Prosecutor in Nixon impeachment contrasts present day hearings

Reporter: Morgan Rynor
Published: Updated:
FILE - In this April 17, 1973 file photo, President Richard Nixon speaks during White House news briefing in Washington. (AP Photo/Henry Burroughs. File)
FILE – In this April 17, 1973 file photo, President Richard Nixon speaks during White House news briefing in Washington. (AP Photo/Henry Burroughs. File)

President Donald Trump is the fourth president to face impeachment and the third since the 1970s. A prosecutor involved in President Richard Nixon’s impeachment told WINK News the similarities between then and now.

The Nixon impeachment hearings in 1974 and the Trump impeachment hearings on Wednesday is history. Philip Allen Lacovara is watching and, more importantly, listening to the hearings with a sense of deja vu. Retired and living on Sanibel Island, Lacovara lived through the Nixon hearings.

Philip Allen Lacovara with President Richard Nixon. (Credit: Lacovara)
Philip Allen Lacovara shaking hands with President Richard Nixon. (Credit: Lacovara)

“I argued the so-called Nixon tapes case in the U.S. Supreme Court,” Lacovara, former Watergate special prosecutors council, said. “That was the decision that basically forced President Nixon to resign because the tapes showed the so-called smoking gun, demonstrating that President Nixon was up to his eyeballs in the cover-up conspiracy.”

Lacovara told us he sees similarities between Nixon and Trump. But in his opinion, he fears what he calls significant differences.

“President Nixon was at the bottom covering up what was called a third rate burglary, that is a domestic break-in at an office in Washington, D.C.,” Lacovara said. “What is being investigated now with regard to president trump concerns the national security of the United States.”

While it may seem like impeachment has been hanging over the head of the nation for a long time, Lacovara said what happens in the days today, took months back in the 1970s.

Copyright ©2024 Fort Myers Broadcasting. All rights reserved.

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without prior written consent.