#Richard Nixon disgraced ex-US president | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

tabloidtoc · 3 years

Text

Globe, November 9

You can buy a copy of this issue for your very own at my eBay store: https://www.ebay.com/str/bradentonbooks

Cover: Prince Andrew fails lie detector -- new crisis rocks the palace

Page 2: Up Front & Personal -- Bruno Toniolo shirtless, Heidi Pratt at a pumpkin patch in L.A., Jacqueline Bisset catches some rays in L.A.

Page 3: Larry David leaves an L.A. office, Ellen Pompeo, Pete Wentz

Page 4: Kathie Lee Gifford is talking to NBC bigwigs about coming back to Today and they’re hot over the idea but Hoda Kotb is not pleased and Jenna Bush Hager is feeling threatened because Jenna never really grabbed the audience like Kathie Lee did, Martha Stewart and Gwyneth Paltrow are heading into the holidays trash-talking each other even more than usual and their pals have nowhere to hide -- they’re snippier than ever and can’t get through the week without saying something crass but the trouble is they have the same friends and they use some of the same chefs and caterers and crew -- all their friends in the Hamptons including the Seinfelds and Beyonce and Jay-Z and Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley and Rachael Ray are trying to keep out of it but it’s impossible because Martha and Gwyneth are both screaming for loyalty

Page 5: Legal hotshot and writer Jeffrey Toobin has been shelved by the New Yorker magazine for showing off his willie to co-workers during a Zoom conference call -- witnesses say Toobin was masturbating but he insists it was a blooper

Page 6: Dolly Parton was so lovestruck when she met Elvis Presley that she nearly chucked her marriage and career to shack up with Elvis -- Dolly is ready to tell all about Elvis after decades of protecting her husband Carl Dean and Elvis’ only child Lisa Marie Presley -- Dolly was in her late 20s and Elvis was in his late 30s when they had their sizzling encounter where she got dolled up to meet Elvis in a Nashville office and discuss working together and he wanted to do a duet but she didn’t trust herself to work with him and she didn’t even let Elvis do a cover of her song I Will Always Love You -- even though Dolly didn’t actually cheat on Carl she sure was tempted and she’s felt guilty about it ever since

Page 8: Just two weeks after splitting with his wife of 14 years former Home Improvement kid Zachery Ty Bryan was arrested and jailed on charges of trying to strangle a terrified galpal -- after a night of partying where he was photographed surrounded by four gals with an iced bottle of vodka at the table Zachery reportedly got into a heated clash with his galpal and she claims Zachery grabbed her by the throat and squeezed then tried to snatch her phone when she attempted to call 911 so she ran to a neighbor’s home where she hid while cops were called

Page 9: Distressed Kelly Clarkson and her two toddlers are in therapy to help cope with the anguish brought on by her divorce from Brandon Blackstock -- the talk show host is especially struggling because the split is playing out so publicly and the kids are seeing things about their mom on TV and she feels immense guilt about the divorce but knows it was the best decision because she wasn’t happy married to Brandon though she did try but staying in a marriage just for the kids wasn’t an option for her -- Kelly was deeply wounded when her father-in-law Narvel Blackstock’s management company recently sued her for $1.4 million in alleged unpaid commissions but she’s speaking with her ex privately in an effort to resolve the issue out of court but Kelly suspects he’s using it as a bargaining chip for a bigger settlement and also feels he’s using the kids against her as a weapon

Page 10: Showbiz legend Michelle Phillips has become a shut-in who sits home alone tippling wine while watching movies on TV and listening to her hits from The Mamas & the Papas where she is the last surviving member of the band -- she’s sad the rest are all gone and she’ll put on a record and sit in the dark; she misses them and so many other people -- she’s become a shut-in due to the pandemic and can’t bear for people to see her so old and haggard and overweight and all those years of partying have done their damage to her once-beautiful face -- she also hasn’t been able to see her young grandson and she’s grieving the loss of her longtime lover who died in 2017

Page 11: Baywatch hunk Jeremy Jackson’s cover girl ex-wife has been found homeless wandering California’s mean streets in worn and shabby clothes -- lost for two years Loni Willison is now virtually unrecognizable with missing teeth and her long blond tresses cropped short -- she was found pushing a grocery cart filled with her battered possessions in Venice -- despite her tragic situation she insists she’d doing fine and doesn’t want help despite reportedly having drug and mental health issues

Page 12: Celebrity Buzz -- Rita Ora in a see-through frock (picture), Lily James got caught brazenly canoodling with the very much married Dominic West who plays her father in the BBC miniseries The Pursuit of Love, just weeks after Cardi B filed to dissolve her marriage to Offset she’s put the split on hold and all it took was Offset to spend bucks on a heart-tugging Sunset Strip billboard and a Rolls-Royce and a Hermes Birkin bag, Kate Hudson’s getting loose-lipped about gross snotty smooches with her leading man Matthew McConaughey

Page 13: Vinny Guadagnino eating in Beverly Hills (picture), Kaitlyn Bristowe has a puffy trout pout (picture), Shia LaBeouf doesn’t let an apparent injury keep him from getting out and about in Pasadena (picture), Alanis Morissette says the fame that came with her 1995 revenge song You Oughta Know wasn’t so sweet but instead was an isolating experience

Page 14: Nicole Kidman is starring opposite Hugh Grant in the thriller series The Undoing but she really wanted to plays Hugh’s love interest in Notting Hill except she wasn’t well-known enough, Reba McEntire has landed herself a brand new TV show which is a modernized Fried Green Tomatoes drama series in which she’ll play the present-day Idgie Threadgoode, Fashion Verdict -- Regina King 8/10, Isabelle Huppert 2/10, Queen Maxima 5/10, Tracee Ellis Ross 9/10, Cher 4/10

Page 16: How John F. Kennedy stole the White House from Richard Nixon -- Chicago mob rigged the 1960 vote and cheated Nixon out of the presidency

Page 19: True Crime

Page 21: Parkinson’s patient Alan Alda is refusing to slow down at age 84 and friends fear the fragile M*A*S*H legend is headed for a devastating health crisis and he’s busier now than he ever was even during his sitcom days and he bravely says he lives with it by staying active but medication can only do so much and his friends and family including wife Arlene are worried he’s pushing himself too hard, teary-eyed Ringo Starr confesses his last conversation with dying Beatles bandmate George Harrison was heartbreaking and unforgettable -- Ringo wanted to stay with George until the end but his daughter Lee had been diagnosed with a brain tumor and Ringo had to rush to Boston to see her and when Ringo told George he had to go to Boston George said D’ya want me to come wit’ ya? so even on his death bed George made his best buddy smile while both faced unspeakable grief

Page 22: 10 Things You Don’t Know About S. Epatha Merkerson, Today show host Hoda Kotb reveals Frank Sinatra Jr. was the show’s worst guest because he clammed up instead of touting a book about his famous dad in 2015, Khloe Kardashian confesses she once worked as Nicole Richie’s personal assistant because she just needed a job and they went to school together -- Nicole’s reality career crashed in 2007 which was the same year Khloe’s series started

Page 24: Cover Story -- Disgraced Prince Andrew has flunked a lie detector test on his close relationship with murdered American pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and now the rogue royal insists he’ll never cooperate with the FBI for fear his testimony will land him behind bars but Queen Elizabeth’s favorite son has his back against the wall as new evidence surfaces on both sides of the Atlantic -- Andrew is terrified newly released secret testimony from Epstein’s accused madam Ghislaine Maxwell is just the tip of the iceberg of what she’s prepared to reveal and Maxwell’s revelations detailing her twisted sex life come on the heels of an explosive new British book accusing Andrew of attending debauched events with Epstein where teenage girls were parading around topless -- even though friends close to Andrew say he did nothing wrong and has no reason to fear the prince may not have a choice about spilling his guts because the fed-up royal family is threatening to cut off the cash-strapped rogue unless he plays ball

Page 25: Prince Andrew has been banished from the gift shop at his mother’s Balmoral Castle -- tourists can still purchase postcards her Her Majesty’s kids Prince Charles and Princess Anne and Prince Edward but Prince Andrew has disappeared which is a sure sign that Andrew is in the doghouse since items featuring Elizabeth’s beloved corgis are still up for sale

Page 26: Health Report

Page 27: Dirtiest places on planes exposed

Page 30: Serial sleaze Matt Lauer’s ready to pop the question to girlfriend Shamin Abas over the holidays and he hopes for a brighter future with her a year after his 20-year marriage to Annette Roque ended in divorce -- Matt showers Shamin her with gifts and wants to buy a house on the East Coast where they can make new memories and Matt’s hinted he’s already bought the ring and plans to propose by New Year’s and he hopes to have a celeb-studded wedding at their new home, Kathleen Turner will be back at Michael Douglas’ throat as his acid ex in The Kominsky Method to fill the hole left by Alan Arkin who abruptly pulled out of the third and final season of the show

Page 35: Matthew McConaughey’s father predicted he’d die while making love to his wife and he did, desperate to turn back time Marie Osmond is going whole hog on a head-to-toe makeover -- Marie is no stranger to cosmetic fixes and she is considering a slew of procedures to get a new look that’ll knock ‘em out including everything from Botox and fillers to face-lift to boob job and lipo-sculpting to enhance her waistline -- the makeover is motivated by revenge because she’s bitter over recently being pushed off her co-host gig on The Talk and now she’s counting on a younger look to land her a plum new TV gig

Page 38: Real Life Monsters

Page 39: Kris Jenner blames social media for ending the 14-year run of Keeping Up with the Kardashians because when the show started there was no Instagram or Snapchat or other social media platforms but now she gripes that now there are so many the viewer doesn’t have to wait three or four months to see an episode but instead information spreads online in real time, Phil Collins’ ex-wife has traded him in for a 31-year-old guitarist who never managed to make much noise in the music industry -- Phil was furious when he heard Orianne Cevey married Tom Bates in Las Vegas, Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman died without a will according to his widow -- Taylor Simone Ledward filed a probate case in L.A. asking a judge to name her administrator of Boseman’s estimated $938,500 estate with limited authority

Page 44: Straight Talk -- Bruce Willis and Demi Moore’s daughter Rumer Willis claims posing for raunchy bondage shots proves she’s a liberated woman free from sexual stereotypes but it’s not that simple

Page 45: Jeff Bridges is battling non-Hodgkin lymphoma which is a rampaging cancer that often spreads through the body to the liver and bone marrow and lungs -- while the cancer can be deadly experts say the five-year survival rate is 73 percent

5 notes · View notes

xtruss · 4 years

Text

Argument

America Needs to Prosecute Its Presidents

Pardoning Trump, like Nixon before him, would be a disaster.

— September 29, 2020 | Foreign Policy | Paul Musgrave

Electoral defeat for Donald Trump, even if the transition of power goes smoothly, will not be the end of the country’s political crisis. It would instead be the beginning of the next test of the American political system: confronting the record of wrongdoing left by the Trump administration, both the crimes committed in office and crimes overlooked due to his power.

Grappling with the Trump post-presidency will include delicate questions about how to investigate potential criminal and civil wrongdoing committed by the president, his associates, and his family. And there is a chance the country may not be up to this task.

There’s one clear precedent for worrying: President Gerald Ford’s pardon of his criminal predecessor (and tax cheat) Richard Nixon, and the subsequent elite embrace of that pardon. That means it’s important to lay out the case for why a potential President Biden should not pardon Trump for offenses committed against the United States.

To be sure, Biden has pledged not to do so. Yet there have been signs that he may be going wobbly. Whereas in 2019, Biden emphasized that Trump’s actions merited scrutiny (“This guy does all these things that put us in jeopardy and he gets off?” he said to Radio Iowa), in an August NPR interview he emphasized instead that pursuing criminal charges against a former president would be “a very, very unusual thing” and “probably not very—how can I say it?—good for democracy.”

These shifting stances may just be an attempt to calm nervous voters. But the direction of that shift is also what we would expect from a candidate attuned to the conventional wisdom of U.S. elites: that pardons of even criminal ex-presidents can heal the country.

The American political system has no tradition of official disgrace or damnatio memoriae. All presidents are honored, even those who were awful or, in the case of President John Tyler, disloyal. Tyler, the tenth president, not only ran a disastrous administration but ended his public life as a congressman in a brief-lived treasonous slave power. And yet even Tyler receives official remembrances, including a presidential dollar coin featuring his image.

That coin illustrates the natural arc of American political culture: institutional ignoring of the misdeeds of the powerful in the name of “healing.” Yet this norm does not heal; it harms. It makes a mockery of Americans’ belief that they have a government of laws, not of men, if those laws do not apply to the men who enforce the laws. It constitutes a denial of justice and an amnesty granted only to the powerful. Left unchallenged, this norm will protect Trump from the reckoning that the country needs.

Consider how the system dealt with Nixon.

Time has so effaced the details of Nixon’s malfeasance that he has regained a patina of statesmanship. Thus, Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, could recently tweet a favorable comparison between Nixon and Trump, arguing that that “Nixon, for all his flaws, was a conservative who abided by norms.”

Haass’s viral tweet reflects an irony that, in death, Nixon has finally been accepted by the sort of institution whose rejections kindled in him a lifelong resentment of the Eastern Establishment he tried to join. In doing so, it reflects a general amnesia about why Watergate was so bad that illustrates how far elite culture will go to forgive the crimes of the powerful.

The signature moment of Watergate is the June 17, 1972, break-in, when a team of burglars were caught in the Democratic National Committee headquarters. Reporting and investigations soon uncovered ties to the White House. But that was just the tip of a very dirty iceberg. Subsequent prosecutorial and congressional investigations broke apart not just the Nixon administration’s frantic, illegal cover-up of its ties to the burglary but uncovered an entire panoply of what Attorney General John Mitchell called the “White House horrors.”

These included use and the attempted use of government agencies like the IRS to go after the president’s political enemies. The administration sought to persecute its enemies, leading to abuses like an attempt to steal the files of dissident Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist. The president directed his aides to retrieve classified papers from the Brookings Institution by any means necessary, including stealing them or firebombing the think tank. Even the Watergate break-in turned out to be the second one—the first, on May 28, 1972, had been undetected.

And Nixon was not above using his position to enrich himself. He used government agencies to improve his private residences. And he evaded taxes, including by improperly claiming deductions related to his gift of his vice-presidential papers to the government. Far from abiding by norms, he broke them with abandon.

None of this should have come as a surprise given Nixon’s pre-presidential career, including his use of campaign funds for personal expenses (sanitized as his so-called Checkers speech), his attempt to win the 1968 election by sabotaging Vietnam peace talks, and his ties to various underworlds.

Nixon’s wrongdoing extended far beyond the break-in and coverup. His administration displayed a consistent pattern of abuse of powers matching or exceeding that of Trump.

And yet somehow minimizing that pattern of abuse has become the literal textbook version of history. In Alan Brinkley’s widely assigned high school history textbook The Unfinished Nation (1992), for example, Watergate receives two and a half pages, without mentioning any specific crime other than the break-in.

This revisionist history may explain why, in a 2014 CNN survey, only 51 percent of Americans reported considering Watergate a “very serious matter” that revealed unusual corruption in the Nixon White House, while 46 percent reported that the scandal was “just politics–the kind of thing both parties engage in.”

Brinkley’s textbook later blandly mentions that President Gerald Ford, Nixon’s successor, suffered political consequences from his decision to offer Nixon a blanket pardon for wrongdoing while in office.

Pointedly, Ford had rejected pardoning Nixon during his confirmation hearings as vice president. Once in office, though, a chorus of voices lobbied him to change his mind, claiming that neither the country nor Nixon himself might survive the trial.

Ford’s pardoning of Nixon was unpopular at the time, with 53 percent of Americans rejecting it. It has since become conventional wisdom among America’s institutional elite that Ford’s act was merciful and correct. In 2001, a panel of eminences recruited by the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation honored Ford’s pardon of Nixon by giving him its Profiles in Courage Award.

At the awards dinner, Senator Ted Kennedy praised the wisdom of Ford’s decision. “I was one of those who spoke out against his action then,” Kennedy said. “But time has a way of clarifying past events, and now we see that President Ford was right. His courage and dedication to our country made it possible for us to begin the process of healing and put the tragedy of Watergate behind us.”

It’s hard to find dissenters from this view in D.C. power circles. Yet there are those who view Kennedy’s argument as dangerously wrong-headed. One of those was Elizabeth Holtzman, who in 1974 was a firebrand first-term liberal representative from New York City who sat on the House Judiciary Committee during its impeachment hearings.

In an oral history with the federal Nixon Presidential Library, Holtzman called the “healing” argument “nonsense”. “In my mind, the impeachment process brought the country together, because whether you had voted for Nixon, whether you’re Republican or Independent or Democrat or unaffiliated, you felt that the rule of law had finally been carried out,” she said. “We reconnected to our commitment to the rule of law and then we had President Ford come in and [shatter] that.”

By downplaying the seriousness of Nixon’s crimes, and stopping further consequences, the pardon made it possible to reduce Watergate from the White House horrors to the break-in. It also enabled Nixon’s rehabilitation.

When Nixon died, President Bill Clinton ordered the closing of government offices “as a mark of respect for Richard Milhous Nixon.” In a cloying eulogy delivered “on behalf of a grateful nation,” Clinton praised Nixon’s legacy in domestic and foreign policy, without a single reference to Watergate or abuse of power other than the banal acknowledgment that “He made mistakes.”

The healing myth has become part of a bipartisan catechism even though its central premise—that the pardon healed the country—is unsupportable. In the long run, as Holtzman said, “the Nixon pardon has had terrible ramifications.” It set the stage for later pardons related to executive self-interest, including George H.W. Bush’s pardons of many figures involved in the Iran-Contra scandal.

If U.S. political culture can congratulate itself for rehabilitating Nixon, then the temptations for a Biden administration to do the same for Trump will be powerful. Doing so will let the administration move on to other priorities, sensible centrists will argue. And the next election is only two years away—do you really want to have Trump still in the news by then?

Advocates of a pardon or other forms of clemency will point to other factors as well. They will argue that, in a polarized country, the specter of politicized prosecutions will raise the possibility that vengeful Republicans will retaliate later. And indeed, it would be disastrous for democracy were each administration to misuse prosecution against its political enemies.

Yet given what we already know about the president’s finances and conduct in office, an investigation of the Trump administration is unlikely to be politicized in any meaningful sense. It is only a refusal to prosecute that could be politicized, in the sense of being guided by political calculation rather than a commitment to the rule of law. (That would apply doubly to the idea that a pardon could help ease Trump out of the White House without strife.)

More sophisticated observers might caution that even potentially justifiable prosecutions could have deleterious effects on U.S. politics and the country’s standing in the world. The prosecutions of Brazil’s most recent presidents—Lula, Dilma, and Michel Temer—did much to clear the way for the election of the country’s disastrous current president, Jair Bolsonaro. Similar concerns have been raised about other prosecutions elsewhere, like Ecuador’s conviction of former president Rafael Correa, which barred him from a return to politics.

But it’s strange to argue that democracy depends on not prosecuting those who commit crimes. In France, even a prime minister caught misusing public funds may now go to jail rather than retire to a villa. And although some have criticized South Korea for prosecuting its ex-presidents (over half of whom are now in prison), measures like the Varieties of Democracy index show that Seoul’s record on liberal democracy is stronger than that of the United States.

It should not be surprising that democracy and prosecutions of former officials can go together. That is, after all, the entire point of the rule of law. Holding officials to account forms a critical part of strengthening democratic institutions. And the ballot box is only one way to do that.

That is why Biden must not waver. If a former president has never been prosecuted in American history, that’s because the last time the country had a chance to do so it was denied that opportunity. Far from being bad for democracy, a sober, lengthy, and deliberative investigation would be good for establishing a record of the rot in the Trump administration. And it would be a major boost for liberal democracy and anti-corruption efforts by demonstrating that in mature democracies, officials face consequences.

Having a president who committed crimes is not unprecedented in American history. What would be unprecedented would be to end this long national nightmare by letting them face the same justice that any other American should.

0 notes

marylandprelawland · 5 years

Text

A BRIEF HISTORY OF IMPEACHMENT

By Robert Thorpe, Johns Hopkins University, Class of 2020

May 31, 2019

On July 10, 1842, John Minor Botts of Virginia had had enough. With a healthy disdain for democrats and a simmering anger at having a national bank bill vetoed [1], he introduced a resolution to impeach John Tyler, the 10th President of the United States. This would go on to be rejected, but the moment marked the first time the House of Representatives formally began impeachment proceedings against a president [2].

In a nation founded upon a system of checks and balances, the impeachment process is a reminder that no one is above the law. Framers of the Constitution, including James Madison, Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton, wanted a peaceful means of removing the President from office and protecting the public from severe abuses and violations of trust. As Elbridge Gerry noted, “A good magistrate will not fear [impeachments]. A bad one ought to be kept in fear of them,” [3].

As noted in Article II, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution, “The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors [4]. “High crimes and misdemeanors” was a phrase added by George Mason, who believed treason and bribery alone didn’t go far enough in protecting the Constitution from subversion [5]. Scholars have long debated over what might qualify as an impeachable offense, beyond treason and bribery, though Gerald Ford’s 1970 comment remains the popular opinion to this day. As a member of the House of Representatives, he aptly noted, “An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history” [6].

In order to be impeached, the House of Representatives initiates the process when a member requests impeachment proceedings or the house passes a resolution to look into impeachment. The House Judiciary Committee then decides if there is enough evidence to warrant moving forward. Any charge worthy of impeachment becomes an article of impeachment, and the committee will vote to bring the article to the House floor. By a simple majority vote, the House determines whether or not to pass the article of impeachment.

If the article passes, the official is impeached, and the process moves to the Senate for trial. If the President is the one being impeached, the chief justice of the Supreme Court will preside over the trial, while the president pro tempore of the senate oversees other impeached officials [7]. During the trial, house members are appointed to act as managers and will present their case for impeachment [8]. The indicted party may appear at the trial or instead have their counsel make their case for them. All 100 senate members act as the jury and a two-thirds majority is required in order to convict. If convicted, the official is removed from office and may be disqualified from holding any other federal office [7].

Only federal judges have ever been impeached and convicted, including Alcee Hastings who was removed from office in 1989 after being convicted on eight articles of impeachment [9], though he has since moved on to become a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. No president has ever been convicted after being impeached. Richard Nixon chose to resign as the 37th President of the United States before the House of Representatives could vote on the three articles of impeachment recommend by the House Judiciary Committee. For more than two years, Nixon and his administration had been embroiled in the Watergate Scandal, stemming from the arrest of for breaking into the Democratic National Committee Headquarters in 1972 [10].

Only two presidents have gone through the impeachment process: Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton.

Andrew Johnson

On February 24, 1868, by a vote of 126-47, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to impeach President Andrew Johnson. Johnson had previously been a U.S. Senator from Tennessee. The only senator from a seceding state to stay loyal to the Union during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln chose him to be his vice president in 1864. When Lincoln was assassinated, Johnson became president and quickly drew the wrath of the republican party for his leniency towards southern states.

Republicans didn’t believe Johnson should be granting amnesty to ex-confederates or welcoming the southern states back into the union so quickly with little repercussions. Further frustrated by Johnson’s support of “black codes,” laws that southern states enacted to restrict the rights of freed slaves, as well as his attempts to replace republican lawmakers who opposed him, Republicans passed the Tenure of Office Act in March of 1867. This was meant to prevent the President from removing any officials without senatorial approval and warned that any violation of the act would be considered a “high misdemeanor.” After Johnson repeatedly ignored the act and attempted to replace Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, the house began formal impeachment proceedings. Eleven articles of impeachment were passed against Johnson. Nine focused on violations of the Office of Tenure Act while another accused Johnson of disregarding the Army Appropriations Act of 1867, which required him to issue military orders through his Secretary of War. One more accused Johnson of attempting to disgrace Congress with his speeches.

On March 5, 1868, Johnson’s impeachment trial began. Each day of the trial, the senate galleries were packed full as 1,000 ticket holders gathered to watch the spectacle. Johnson, though, never made an appearance on the advice of counsel. On May 16, 1868, after more than two months, the trial ended. Although the majority of senators voted to convict Johnson, the senate failed by one vote to reach the necessary two-thirds majority required to convict. Seven Republican senators broke ranks and voted to acquit, including James Grimes of Iowa, who noted that, “I cannot agree to destroy the harmonious working of the Constitution for the sake of getting rid of an Unacceptable President” [11].

Vindicated, Johnson finished out his term as president, but was not nominated for a second term. In 1875, six years after leaving the White House, Johnson returned to Congress as a Tennessee Senator, but died, serving only three months. Today, because of Johnson’s opposition to Republican efforts, including the Fourteenth Amendment, which gave citizenship and other rights to African Americans, he is consistently ranked as one of the worst presidents in U.S. history [12], [13], [14], [15].

Bill Clinton

William Jefferson Clinton was impeached on December 19, 1998. By a vote of 228-206, the House voted to impeach Clinton on a charge of perjury, and by a vote of 221-212 for a charge of obstruction of justice [16].

Clinton’s troubles began with a lawsuit by Paula Jones on May 6, 1994. Jones sued Clinton for sexual harassment, claiming she had been lured to Clinton’s room at the Little Rock’s Excelsior in 1991, when he was Governor of Arkansas [17]

Clinton had tried to have the case dismissed, claiming presidential immunity, but in Clinton v. Jones, the Supreme Court unanimously held that the Constitution does not give the President immunity from civil suits [18].

During the civil suit, Clinton, under oath, testified that he had not had an extramarital relationship with white house intern, Monica Lewinsky. This, however, turned out to be a lie. After being transferred to the Pentagon, Lewinsky befriended and confided in Linda Tripp, who secretly recorded their conversations. After informing Jones’ lawyers of the information, Tripp would later pass the tapes on to Kenneth Starr, independent counsel who was already investigating Clinton over his role in the Whitewater controversy, pertaining to certain real estate investments. After receiving permission from U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno to expand the scope of his investigation, Starr gathered enough evidence to bring Clinton before a Grand Jury, where the President would eventually admit to having an affair with Lewinsky. Starr’s subsequent report to Congress alleged there were eleven impeachable offenses against the President. The republican-led House of Representatives, believing Clinton to be unfit to serve as President, voted to impeach on two counts of perjury and obstruction of justice [19].

On January 7, 1999, Clinton’s impeachment trial began and concluded February 12, 1999. Like Johnson, he was eventually acquitted of all charges. By a vote of 55-45, with ten Republicans joining Democrats, Clinton was acquitted on the charge of perjury. And by a vote of 50-50, he was acquitted on the obstruction charges [20]. In 2001, in order to avoid a criminal trial, Clinton accepted a five-year suspension of his law license [21].

________________________________________________________________

Robert Thorpe is an intern with the Evan Guthrie Law Firm who contributes and edits articles for a national legal website. A graduate student, Robert is pursuing his Master’s in Communication degree at Johns Hopkins University.

________________________________________________________________

[1] Coryell, J. (2001). John Botts. Retrieved from http://edu.lva.virginia.gov/online_classroom/union_or_secession/people/john_botts

[2] The Attempted Impeachment of John Tyler. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://potus-geeks.livejournal.com/315466.html

[3]Bomboy, S. (2017, May 18). What the Founders thought about impeachment and the President. Retrieved from https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/what-the-founders-thought-about-impeachment-and-the-president

[4]Article II. Retrieved from https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleii

[5] Trickey, E. (2017, October 02). Inside the Founding Fathers' Debate Over What Constituted an Impeachable Offense. Retrieved from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/inside-founding-fathers-debate-over-what-constituted-impeachable-offense-180965083/

[6] Davis, K. (2017, June 12). The History of American Impeachment. Retrieved from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-you-need-know-about-impeachment-180963645/

[7] Law, T. (2018, December 18). How Does Impeachment Work? 7 Questions Answered. Retrieved from http://time.com/5477435/impeachment-clinton/

[8]Fahrenthold, D. A. (2019, April 20). Five things to know about impeachment. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/five-things-to-know-about-impeachment/2019/04/20/627674d4-6394-11e9-bfad-36a7eb36cb60_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.e5b9b174d0bf

[9] The Impeachment Trial of Alcee L. Hastings (1989) U.S. District Judge, Florida. (2018, April 11). Retrieved from https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Impeachment_Hastings.htm

[10] The Watergate Scandal: A Timeline. (2019, January 18). Retrieved from https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/watergate-scandal-timeline-nixon

[11] The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson (1868) President of the United States. (2018, April 11). Retrieved from https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Impeachment_Johnson.htm

[12] Weindling, J. (2015, March 25). The Unsweet 16: America's Worst Presidents Ever. Retrieved from https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2019/03/the-unsweet-16-americas-worst-presidents-ever-brac.html

[13] Dvorak, P. (2018, February 20). The 10 worst presidents: Besides Trump, whom do scholars scorn the most? Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/02/20/the-10-worst-presidents-besides-trump-who-do-scholars-scorn-the-most/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.9f8a12fc919e

[14] Illsley, C. (2016, June 02). The 10 Worst Presidents in the History of the United States. Retrieved from https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/who-were-the-worst-presidents-in-the-history-of-the-united-states.html

[15] Tolson, J. (2007, February 16). Worst Presidents: Andrew Johnson (1865-1869). Retrieved from https://www.usnews.com/news/special-reports/the-worst-presidents/articles/2014/12/17/worst-presidents-andrew-johnson-1865-1869

[16] Barkham, P. (1998, November 18). Clinton impeachment timeline. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/1998/nov/18/clinton.usa

[17] Glass, A. (2018, November 14). Clinton settles sexual harassment suit, Nov. 14, 1998. Retrieved from https://www.politico.com/story/2018/11/14/clinton-settles-sexual-harassment-suit-1998-983371

[18]Clinton v. Jones. Oyez. Retrieved May 26, 2019, from https://www.oyez.org/cases/1996/95-1853

[19] Stanitz, E., Pearson, M., & Francis, E. (2019, January 09). 'The president has a girlfriend': Linda Tripp's betrayal of Monica Lewinsky and the taped phone calls. Retrieved from https://abcnews.go.com/US/president-girlfriend-linda-tripps-betrayal-monica-lewinsky-taped/story?id=59865969

[20] Linder, D. (n.d.). The Impeachment Trial of President William Clinton: An Account. Retrieved from https://www.famous-trials.com/clinton/884-home

[21] Yost, P. (2001, January 19). Clinton Accepts 5-Year Law Suspension. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010119/aponline132649_000.htm

0 notes

gwydionmisha · 7 years

Text

Laugh In

I've been low key doing a Laugh In rewatch, as I last saw these in... mid 80's maybe? They were in syndication for most of my growing up. It wasn't really my parents sort of thing, but I had a friend who was obsessed with Farkles and my parents were indulgent about things like this. I was a bright kid, well read, and a history geek, but I still used to ask my mother questions about the historical references I didn't get. (Remember I was too young to have seen these anywhere but syndication, though I am old enough to have snuck up to see the occasion first year Saturday Night Live even though it was very past my bed time). We would watch them together and had some fascinating conversations in the breaks. (VCRs were not invented or too expensive for most of this. We were literally sitting in the living room together working on separate projects while these were broadcast in real time). There were things that remained for one reason or another inexplicable, and it's certainly interesting watching them with google.

They are a mess, of course. I was able to pick up how incredibly sexist they were when my age was in single digits back in the '70's, and that aspect really hasn't aged well. The blackface, red face, yellow face, cultural appropriation bits have aged even worse, as have the incredibly ignorant mental illness jokes that don't even make sense and are cliche to boot.

Still there were things that were or one reason or another classic. (I don't know how many times I've told the Chelsea Brown/Rockford screens going black all over the South story, because that was a first the same way the Uhura/Kirk kiss on Star Trek was a first. Alas, I'm not watching that season, but have picked up in early '70 and am just on to '71.) Anyway, the Sammy Davis Jr. "Here Comes the Judge" segments that fascinated me as a child mostly still hold up. (Alas, not all of them, but most of them). Some of the things make way more sense to me. you are likely imagining the dirty bits, but that's not the case as I was well up on innuendo by the time I had to stop watching them because I had a job that conflicted. No, it was things like the fake press conference with the horrifying Bill Buckley that I needed time to appreciate better.

The reason I'm really writing this though, is the tap dancing sting at the end of the shows for '70-'71, which I did not get at all, until literally this week. See, I knew who Spiro Agnew was. My childhood cat was named Spiro after him as a private joke between my parents that was never adequately explained to me. It was a girl cat, my age almost exactly, but she and I were a year old when my parents and the vet illegally rescued her which is a whole other story. As a result I literally have no idea how old was when I learned about Spiro Agnew's fall, because it's such a part of the fabric of basi knowledge I had coming out of toddlerhood that I can't pin point it. (Until I was three and half or so, my memory was pretty episodic and random). It is quite possible it was explained to me in child terms while it was happening. So for me, keep in mind, Spiro T. Agnew has always been 1. A female tabby cat I loved dearly for most of two decades. 2. A disgraced crooked ex-Vice President under disgraced crooked ex-President Nixon.

So here at the end of a season or two of Laugh-In, a woman does a little tap dance and poem in front of "President Agnew." Me at various ages: ???? It was so culture without context I couldn't make any sense out of it all even though all the words were individually explicable. OMG, you guys! Agnew fell in '73! This was '70-'71. They are doing something simultaneously incredibly aggressive and cleverly side ways so as to get it past the network suits. They are wishing Richard Nixon away in favor of his Vice President, because THEY DON"T KNOW YET. O.o It's as if the end of every episode Saturday Night Live, they had Kate McKinnon come out and tap dance and do a little love letter rhyme to "President Pence." Almost perfectly analogous really. Seriously. I've been pondering this most of a week and it is Fascinating. I am now wondering if the joke with the cat didn’t have to do with how much they disliked Nixon.

I am fundamentally too old for this show. The little live action cartoons were really for me as a small child, and a lot of the other stuff was for me as a tween and early teen. The Show itself is way too far from it's moment to be particularly funny, but as an historical artifact? It really is interesting. In a future news segment they were predicting the first gay divorce in 1990. I know, meant for a joke, but oddly poignant from this side of the Plague and the marriage equality battle. It is such a strange thing to watch from the distance of nearly the whole length of my life. I remember much preferring the original cast to the one I'm watching now, though they have their moments. I'm going to try to wrap around to catch them, though I may lose interest in the project before I get there.

Now if there were only some way for me to watch Blake 7 without a region 2 DvD player....

#Laugh In #Spiro T. Agnew #Richard Nixon #Saturday Night Live #Sammy Davis Jr.

2 notes · View notes

tomorrowusa · 4 months

Text

Vivek Ramaswamy and other Republicans are trying to rehabilitate the memory of Richard Nixon. I will concede that Nixon is at least a step up from Donald Trump; Nixon wrote his own books and probably even read them.

In the current GOP, Dwight Eisenhower and Gerald Ford are nonpersons; the integrity and honesty of Ike and Jerry are too high a standard for today's cesspool-dwelling Republicans.

Current Republicans are Reaganites In Name Only. If he somehow returned, Uncle Ronnie would castigate the Kremlin-friendly Trumpsters who play footsie with the Evil Empire which is now led by a onetime KGB (secret police) colonel.

The Bush clan has never been on great terms with the Trump crew. Jeb's kid, George P. Bush, had tried to save his own political skin by pandering to MAGA – but to no avail.

So Richard "Tricky Dick" Nixon enters into the revisionist GOP pantheon.

In late August, Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy took a break from his typical campaign events to make a pit stop at an unusual venue for mainstream Republicans: The Richard Nixon Presidential Library. Speaking before a packed house, Ramaswamy was slated to deliver a speech on foreign policy. But his opening remarks served the more provocative purpose of challenging Nixon’s much-maligned status in the annals of conservative history. “He is by and away the most underappreciated president of our modern history in this country — probably in all of American history,” said Ramaswamy, without a hint of irony. Ramaswamy’s homage to America’s most disgraced ex-president perplexed some liberal commentators, for whom Nixon remains the ultimate symbol of conservative criminality. But Ramaswamy is far from alone in rethinking Nixon’s divisive legacy. Among a small but influential group of young conservative activists and intellectuals, “Tricky Dick” is making a quiet — but notable — comeback. Long condemned by both Democrats and Republicans as the “ crook” that he infamously swore not to be, Nixon is reemerging in some conservative circles as a paragon of populist power, a noble warrior who was unjustly consigned to the black list of American history. Across the right-of-center media sphere, examples of Nixonmania abound. Online, popular conservative activists are studying the history of Nixon’s presidency as a “ blueprint for counter-revolution” in the 21st century. In the pages of small conservative magazines, readers can meet the “ New Nixonians” who are studying up on Nixon’s foreign policy prowess. On TikTok, users can scroll through meme-ified homages to Nixon. And in the weirdest (and most irony laden) corners of the internet, Nixon stans are even swooning over the former president’s swarthy good looks.

I can understand them loving Nixon for his attempts to improve ties with Putin's old Soviet Union. But Nixon as a sex symbol requires a strong imagination. He's hot only when compared to Donald Trump or Rudy Giuliani.

“No man is perfect — Richard Nixon definitely wasn’t — but one element of his legacy that I respect is reviving realism in our foreign policy,” said Ramaswamy in an interview from the campaign trail, pointing specifically to Nixon’s successful efforts to reestablish diplomatic relations with China during the 1970s. “Pulling Mao out of the hands of the USSR was one of the great victories that allowed us to come to the end of the Cold War … and it took an independent thinker like Nixon to lead us out of that.”

What Ramaswamy ignores is that Nixon escalated the Vietnam War after promising "peace with honor" in his 1968 campaign. After Nixon invaded Cambodia in 1970, large protests broke out across the US which led to the killings of unarmed students by National Guard troops at Kent State University in Ohio and Jackson State University in Mississippi.

And Nixon certainly did not pull "Mao out of the hands of the USSR" the way Vivek claimed. The China-Soviet split pre-dates the Nixon administration by over a decade. The USSR and China even fought a small border war against each other in 1969.

youtube

Ramaswamy has a pitiful understanding of the world. Like Elon Musk, most of his knowledge of geopolitical history seems to come from memes and dubious social media posts. Tech billionaires are among the most ignorant people on the planet outside of their narrow fields.

#richard nixon #vivek ramaswamy #republicans #republicans think nixon is hot #springtime for nixon #the vietnam war #china #geopolitics #cold war history #tech billionaires #election 2024

11 notes · View notes

bountyofbeads · 5 years

Text

Roger Stone appears in D.C. federal court Tuesday in Mueller investigation

https://wapo.st/2FVHkir

Roger Stone Pleads NOT GUILTY !! He must appear in court again on Friday before Judge Amy Berman Jackson who is over seeing the Mueller investigation and the Manafort trial.

By Spencer S. Hsu and Dein Barrett | Published January 29, 2019 | The Washington Post |

Posted January 29, 2019 |

President Trump’s longtime friend Roger Stone walked into federal court in Washington Tuesday morning, preparing to enter a not guilty plea to charges stemming from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.

Stone was indicted last week and accused of lying about his efforts to gather information about hacked Democratic Party emails at the direction of a senior unidentified Trump campaign official before the election.

As he walked into the courthouse in Washington, some onlookers chanted “lock him up!” while others screamed their support for Stone. Afterward, some of those same people engaged in angry, profanity-laced arguments about the case.

Stone was set to for an 11 a.m. arraignment before U.S. Magistrate Deborah A. Robinson after spending the weekend in a media blitz in which he proclaimed his innocence, criticized prosecutors and promised not to testify against the president.

He faces charges of lying, obstruction and witness tampering.

At an initial court appearance Friday in Florida after his arrest at his Fort Lauderdale home, the 66-year-old Stone appeared in shackles but was released on $250,000 bond.

Stone, a veteran GOP operative and friend of Trump for four decades, briefly advised the presidential campaign in 2015 and remained in contact with Trump and top advisers through the election.

The indictment centers on Stone’s alleged efforts to learn when potentially damaging internal emails from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign would be released by Julian Assange, WikiLeaks’s leader.

U.S. authorities in July indicted a dozen Russian military intelligence officers on charges they hacked Democrats’ computers, stole their data and published those files to disrupt the 2016 election, using as one of their conduits WikiLeaks, the global anti-secrecy group, which publicized the emails during the campaign’s final months.

In Stone’s indictment, prosecutors charged that after the initial July 22, 2016, release of stolen emails, “a senior Trump campaign official was directed to contact Stone about any additional releases and what other damaging information Organization 1 had regarding the Clinton campaign.” The indictment does not name the campaign official or who directed the alleged outreach to Stone.

The indictment states that Stone thereafter told the campaign about potential future releases by “Organization 1,” which people familiar with the case said is WikiLeaks.

Stone has given scores of interviews during the months that he’s been under investigation and preempted prosecutors by publicly releasing many of the emails and texts he knew they were examining before they could be used in legal action.

On social media since his arrest, Stone all but invited a federal judge to impose a gag order, saying a directive to mute him is “the fervent wish of the Deep State.”

Stone got his start in politics working for Richard Nixon’s 1972 reelection campaign and has a tattoo on his back of the disgraced ex-president. Since then, he has advised Republican and Libertarian candidates, including Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole and Gary Johnson.

After a formal entry of a plea before the federal magistrate, Stone’s case will go before U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the District of Columbia for a scheduling hearing, expected as soon as Thursday.

In other Mueller cases assigned to her, Jackson — a former federal prosecutor, white-collar defense attorney and 2011 appointee of President Barack Obama — has not been reluctant to rein in attorneys and parties whose out-of-court comments she found likely to lead to pretrial publicity that might taint a jury or jeopardize a fair trial.

Jackson issued a gag order days after an attorney for former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort gave a statement outside the federal courthouse attacking the special counsel investigation and defending his client to reporters in November 2017.

Stone has repeatedly denied any contact with Russia or WikiLeaks. He has said he had no advance knowledge of what material WikiLeaks held, adding that predictions he made about the group’s plans were based on Assange’s public comments and tips from associates.

Stone and WikiLeaks and Assange have said they never communicated with each other.

The seven-count indictment against Stone asserts that after the election, he lied in congressional testimony about his activities and efforts to learn about the release of potentially damaging emails and that he attempted to persuade another witness, identified only as “Person 2,” to refuse to talk to the House Intelligence Committee.

People close to the case said Person 2 is New York comedian Randy Credico. A lawyer for Credico, Martin Stolar, has declined to comment.

Rosalind S. Helderman, Lori Rozsa and Manuel Roig-Franzia contributed to this report.

#donald trump #u.s. news #politics #trump administration #legal issues #president donald trump #trump #trump scandals #russia investigation #2016 election #politics and government #white house #robert mueller #roger stone

0 notes

xtruss · 4 years

Text

Trump Goes on Clemency Spree, and the List is Long

Trump commutes sentence of ex-Illinois Governor Blagojevich and pardons ex-NYPD commissioner Bernie Kerik, among others.

“Yes, we commuted the sentence of Rod Blagojevich,” Trump told reporters. “He served eight years in jail, a long time. He seems like a very nice person, don’t know him.” — L.A. Times

Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich makes a statement to reporters outside his Chicago home one day before reporting to federal prison in Colorado to serve a 14-year sentence for corruption

United States President Donald Trump has gone on a clemency blitz, commuting the 14-year prison sentence of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich and pardoning former New York Police Department Commissioner Bernie Kerik, among a long list of others.

Trump also told reporters that he has pardoned financier Michael Milken, who pleaded guilty for violating US securities laws and served two years in prison in the early 1990s. Trump also pardoned Edward DeBartolo Jr, the former San Francisco 49ers owner who was convicted in a gambling fraud scandal and who built one of the most successful National Football League teams in the game's history.

Blagojevich, who appeared on Trump's reality TV show, Celebrity Apprentice, was convicted of political corruption, including seeking to sell an appointment to Barack Obama's old US Senate seat and trying to shake down a children's hospital.

But Trump said he had been subjected to a "ridiculous sentence" that didn't fit his crimes.

Kerik served just over three years for tax fraud and lying to the White House while being interviewed to be secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

"We have Bernie Kerik, we have Mike Milken, who's gone around and done an incredible job," Trump said, adding that Milken had "paid a big price".

Earlier, the White House announced that Trump had pardoned DeBartolo Jr, who was involved in one of the biggest owners' scandals in US football's history. In 1998, he pleaded guilty to failing to report a felony when he paid $400,000 to former Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards in exchange for a riverboat gambling licence.

He also pardoned Ariel Friedler, a technology entrepreneur, who pleaded guilty to accessing a computer without authorisation; Paul Pogue, a construction company owner who underpaid his taxes; David Safavian, who was convicted of obstructing an investigation into a trip he took while he was a senior government official; and Angela Stanton, an author who served a six-month home sentence for her role in a stolen vehicle ring.

Poll-Tested Clemency

Blagojevich, a Democrat who hails from a state with a long history of pay-to-play schemes, exhausted his last appellate option in 2018 and had seemed destined to remain behind bars until his projected 2024 release date. His wife, Patti, went on a media blitz in 2018 to encourage Trump to step in, praising the president and likening the investigation of her husband to special prosecutor Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election - a probe Trump long characterised as a "witch-hunt".

Blagojevich's conviction was notable, even in a state where four of the last 10 governors have gone to prison for corruption. Judge James Zagel - who in 2011 sentenced Blagojevich to the longest prison term yet for an Illinois politician - said when a governor "goes bad, the fabric of Illinois is torn and disfigured".

Blagojevich became the brunt of jokes for foul-mouthed rants on wiretaps released after his December 9, 2008 arrest while still governor. On the most notorious recording, he gushes about profiting by naming someone to the seat Obama vacated to become president: "I've got this thing and it's f****** golden. And I'm just not giving it up for f****** nothing."

When Trump publicly broached the idea in May 2018 of intervening to free Blagojevich, he downplayed the former governor's crimes. He said Blagojevich was convicted for "being stupid, saying things that every other politician, you know, that many other politicians say". He said Blagojevich's sentence was too harsh.

A court reporter looks at a quote taken from a recorded conversation by former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich during his impeachment trial

Prosecutors have balked at the notion long fostered by Blagojevich that he engaged in common political horse-trading and was a victim of an overzealous US attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald said after Blagojevich's arrest that the governor had gone on "a political corruption crime spree" that would make Abraham Lincoln turn over in his grave.

Mueller - a subject of Trump's derision - was FBI director during the investigation into Blagojevich. Fitzgerald is now a private attorney for another former FBI director, James Comey, whom Trump dismissed from the agency in May 2017.

Trump also expressed some sympathy for Blagojevich when he appeared on Celebrity Apprentice in 2010 before his first corruption trial started. As Trump "fired" Blagojevich as a contestant, he praised him for how he was fighting his criminal case, telling him: "You have a hell of a lot of guts."

He later poll-tested the matter, asking for a show of hands of those who supported clemency at an October, 2019 fundraiser at his Chicago hotel. Most of the 200 to 300 attendees raised their hands, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing several people at the event.

Blagojevich testified at his 2011 retrial, describing himself as a flawed dreamer grounded in his parents' working-class values. He sought to humanise himself to counteract the blunt, profane, seemingly greedy Blagojevich heard on wiretap recordings played in court by prosecutors over several weeks. He said the hours of FBI recordings were the ramblings of a politician who liked to think out loud.

But jurors accepted evidence that Blagojevich demanded a $50,000 donation from the head of a children's hospital in return for increased state support, and extorted $100,000 in donations from two horse-racing tracks and a racing executive in exchange for quick approval of legislation the tracks' owners wanted.

He was originally convicted on 18 counts, including lying to the FBI, wire fraud for trying to trade an appointment to the Obama seat for contributions, and for the attempted extortion of a children's hospital executive. The 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago in 2015 tossed out five of 18 counts against Blagojevich, including ones in which he offered to appoint someone to a high-paying job in the US Senate.

The appeals court ordered the trial judge to resentence Blagojevich, but suggested it would be appropriate to hand him the same sentence, given the gravity of the crimes. Blagojevich appeared via live video from prison during the 2016 resentencing and asked for leniency. The judge gave him the same 14-year term, saying it was below federal guidelines when he imposed it the first time.

Blagojevich had once aspired to run for president himself but entered the Federal Correctional Institution Englewood in suburban Denver in 2012, disgraced and broke. Court documents filed by his lawyers in 2016 portrayed Blagojevich - known as brash in his days as governor - as humble and self-effacing, as well as an insightful life coach and lecturer on everything from the Civil War to Richard Nixon. Blagojevich, an Elvis Presley fan, also formed a prison band called The Jailhouse Rockers.

— SOURCE: AP NEWS AGENCY

0 notes