Rachel Maddow points out the frequency with which Donald Trump Jr.’s name seems to come up in discussions of Wikileaks contacts and potential lies to Congress, both of which appear to be topics of prosecutorial interest by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
‘Bad Behavior By People In High Office’: Rachel Maddow On The Lessons Of Spiro Agnew
There are countless presidential scandals in U.S. history, but very few of them have resulted in resignation or impeachment — which is precisely why MSNBC host Rachel Maddow was drawn to the story of Spiro Agnew, Richard Nixon’s first vice president, who resigned in 1973.
Maddow notes there are many misconceptions concerning the former vice president — including the notion that his “big sin” centered on taxes.
“When I tried to sort of thumbnail in my mind what happened in the Agnew resignation, everything I thought about it was wrong,” she says. “I had assumed that it was a Watergate-adjacent scandal, that the FBI was looking into Watergate-related crimes and they stumbled upon something in Spiro Agnew’s taxes. … All of those things were completely wrong.”
Maddow and her former producer Mike Yarvitz created the podcast Bag Man to revisit Agnew’s story. Though his resignation was officially linked to tax evasion, they say that Agnew had engaged in bribery that dated to the early 1960s, when, as Baltimore County executive, he demanded kickbacks in exchange for local engineering or architecture contracts. He continued the practice even after being elected governor of Maryland in 1967 and then vice president in 1969.
Botched Redactions Expose New Details Of Mueller’s Paul Manafort Case | Rachel Maddow | MSNBC
Rachel Maddow reports on an avalanche of legal news including details in the Paul Manafort case exposed by a lawyer’s poor redactions, an intriguing new indictment, and another development in the mystery Mueller case.
Unlike Richard Nixon, Donald Trump Misconduct Piling Up In Full Public View | Rachel Maddow | MSNBC
Rachel Maddow reviews the many ways that Americans have witnessed Donald Trump attempt to quash or otherwise undercut the special counsel investigation into his 2016 presidential campaign, unlike Richard Nixon, the full record of whose misdeeds were not publicly known until after his scandal had run its course.