The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol held its first hearing to present what it has learned during its almost year-long probe. Three scholars analyze the event.
Chairman of the Senate Watergate Committee Sam Ervin sits with Chief Counsel Sam Dash, Sen. Howard Baker, staffer Rufus Edmiston and others as they listen to a witness during the Watergate hearings.
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The public hearings of the House Jan. 6 investigative committee will deal with unprecedented events in American history, but the very investigation of these events has strong precedent.
A view of the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C.
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The Republican Party has a decadeslong relationship with using distrust to incite its base and draw in more supporters – the Jan. 6 Capitol attacks just offer the latest example of this tactic.
A man protesting in New York City one year after the violent insurrection in Washington, D.C.
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Criminal charges against former President Donald Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot could spark political consequences – not only for Trump, but for US democracy.
U.S. Reps. Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney, chair and vice chair of the committee investigating the Capitol insurrection, after voting to hold Steve Bannon in criminal contempt.
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Donald Trump asked his former presidential aides not to testify before a congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection – testing the limits of congressional oversight.
Former South African president Jacob Zuma.
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Press-bashing was a feature of the years Trump was president. But a new, more constructive kind of press criticism has also emerged that aims to improve journalism, not delegitimize it.
On Aug. 9, 1974, Nixon announced his resignation from the presidency.
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After release of tape recordings in which Nixon ordered the Watergate coverup, he resigned under pressure by congressional Republicans. Today’s GOP had a different response to the Trump tape.
Republican lawmakers are seen as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) oversees a vote on the second article of impeachment against President Donald Trump in the House of Representatives, Dec. 18, 2019.
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An expert on Watergate says that today’s House Republicans have taken precisely the opposite position than the GOP took in 1974 on the president’s power to withhold documents from Congress.
The U.S. Capitol, where the vote to impeach President Trump is expected to take place.
AP/J. Scott Applewhite
The impeachment vote is the latest, and most extreme, example of a power struggle between the executive branch and Congress that has existed since George Washington was president.
Congress and President Trump are engaged in a power struggle that historically has been avoided by the courts.
AP/J. Scott Applewhite
President Trump refuses to provide information to lawmakers in the impeachment inquiry. But courts have been reluctant to take such cases for fear of upsetting the government’s balance of power.
Halloween can also be a time of expression of cultural and social anxieties.
AP Photo/Richard Vogel
In the early 1970s, rumors about poisoned candy on Halloween led to mass paranoia. A historian explains why such fears emerge – and what, in reality, feeds them.
Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani in late November 2016, after Trump won the presidential election.
AP/Carolyn Kaster
A former congressional staffer says withholding damning evidence from Congress and using civilians to carry out presidential or intelligence agency agendas links the Ukraine crisis to other scandals.
On Aug. 9, 1974, Richard M. Nixon resigned and left the White House.
AP/Chick Harrity
President Trump has invoked executive privilege to stymie congressional investigators. Another president, Richard Nixon, did the same thing. It helped Nixon hold onto power – but only for a while.
Special counsel Robert Mueller reached no definitive conclusion about whether President Donald Trump obstructed justice in firing FBI Director James Comey or attacking his own investigation.
Reuters/Hyungwon Kang, AP Photo/Susan Walsh, Reuters/Jonathan Ernst, Twitter
Legally, a person can obstruct justice even if he committed no other crime – though it is harder to prove. It all depends on the intent behind pressuring investigators, say, or firing an FBI director.
Will the public ever see a report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller?
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Will the public ever see a report from Robert Mueller’s investigation of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia? Maybe not. There are big legal hurdles to making it public.
Trump before delivering the State of the Union address with Pelosi and Pence.
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Four scholars weigh in on President Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech, exploring his statements on immigration, childhood poverty, the border wall and the investigations into his campaign.
There is one area where the Trump presidency has already been more successful than any in living memory: exposing the weaknesses of the American constitutional order.
And if President Trump is removed from office? Meet President Pence.
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The claim of “resistance” inside the White House offers the possibility of government by Trump appointees who prefer to keep their positions rather than publicly denounce a man they disapprove of.