OPINION:
The current reports of executive branch illegality make Watergate look like kindergarten mischief.
It is clear from the Durham Report and the work of House Republican hearings that the current scandals in the Biden White House — and senior bureaucracies at the Justice Department, IRS and elsewhere — are much deeper and more cancerous than Watergate ever was.
It may be hard to remember, but Watergate came about due to a weird, dumb, and fairly narrow set of criminal behaviors that mushroomed into 69 officials being indicted and 48 imprisoned.
I remember Watergate vividly, because I first ran for Congress in 1974 during that scandal.
President Richard Nixon had won the largest popular vote majority in modern history in 1972 (60.7% to 37.5%). He won every state and territory except Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.
Two short years later, he became the first president to resign from office.
In an idiotic move, the Nixon presidential campaign sent five men to burglarize the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Hotel. Aside from being a crime, it was idiotic because Nixon was clearly going to win in a landslide. They did not need any information. But the Nixon reelection campaign had so much money, had hired so many people, and had become so drunk with power that it lost control of what it was doing.
The real problem came when President Nixon and his team intervened to try to control the investigation. Ultimately, the president used the CIA, FBI and IRS to try to divert and cover up the involvement of the campaign with the Watergate burglars.
John Mitchell became the first attorney general to be sent to jail. He was found guilty of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and perjury. He was ultimately sentenced to 19 months in a minimum-security federal prison in Montgomery, Alabama.
Mitchell is an extremely important parallel to the current disaster, because Attorney General Merrick Garland seems to be doing a lot more obstructing of justice than Mitchell ever dreamed of doing. Mr. Garland’s Justice Department reportedly instructed the IRS to disband the unit investigating Hunter Biden’s taxes. He has used the FBI to harass former President Donald Trump and a wide range of Republicans. And he has turned a blind eye to every report of foreign money going to the Biden family ($3 million in one Chinese transaction, a diamond sent to Hunter Biden, millions of dollars sent by the widow of the mayor of Moscow, etc.).
Mr. Garland has also done nothing with the clear references to “the big guy” in various Hunter Biden emails. He’s ignored the testimony of Hunter Biden’s associates that his father was actively supporting them as vice president. The list goes on.
If Nixon’s White House was trying, unsuccessfully, to manipulate the IRS, the FBI and the CIA, President Biden’s White House has become quite good at it. These institutions are now so corrupt that their senior leadership is instinctively willing to break the law, frame the innocent and obstruct justice in defense of their chosen leader. This includes lying to FISA Court judges, leaking falsehoods to the equally corrupt elite media, and isolating and punishing would-be whistleblowers.
Compare the shock of Democrats and Republicans in the Watergate era with the staunch unwillingness of virtually any Democrat to go after the Biden family scandals — or to be infuriated at the blatant abuses of power and obstructions of justice.
The Durham Report had an impact because it began to build a narrative of such institutional illegality and corruption that the hand of the House Republican investigators has been dramatically strengthened.
Over the next few months, we will learn more about just how sick the system has become, just how dishonest the elite corporate media are, and just how deep the need for reform is.
In Watergate, a narrow trail of idiotic criminal behavior and a cover-up led to 69 officials being indicted and 48 going to jail.
When the tide turns, and honest people are once again openly enraged and demanding action, we are going to learn just how much corruption there is.
At that point, we will realize that Watergate was a modest preliminary venture into lawbreaking, and the Biden-Garland-establishment system is filled with criminality on a grand scale.
• For more commentary from Newt Gingrich, visit Gingrich360.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.