AFP PHOTO / SAUL LOEB (Photo credit should read SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images) SAUL LOEB/AFP/AFP/Getty Imagesĭonald Trump thinks he can beat Robert Mueller at his own game US President Donald Trump gestures as he holds a press conference with the French president following meetings at the Elysee Palace in Paris, on July 13, 2017, during the US president's 24-hour trip that coincides with France's national day and the 100th anniversary of US involvement in World War I.ĭonald Trump arrived in Paris for a presidential visit filled with Bastille Day pomp and which the White House hopes will offer respite from rolling scandal backing home. “You must pursue this investigation even if it leads to the president,” Nixon said, and his eyes met Richardson’s. Nixon told him that the investigation must be thorough and complete, though there might be some areas of national security that would have to be left alone. Still, he needed Richardson, with his impeccable reputation, to redeem his Justice Department and take charge of the Watergate investigation. The slow, winding rhetoric that weighed down his conversation drove the president to distraction. Richardson’s chilly, formal manner evoked the Eastern, academic establishment that Nixon despised.

The president invited him to a Camp David meeting that turned out to be part of the Watergate cover-up: He wanted to ensure that Richardson would be an ally in a new Watergate investigation. In April 1973, Nixon persuaded Richardson, his defense secretary, to switch departments and become the attorney general. A retelling of the episode, adapted from “The Final Days,” as we called our book on the president’s last year, can illuminate the stakes. Nixon didn’t know it at the time, but the Saturday Night Massacre would become a pivot point in his presidency – crucial to the charge that he’d obstructed justice. We covered that eerily similar confrontation for The Washington Post 45 years ago. No wonder many people are making comparisons to the Saturday Night Massacre of 1973, when President Richard Nixon fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox, and Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus resigned. He constantly complains about the investigation in private and reportedly asked his White House counsel to have Mueller fired. President Donald Trump insists it’s all a “witch hunt” and an unfair examination of his family’s personal finances. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s mission is a comprehensive look at Russian meddling in the 2016 election – and any other crimes he uncovers in the process. A powerful and determined President is squaring off against an independent investigator operating inside the Justice Department.

The final days woodward and bernstein