Jaworski served as President of both the Texas Bar Association (1962–1963) and the American Bar Association (1971–1972) prior to his appointment as Special Prosecutor. He was also President of the Houston Chamber of Commerce in 1960 and served on many corporate and civic boards.
After starting out defending bootleggers during Prohibition, in 1931, he joined the Houston law firm that became Fulbright & Jaworski, one of the largest law firms in the United States. Jaworski served as President of both the Texas Bar Association (1962–1963) and the American Bar Association (1971–1972) prior to his appointment as Special Prosecutor. He was also President of the Houston Chamber of Commerce in 1960 and served on many corporate and civic boards.
Jaworski's greatest fame came from his tenure as Watergate Special Prosecutor, when he assumed leadership of a protracted contest with President Nixon to secure evidence for the trial of former senior administration officials on charges relating to the Watergate cover-up.
Jaworski subsequently subpoenaed sixty-four taped conversations. Nixon appealed on two grounds: first, that the office of Special Prosecutor did not have the right to sue the office of President; and second, that the requested materials were privileged presidential conversations.
In the summer of 1982, seven members of the grand jury choose to break their oath of silence because "they [were] convinced justice was not done" and discussed their 30-month service with the ABC news show 20/20. They stated they wanted to bring an indictment against Pres. Nixon after hearing the batch of tapes released the Summer of 1974. One grand juror stated that in a straw vote, "There were 19 people in the grand-jury room that particular day, and we all raised our hands about wanting an indictment—all of us. And some of us raised both hands." However, Jaworski did not favor an indictment, even going so far as saying he would not sign one. In discussions with the grand jury, Jaworski cited "the trauma of the country," and prior to Nixon's resignation, the lack of precedent for indicting a sitting president.
After the war, Jaworski served as a war crimes prosecutor in Germany. He was involved in a case where eleven German civilians were accused of murdering six American airmen forced down over Germany in the RĂĽsselsheim massacre. However, he declined to participate in the Nuremberg Trials on the grounds that the prosecution there was based on laws that did not exist at the time of the culpable acts.
He supported Richard Nixon and voted for him twice, contributed to George H.W. Bush in his campaign for the presidency in 1980, and after Bush conceded the nomination he became treasurer of "Democrats for Reagan " during the 1980 general election campaign. Having been convinced of his integrity, in 1980, Jaworski aided former Nixon staffer Egil ...
Nixon had ordered Richardson to fire Cox, but he refused and resigned, as did Ruckelshaus when Nixon then asked him to dismiss the special prosecutor. Bork agreed to fire Cox and an immediate uproar ensued. This series of resignations and firings became known as the Saturday Night Massacre and outraged the public and the media.
The Watergate scandal involved the bungled burglary of the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate apartment complex in Washington, D.C., on June 23, 1972. It was eventually learned that the cover-up went all the way to the White House; President Nixon, facing impeachment, resigned from the presidency in August 1974.
After the failure of the Stennis Compromise, Nixon ordered Richardson to dismiss Cox. Richardson refused and resigned, as did his deputy, Ruckelshaus. Bork ultimately was the one to fire Cox.
Three days after the tapes’ existence became known to the public, Nixon resigned from the presidency.
Most plausible, according to Drew, is Ehrlichman's allegation that Nixon personally erased the tapes, presumably because they contained yet more discussion of a cover-up. Three days after the tapes’ existence became known to the public, Nixon resigned from the presidency.
The reaction to the events was furious. "It was a terrifying night," Elizabeth Drew, a veteran reporter who covered Watergate at the time, told me in a 2014 interview. "It felt like we were in a banana republic."
The White House finally complied, and on August 5 they released what became known as the "smoking gun" recording, in which Haldeman and Nixon, days after the break-in, discuss using the CIA to hamper the FBI's investigative efforts.
While the Kennedy and Johnson White Houses had sometimes taped presidential meetings, the Nixon administration was the first and only one to record the president's activity so completely (though his bedroom and residences in San Clemente and Key Biscayne were not taped). So the tapes represented the single best source of evidence into the White House's involvement in the break-in.
That hardly solved Nixon’s problems. Instead, it only accelerated public interest and outrage at the brewing scandal over the Watergate cover-up; while Nixon had acted privately in the past to try to keep his team’s break-in to the DNC's offices in the Watergate under wraps, this was a very public, and very brazen, attempt to derail efforts to investigate the crime.
U.S. Attorney General Elliot Richardson had appointed Cox in May 1973 after promising the House Judiciary Committee that he would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the events surrounding the break-in of the Democratic National Committee's offices at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., on June 17, 1972.
Leon Jaworski was appointed as the new special prosecutor on November 1, 1973, and on November 14, 1973, United States District Judge Gerhard Gesell ruled that the dismissal had been illegal. The Saturday Night Massacre marked the turning point of the Watergate scandal as the public, while increasingly uncertain about Nixon's actions in Watergate, ...
Nixon's presidency succumbed to mounting pressure resulting from the Watergate scandal and its cover-up. Faced with almost certain impeachment and conviction, Nixon resigned. In his posthumously published memoirs, Bork said Nixon promised him the next seat on the Supreme Court following Bork's role in firing Cox.
Saturday Night Massacre. United States v. Nixon. The Saturday Night Massacre was a series of events that took place in the United States on the evening of Saturday, October 20, 1973, during the Watergate scandal. U.S. President Richard Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox;
The Final Days (book, film) Dick (1999 film) Mark Felt: The Man who Brought. Down the White House (2017 film) Slow Burn (2020 series) v. t. e. The Saturday Night Massacre was a series of events that took place in the United States on the evening of Saturday, October 20, 1973, during the Watergate scandal.
citizens supported impeaching Nixon, with 44% in favor, 43% opposed, and 13% undecided, with a sampling error of 2 to 3 per cent.
Origin of the phrase. The actual origin of the phrase is unknown; it first appeared in writing two days after the events, in a Washington Post article by David S. Broder on October 22, but even in that article, Broder writes that the events were already "being called" the Saturday Night Massacre.
At least one former Nixon administration official, his then-counsel, John W. Dean, has cautioned Trump to learn from Nixon's mistakes. Dean — who was charged with obstruction of justice, served four months in prison and eventually became a key witness for the prosecution in the Watergate scandal — previously tweeted at Trump, "Cover-ups don't get easier as they proceed."
Kissinger, now 93, was one of Nixon's closest advisers and met with him after the Saturday Night Massacre.
Roger Stone, a Republican operative and longtime Trump ally, cut his teeth working for Nixon, David Greenberg said.
Mr. Smith called on Congress to reestablish the special prosecutor’s office. A former American Bar Association president, Leon Jaworksi, became the new special prosecutor and continued to probe presidential abuse of power. Mr. Smith recalled, in a 1999 interview with the Associated Press, that “the justice system was being torn down by Nixon’s ...
July 18, 2003. Chesterfield Smith, 85, a prominent Florida lawyer who, as president of the American Bar Association in 1973, became a critic of President Richard Nixon’s efforts to avoid the stains of the Watergate scandal, died July 16 in a hospital in Coral Gables, Fla., after a heart attack. Mr. Smith, who was the bar association’s president in ...
Nixon also abolished the special prosecutor’s office. The day after what became known as the “Saturday Night Massacre,” Mr. Smith, a longtime corporate lawyer who had supported Nixon’s 1968 and 1972 presidential campaigns, released an American Bar Association statement.