Nixon’s Youngest Lawyer Reflects on Watergate 50 Years Later: “It Ended Up a Coup,”

Richard Nixon, America’s 37th President, resigned his office on August 9, 1974, in the wake of the Watergate scandal. Considering the 50th anniversary of Nixon’s resignation on August 9, 2024, Geoff Shepard, a Nixon White House official and the youngest lawyer to serve on Nixon’s Watergate defense team, reflected on the rise and fall of the president in an intimate exclusive interview with Andrew Muller for The New American magazine.

Shepard, who also personally transcribed the Nixon tapes and ran the White House document room, said the legal attacks against Nixon and his people “ended up a coup.”

“I didn’t have a front-row seat,” reflected Shepard, the author of The Real Watergate Scandal. “I was on the stage during the unfolding of the crisis.” Despite many of his colleagues being indicted, prosecuted, and imprisoned, Shepard is the only member of the White House staff to have a letter of clearance from the special prosecutor.

After leaving D.C. to pursue a career as a lawyer in the insurance industry, Shepard discovered in 2003 that all the records of the Watergate special prosecution force are held by the National Archives. Receiving credentials to view the documents, Shepard discovered what he called a “secret cabal of all senior officials, of all three branches of government, who were secretly meeting and secretly coordinating their attacks on the Nixon administration.” The specially recruited group of 100 federal characters, including 60 lawyers, were so eager to “get Nixon’s and his people” that they “cheated,” Shepard shared.

Shepard’s research also uncovered written memoranda that prove at least ten separate illegal secret meetings with federal prosecutors and Judge John Sirica, who presided over the Watergate coverup and burglary trial. The federal prosecutors also met secretly with Judge Gerhard Gesell, who presided over the White House Special Investigations Unit, sometimes referred to as the Plumbers, trial.

Ultimately, the story of Nixon has broad applications for America’s current political landscape, argued Shepard, comparing the lawfare waged against Nixon to that of former President Donald J. Trump. While Watergate and its calamities are in the past, the lessons learned might help direct America to safer waters in 2024.

2 thoughts on “Nixon’s Youngest Lawyer Reflects on Watergate 50 Years Later: “It Ended Up a Coup,””

  1. Way back then at age 18 I knew something was seriously wrong. There was too much unison in the effort to get Nixon, who was never shown to have involvement in the break ins. The media pushed the public every night until public opinion was so great to remove Nixon that congress felt ready to act.

  2. Avatar
    Recognizing Truth

    True enough.
    As long as the elections remain unsecured, the ballot stuffing operations will ensure the left’s “candidate” will always ‘get in’.

    As a side note, the “polls” are engineered to create the illusion of a “tight race” to make it more plausible when the left’s “intended” “wins the election”. Case in point – after watching the Biden campaign of 2020, with few supporters , empty audiences at EVERY rally and event, and a campaign that “called a lid” at the drop of a hat…NOBODY with a functioning brain believes Biden/Harris received 81 million legitimate votes. But all the polls had the race very tight, so the ballot stuffing wouldn’t draw much attention.

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