Watergate prosecutor says the evidence against Trump is even clearer than the evidence against Nixon

(Image credit: Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images)

last updated 18 October 2019

Even former President Richard Nixon may have been better off than President Trump is now.

As evidence of Watergate wrongdoing started to catch up with Nixon, he still had one important asset: a loyal inner circle. But Trump is losing his aides left and right, leaving Trump in a situation that's "just cascading at this point," Nixon prosecutor Nick Akerman tells The Washington Post.

Like Trump, Nixon initially claimed he had no role in his Watergate scandal. But in Nixon's case, prosecutors had a hard time figuring out just how closely the president was tied to criminal activity because his devoted aides wouldn't give up the gun. In Trump's case, though, "you'll have that in spades," Akerman tells the Post. "All these individuals, all testifying that this is what happened. ... It's just cascading at this point," he continued.

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There's a reason Trump's officials are so willing to spill the beans. Since Trump couldn't speak Ukrainian and Russian and isn't too politically experienced, he had to use a lot of foreign service officials to accomplish his goals that allegedly involved wrongdoing. They're largely "career people, extremely smart people who certainly don’t want their reputations smeared," so they're loyal "to the U.S. government and Constitution and not to [Trump]," Akerman said. And each time another one testifies, Akerman says it reveals "you've got Trump clearly involved."

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Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.

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