought Brexit and Trump to the U.S. with a comparable policy revolutionnor does she seem likely to after a campaign that at times now seems reminiscent of last years American contest.

Indeed, Mays own leadership style and decision-making became the issue in ways she could hardly have anticipated when she called the snap election in April. In loud echoes of the rap on Clinton, May has been dinged in recent days on everything from her insular way of running 10 Downing St. and small circle of confidants to talking points-laden speeches and lack of a positive vision for the country.

May promised British voters strong and stable leadershipin theory an appealing slogan at a time of massive uncertainty about the countrys post-Europe futurebut then was forced to abandon a key plank in her party platform just four days after issuing the campaign manifesto. She proposed and quickly withdrew a so-called dementia tax to make Britons pay more out of pocket for long-term care, resulting in days of punishing press coverage; the Tories lead in the polls quickly collapsed from some 22 points to as little as 5 points. Headlines, like this one in the left-leaning Independent, started warning: Theresa May will meet the same fate as Hillary Clinton.

And meantime, the much-maligned Corbyn has been running what many British pols this week told me they consider a near-flawless campaign. His advisers speak openly of how they Trumpified their leftist boss, courting controversy rather than avoiding it, doubling down on the partys left wing rather than worrying about pivoting to the center, rallying the public with populist pledges to skip the messy foreign entanglements in favor of investing more back home.

Then came Manchester.

Massacre of the Innocents. Fortress Britain. Pure Evil.

All week long the tabloids screamed out the horror of the terrorist attack in this football-obsessed, proudly working-class hub of the industrial revolution turned booming center of the new economy, with 22 dead in the Monday night bombing of an Ariana Grande concert full of young girls and their mothers. By the time I arrived Tuesday afternoon, all national campaigning had been suspended as Britain stopped to mourn the dead. At the vigil that night in Manchesters Albert Square, I stood amid a silent, tearful crowd of thousands. There was shock but not necessarily surprise that Manchester had been added to the long list of European cities like Paris, Brussels and Berlin that have been hit by such attacks in the last few years.

On his first international trip as president, Trump took time out to condemn the Manchester attack, calling the bomber who did it an evil loser. Even many Brits who said they didnt like Trump thought that was just about the right tone to strike.

By Wednesday, May had ordered armed police to the streets and the British military to take up positions at key posts and raised the nations threat level to the highest in a decade, assessing the chances of another attack as imminent. The papers were no longer talking about her U-turn on the dementia tax but about whether the national police budget had been cut too much in recent years and how security should play in Mays favor over Corbyn, nobodys idea of a get-tough-on-terrorists hawk.

By Friday, campaigning was back on, and the subject was most decidedly not Mays social program. As Corbyn complained that British foreign policy was partly to blame for the terrorist attack, May went on the offensive.

Mixing partisan politics with a G-7 summit in Sicily, she said Corbyns statement amounted to an excuse for terrorism, adding: The choice that people face at the general election has just become starker. Its a choice between me, working constantly to protect the national interest and to protect our securityand Jeremy Corbyn, who frankly isnt up to the job.

After a painful detour of more than a week, May was back doing what her campaign believed she had to do to win: Make it a him-or-me kind of a race.

But those nagging, havent-we-seen-this-play-before doubts continue to follow May, and how could they not, with memories so fresh of Clintons decision to make the election a referendum on Trump? May is very much a creature of the British Tory establishment whose careful political persona would seem to be not only Clintonian, but out of step with the to-hell-with-that ethos that led to the Brexit vote less than a year ago.

Then again, her advisers reckon that might not matter so much, and there are several broad developments that might help May even if her own political skills undercut her. Most important: shes pulled perhaps the most important flip-flop possible in going from Brexit opponent before last years referendum to portraying herself as the strong-willed negotiator who can deliver on Brexit in this years race, pitching even more explicitly to the white working-class voters who fueled the referendum win at just the moment when the insurgent party that helped fuel the referendum, the UK Independence Party and its immigrant-bashing leader Nigel Farage, has seemingly imploded.

And besides, its still hard to see a realistic scenario for a Prime Minister Corbyn.

Can a Labour leader who repeatedly voted against counterterrorism funding, who has been attacked for calling the killing of Osama bin Laden a tragedy, and whose party manifesto is the most left-wing document the party has produced since 1983, really have a chance? What are the odds?

Zero percent, a veteran BBC producer told me meexcept, he quickly added that, in this age of Brexit and Trump, he no longer trusts the polls, or his own political instincts honed over three decades of covering British elections, or anything really.

Susan B. Glasser is POLITICOs chief international affairs columnist. Her new podcast, The Global Politico, comes out Mondays. Subscribe here. Follow her on Twitter @sbg1.

Excerpt from:
An English Hillary Clinton? Left-wing Trump? - POLITICO Magazine

As the presidential campaign drew to a conclusion, unelectable Donald Trump spoke to a smallish campaign rally at a country club in Atkinson, New Hampshire. Conventional wisdom was that he was going to lose badly, taking the Republicans down with him.

His speech was pretty routine, but driving away I reflected on how his message was clear and aimed specifically at the audience he was addressing. There would be jobs especially down the road at Portsmouth naval shipyard. There would be clean air in northern New Hampshire and clean water. A few months on I can still remember what Donald Trump stood for; recalling Hillary Clintons policy platform is more of a struggle.

As the pace quickens in the UK election, Labour has been pretty effective in saying what it is offering the electorate. It has promised to restore student grants, pump money into the health service, and put more police officers...

Read more:
Theresa May is totally relying on her opponent being 'unelectable'. So was Hillary Clinton - Telegraph.co.uk

A federal judge tossed a lawsuit against Hillary Clinton by the parents of two Americans killed at a diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, ruling Friday the former secretary of state did not defame them when disputing allegations that she had lied.

"The untimely death of plaintiffs' sons is tragic, and the Court does not mean to minimize the unspeakable loss that plaintiffs have suffered in any way," U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington wrote in a 29-page opinion.

The suit also alleged Clintons use of a private email server caused the death of their sons, Sean Smith and Tyrone Woods, because it exposed terrorists to sensitive information. They claimed Clinton lied when she allegedly told them it was a YouTube video that prompted the consulate attack.

Berman ruled the parents didn't sufficiently challenge that Clinton was not acting in her official capacity when she used the private server, and that the families didn't put forward appropriate claims that Clinton defamed them or put them in a false light.

One of the parents, Patricia Smith, gave an emotional speech during the 2016 Republican National Convention against Clinton. Her son and Woods were killed in the September 2012 attack, along with CIA operative Glen Doherty and the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens.

Clinton's homebrew server bedeviled her campaign before it officially began. Emails later released under the Freedom of Information Act showed some contained classified information, although they were not marked as such at the time.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Read more from the original source:
Judge throws out lawsuit against Hillary Clinton by parents of Benghazi victims - Fox News

Speaking at Wellesley College's commencement on May 26, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton alluded to similarities between President Trump and former president Richard Nixon. (Reuters)

In thelatest feature by Clinton-chronicler Rebecca Traister, we get a further glimpse of whatHillary Clinton has been up to since Nov. 8. The most fascinating tidbits cast light on events that happened in the immediate aftermath of the election.

In the highlight of the profile, Clinton reveals what it was like to attend President Trumps Inauguration alongside her husband, former president Bill Clinton. To the surprise of some political watchers, the two participated in the ceremony in support of a peaceful transfer of power. Though Clinton put on a stoic facade, she now reveals the event was really...difficult for her:

Oh, says Clinton, it was hard. It was really difficult. But at the time, we hoped that there would be a different agenda for governing than there had been for running.

Of course, it quickly became clear from Trumps speech that there would be no change in strategy. A look of disgust crosses Clintons face as she recalls it. It was a really painful cry to his hard-core supporters that he wasnt changing, she says. The carnage in our country? It was a very disturbing moment. I caught Michelle Obamas eye, like, 'What is going on here?' I was sitting next to George and Laura Bush, and we have our political differences, but this was beyond any experience any of us had ever had.

Clinton also appeared to corroborate reports that former president George W. Bush had also had some thoughts on Trumps speech:

I ask her about the report that Bush had said of the speech, That was some weird shit, and her eyes light up. Put it in your article, she says. They tried to walk back from it, but Did she hear it herself? I ask. She raises her eyebrows and grins.

This is an incredibly dishy anecdote, and a real treat for Trump opponents. But this story, and the possible motives for sharing it, are part of the larger trend of Clintons post-election behavior.

Unlike past failed presidential candidates (think: Mitt Romney) Clinton has been strategically returning to the spotlight rather hastily after her rivals victory. From initial photos of makeup-free Clinton hiking in the woods after the election, to surprise appearances for supporter Katy Perry, to a confessional panel with Christiane Amanpour in which she took absolute personal responsibility for her campaigns loss but also said that she would be your president if not for the actions of former FBI director James Comey Clinton hasbeen far from absent from our political consciousness. And she has been far from silent about the man she conceded to on Nov. 9.

This doesnt seem like Clinton dipping her toe back into public life. At this point, shes essentially wading back into the political fray and taking direct shots at the sitting president.

The Inauguration anecdote isnt just amusing: it conveys that despite her public, bipartisan facade, she wasnt okay with what was happening in front of her.Unlike former president Barack Obama, she no longer feels obligated to remain silent about the course the country has taken.

As President Trumps administration is roiled by controversy over Russias role in the election and the firing of Comey, and as New York magazine unfurled its feature, Clinton gave a commencement speech at her alma mater, Wellesley College, that took direct aim at Trump and his administration.

So the question is, as it always has been, what is she going to do next?

Read the original:
Now we know how Hillary Clinton felt watching Trump's inauguration speech - Washington Post