Donald Trump

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

Donald Trump insisted Tuesday that Hillary Clinton’s handling of emails was far more scandalous than Watergate.

Trump also criticized the Justice Department, saying it was tougher on Richard Nixon that Clinton, the Washington Post reports. 

“This is far bigger and a far bigger scandal than Watergate ever was, but with Watergate we had Justice, we had a Justice Department that went after the people,” Trump said. “Here’s something that just, nobody’s ever seen anything like this.”

Trump insisted the Justice Department’s refusal to charge Clinton is evidence of a “rigged system.”

Steve Neavling

Patrick Gray was the acting head of the FBI when he was pressured to resign on April 28, 1973, in the wake of the President Nixon Watergate scandal, the Guardian reports.

Gray’s resignation came after news that he had burned incriminating documents tied to convicted Watergate conspirator Howard Hunt.
Gray was in line to succeed J. Edgar Hoover.

Despite the allegations, he claimed he did nothing wrong and was leaving for the sake of “the reputation, the integrity and the effectiveness of the FBI.”

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As Sen. Sam Ervin completed his 20-year Senate career in 1974 and issued his final report as chairman of the Senate Watergate committee, he posed the question: “What was Watergate?”

Countless answers have been offered in the 40 years since June 17, 1972, when a team of burglars wearing business suits and rubber gloves was arrested at 2:30 a.m. at the headquarters of the Democratic Party in the Watergate office building. Four days afterward, the Nixon White House offered its answer: “Certain elements may try to stretch this beyond what it was,” press secretary Ronald Ziegler scoffed, dismissing the incident as a “third-rate burglary.”

History proved that it was anything but. Two years later, Richard Nixon would become the first and only U.S. president to resign, his role in the criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice — the Watergate coverup — definitively established. Another answer has since persisted, often unchallenged: the notion that the coverup was worse than the crime. This idea minimizes the scale and reach of Nixon’s criminal actions.

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