From Watergate to Iran-Contra to Mar-a-Lago
On August 8, 2022, agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) fulfilled a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, the Palm Beach, Florida, resort residence of former President Donald Trump.
A federal judge, acting impartially in the interests of justice, had signed the warrant as requested by the top leadership of the FBI. The FBI agents, in the presence of Trump’s attorney, searched the designated locations on the property and recovered troves of documents with “classified” or “top secret” status. Some of these documents are apparently connected to the United States’ nuclear program.
Trump and his aides have offered no reasonable explanation for the continued presence of these documents—which are government property—in the ex-president’s home, despite multiple requests from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) for their return.
Predictably, Trump went through his now-familiar, evidence-free rhetorical cycle: He variously claimed that he had taken no documents, instead saying that the FBI agents planted evidence against him.
He then contradicted that by saying he had every right to have the documents in his possession, that he had in fact declared them declassified. (Never mind the fact that no record exists of any such declassification, and that it is in fact legally impossible for a president to unilaterally declassify documents related to the country’s nuclear program.) It looks like Trump, at a bare minimum, could be facing charges of mishandling classified material.
A master of deflection, 45 even blamed the FBI front-line officers, the leadership of the Justice Department, and the Democratic Party for treating him unjustly—again, without any concrete evidence. A recent poll showed more than a third of Americans agree with him that the search never should have happened.
Trump has escalated the rhetoric so much that his followers threatened the safety of the judge who signed the search warrant. One unhinged rant from a Republican running for office in Florida advocated for the murder of federal agents.
Trump likened the whole affair to Watergate, predictably casting himself as the victim in the same way that the Democratic National Committee had been victimized by the burglary at the Watergate Hotel by President Richard Nixon's minions.
It’s not Watergate.
Experts on presidential scandals beg to differ.
There are few parallels between Watergate and Mar-a-Lago. In the case of Watergate, private-citizen political operatives, acting on Nixon’s behalf, illegally broke into opposition offices and stole proprietary materials. The Nixon administration then went out of its way to cover the whole thing up. Numerous Nixon associates were convicted of crimes and went to jail. Nixon himself was ripe for a trial and a jail term, but it seems like the country wasn’t ready for that back then.
At Mar-a-Lago, the people who entered the property were duly constituted federal employees, acting under a valid warrant that had been legally vetted at the highest levels of the Justice Department. Rather than seeking to steal documents, their job was to remove documents belonging to the American people and return them to their designated place under proper security. In order to execute such a warrant, the FBI would have had to meet an exceptionally high standard for probable cause.
Another key point about the differences: In Nixon’s day, Republicans and Democrats could agree on a common set of behaviors expected of anyone holding high office. When it was apparent that Nixon had violated these norms, leading members of his own party pressured him to resign. Trump knows that, in today’s dangerously polarized America, few Republicans are likely to turn against him. Prominent Republicans running for high office are backing his conspiracy theories about the search to the hilt.
The country has changed a lot since Watergate. We’re less trusting of public officials and institutions. Collectively, we’ve also become more wary of electing presidents with extensive government experience. As capable as he was, Barack Obama was the junior senator from Illinois with only two years’ experience at the federal government level when he first ran for president. Trump is only the most extreme example of this American preference for outsiders.
It’s not Iran-Contra, either
Ronald Reagan—another relative outside who probably benefited in the wake of Watergate —had a second-term scandal that was, in the opinion of plenty of pundits, worse than Watergate.
Reagan, with his staunch anti-Communist policy, wanted to aid the right-wing Contras in Nicaragua in their fight against the Central American nation’s left-wing Sandinista government. But the Boland Amendment, passed over Republican objections by the Democratic-controlled Senate, limited the Central Intelligence Agency's ability to intervene in foreign conflicts. Reagan also wanted to free seven American hostages held by Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon. And thus, the Iran-Contra scandal was born.
Reagan’s government tried to multi-task, with disastrous results: His administration traded missiles and other armaments to the Iranians to free the hostages, then turned around and channeled the funds received to the Contras.
The Iran-Contra hearings in the Senate in 1987 uncovered these covert actions for the public. The findings traced the illegal acts and cover-up to members of Reagan’s National Security Council.
The president took public responsibility while denying knowledge of the diversion of money to the Contras. Later, Marine Corps Lt. Col. Oliver North saw all charges against him dropped, and National Security Advisor John Poindexter had his conviction overturned on appeal. Reagan issued several presidential pardons, as did President George H.W. Bush after him. After a brief dip in his approval ratings, Reagan, the “Teflon” president, quickly bounced back. At least in his case, there was the ostensible purpose of aiding—at least in his view—freedom around the world.
Healing the country’s wounds
With the benefit of hindsight, Nixon himself probably shouldn’t have received a pardon from his successor, Gerald Ford. The country probably could have done better by holding Reagan and his administration more to account. All this likely has a lot to do with the current cynicism about government in our country. The void of trust that’s only grown over the past few decades seems like it’s helping the weeds of polarization and violent conspiracy theories thrive. Could Trump have gained power in any other kind of political ecosystem?
The actions of Trump and members of his circle imperil American security far more than either Watergate or Iran-Contra. Let’s hope that, this time, the country understands that the long-term gain in public confidence in institutions and the rule of law far outweighs the short-term pain of a full legal and moral reckoning with official wrongdoing.