{"id":32737,"date":"2023-01-28T21:40:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-28T21:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=32737"},"modified":"2023-01-31T22:56:12","modified_gmt":"2023-01-31T22:56:12","slug":"the-weaponization-of-the-federal-government-has-a-long-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/the-weaponization-of-the-federal-government-has-a-long-history\/","title":{"rendered":"The weaponization of the federal government has a long\u00a0history"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ken Hughes<\/a>, University of Virginia<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now that House Republicans have created a \u201cSelect Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government<\/a>,\u201d let\u2019s revisit a classic of that power-abusing genre, featuring its greatest star, Richard M. Nixon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The subcommittee\u2019s express purpose is investigating federal investigators for alleged \u201cillegal or improper, unconstitutional, or unethical activities,\u201d at which Nixon was an acknowledged master. I\u2019ve been listening to Nixon abuse power on the secret White House tapes<\/a> for two decades with the University of Virginia<\/a>\u2019s Miller Center<\/a>. I\u2019ve written about his decisions to sabotage Vietnam peace talks to damage the Democrats\u2019 1968 presidential campaign<\/a>, to time his withdrawal from Vietnam to help his 1972 reelection campaign<\/a>, and to spring former Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa<\/a> from prison in return for the union\u2019s political support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This story is a forgotten sequel to the Watergate break-in. No one has ever proved<\/a> that President Nixon ordered burglars to photograph documents and plant listening devices at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, known as the DNC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Nixon himself created proof that he abused his presidential authority to go after the DNC with the investigative powers of the Internal Revenue Service. He captured this high crime on tape less than two months after the Watergate burglars\u2019 arrests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Can\u2019t we investigate people?\u2019<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAre we looking over the financial contributors of the Democratic National Committee?\u201d Nixon asked his chief of staff on Aug. 3, 1972. \u201cAre we running their income tax returns? Or is the Justice Department checking to see whether or not there\u2019s any antitrust suits? Do we have anything going on any of these things?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNot as far as I know,\u201d said H.R. \u201cBob\u201d Haldeman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have all this power and we aren\u2019t using it. Now, what the Christ is the matter?\u201d Nixon asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Two<\/a>
President Richard Nixon walks with his assistant H.R. Haldeman from the Executive Office Building to the White House for a Cabinet meeting in December 1969. AP photo\/file<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got a guy who\u2019s a pluperfect bastard. He\u2019s a loyalist \u2013 he\u2019s a fanatic loyalist \u2013 in the IRS,\u201d said John D. Ehrlichman, whose title was assistant to the president for domestic affairs and whose job was henchman<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe\u2019s with us, you mean?\u201d Nixon asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe\u2019s our guy,\u201d Ehrlichman said. \u201cOne Treasury secretary after another, starting with [David M.] Kennedy, [John B.] Connally, now [George P.] Shultz, has said, \u2018Oh, Jesus, can\u2019t you get this guy out of there? Can\u2019t you just take him out? He\u2019s making all kinds of trouble for us. He\u2019s too partisan.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The president\u2019s mood darkened. \u201cShultz is not long for this life, in my opinion, because he\u2019s not being political enough,\u201d Nixon said. \u201cI don\u2019t care how nice a guy is. I don\u2019t care how good an economist he is. We can\u2019t have this bullshit.\u201d His frustration was growing. \u201cCan\u2019t we investigate people?\u201d Nixon asked. \u201cIs there anything we can do?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYes,\u201d Ehrlichman said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI would think that we could get some people with some guts in the second term, when we don\u2019t care about repercussions,\u201d Haldeman said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nixon wanted to do something immediately about the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Larry O\u2019Brien<\/a>. O’Brien directed John F. Kennedy\u2019s victorious presidential campaign in 1960 and Lyndon B. Johnson\u2019s in 1964. \u201cIf you could dirty up O\u2019Brien now, I think it might be a lot better than to wait until later,\u201d Nixon said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Two<\/a>
President Nixon, right, at a meeting with aide John D. Ehrlichman in 1972. AP photo<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Abuse of power<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Under pressure from the White House, the IRS subjected O\u2019Brien to an audit during the 1972 presidential campaign<\/a>. The audit found a \u201crelatively small deficiency,\u201d which O\u2019Brien promptly paid. Treasury Secretary Shultz and IRS Commissioner Johnnie Walters told Ehrlichman there was nothing more they could do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI wanted them to turn up something and send him to jail<\/a> before the election,\u201d Ehrlichman later said. There are few purer expressions of authoritarianism than an attempt to jail the titular head of the opposition party during a campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shortly before Nixon resigned in 1974, the House Judiciary Committee cited his abuse of his power over the IRS in an article of impeachment<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chief of staff: Trump requested audits<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In 1998, Congress made it a felony for a president to \u201crequest, directly or indirectly<\/a>,\u201d an IRS audit or investigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

None of that stopped President Donald Trump from requesting IRS audits, according to his own former White House chief of staff, John Kelly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI would say, \u2018It\u2019s inappropriate, it\u2019s illegal, it\u2019s against their integrity, and the IRS knows what it\u2019s doing, and it\u2019s not a good idea,\u2019\u201d Kelly told The New York Times<\/a> in November 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Two<\/a>
White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, right, says that President Donald Trump wanted the IRS to conduct audits on people Trump had publicly attacked. AP Photo\/Pablo Martinez Monsivais<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Trump said the IRS should investigate two former FBI officials, Director James Comey and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Kelly said. Trump has publicly, and baselessly<\/a>, accused Comey and McCabe of treason, a capital crime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After Kelly left the White House, both Comey and McCabe were subjected to unusually intense IRS audits, the kind tax lawyers refer to as \u201can autopsy without the benefit of death<\/a>,\u201d New York Times reporter Michael S. Schmidt wrote. Through a spokeswoman, Trump denied any knowledge of the audits. A Trump spokeswoman also denied Kelly\u2019s account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Kelly told the truth, then Donald Trump managed to weaponize the IRS more effectively than Richard Nixon. That\u2019s a sentence that I, as the author of two<\/a> books<\/a> on Nixon\u2019s worst abuses of power, found difficult to type.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kelly has made exactly the kind of credible allegation that a \u201cSelect Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government\u201d worthy of the name would investigate. Yet none of the Republicans who spoke before their party-line vote<\/a> to establish the subcommittee expressed any interest in investigating government weaponization by politicians of their own party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Congress has the power, even the obligation, to unearth and eliminate government weaponization. But if the subcommittee abuses its power for partisan ends, it will merely be an example of the problem it\u2019s supposed to solve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ken Hughes<\/a>, Research Specialist, the Miller Center, University of Virginia<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ken Hughes, University of Virginia Now that House Republicans have created a \u201cSelect Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government,\u201d let\u2019s revisit a classic of that power-abusing genre, featuring its greatest star, Richard M. Nixon. The subcommittee\u2019s express purpose is investigating federal investigators for alleged \u201cillegal or improper, unconstitutional, or unethical activities,\u201d at which Nixon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":32738,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[9180,473,13399,5177,479,547,548,989,1797,2587,1988,99],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32737"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32737"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32760,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32737\/revisions\/32760"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}