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The family moved to New York City, where Nixon became a senior partner in the leading law firm Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie & Alexander.
Cox rejected the offer. Then, in a series of episodes that came to be known as the Saturday Night Massacre, Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Cox, and Richardson resigned rather than comply. Nixon then fired Richardson’s assistant, William Ruckelshaus, when he too refused to fire Cox.
He was succeeded by Gerald Ford, whom Nixon had appointed vice president in 1973 after Spiro Agnew resigned his office amid charges of bribery, extortion and tax evasion during his tenure as governor of Maryland. Nixon was pardoned by President Ford on September 8, 1974.
Though achieving some success in domestic politics, most of President Nixon's first term was dominated by foreign affairs and, most notably, the Vietnam War. His administration successfully negotiated the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT), designed to deter the Soviet Union from launching a first strike.
These articles charged Nixon with: 1) obstruction of justice in attempting to impede the investigation of the Watergate break-in, protect those responsible, and conceal the existence of other illegal activities; 2) abuse of power by using the office of the presidency on multiple occasions, dating back to the first year ...
New York City, U.S. Nixon was born into a poor family of Quakers in a small town in Southern California. He graduated from Duke Law School in 1937, practiced law in California, then moved with his wife Pat to Washington in 1942 to work for the federal government.
President Richard Nixon made an address to the American public from the Oval Office on August 8, 1974, to announce his resignation from the presidency due to the Watergate scandal.
Nixon, 418 U.S. 683 (1974), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case that resulted in a unanimous decision against President Richard Nixon, ordering him to deliver tape recordings and other subpoenaed materials to a federal district court.
On June 17, 1972, police arrested burglars in the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. Evidence linked the break-in to President Richard Nixon's re-election campaign.
Major Events of 1972Summit meeting.Arab terrorists murder 11 people at the Olympic games.Britain takes direct control over Northern Ireland.President Richard Nixon visits China.SALT Agreement.Congressman Ford is sworn in as Vice President.Managua is leveled by an earthquake.
Nixon received almost 18 million more votes than McGovern, and he holds the record for the widest popular vote margin in any post–World War II United States presidential election. The 1972 presidential election was the first since the ratification of the 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18.
The House Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment against Nixon for obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress. With his complicity in the cover-up made public and his political support completely eroded, Nixon resigned from office on August 9, 1974.
In the year 1973, U.S. unemployment was 5.6%, the average family income was $12,900, and a new house cost around $32,500. The retail price for a gallon of gas averaged 39 cents, the minimum wage was $1.60 per hour, and an ounce of gold cost $106.48.
Immediately after this Act was enacted, Richard Nixon filed a lawsuit in a federal district court claiming that the Act violated the principle of separation of powers, the principle of presidential privilege, Nixon's personal privacy, his First Amendment right of association, and further asserted that it amounted to a ...
Unanimous decision The Court held that neither the doctrine of separation of powers, nor the generalized need for confidentiality of high-level communications, without more, can sustain an absolute, unqualified, presidential privilege.
President Nixon argued that he did not have to turn in the tapes because of executive privilege meaning he was able to keep certain things private.
Richard Nixon was the 37th president of the United States. He was a Republican, and he held the presidency from 1969 to 1974. Nixon became the firs...
As U.S. president, Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency, proposed an affirmative action program in federal employment, expande...
During the Watergate scandal, Richard Nixon and his administration were discovered to have been involved in a burglary attempt at the Democratic Na...
Richard Nixon, arguably, tried to prolong the Vietnam War during the 1968 presidential campaign in an effort to win the presidency. Once he became...
Gerald Ford succeeded Richard Nixon as U.S. president after Nixon resigned. He was Nixon’s second vice president. President Ford’s earliest acts in...
Instead, he returned to California and was admitted to the California bar in 1937. He began practicing in Whittier with the law firm Wingert and Bewley, working on commercial litigation for local petroleum companies and other corporate matters, as well as on wills. In later years, Nixon proudly said he was the only modern president to have previously worked as a practicing attorney. Nixon was reluctant to work on divorce cases, disliking frank sexual talk from women. In 1938, he opened up his own branch of Wingert and Bewley in La Habra, California, and became a full partner in the firm the following year.
A member of the Republican Party, Nixon previously served as the 36th vice president from 1953 to 1961, having risen to national prominence as a representative and senator from California.
In a three-way race between Nixon, Humphrey, and American Independent Party candidate former Alabama Governor George Wallace, Nixon defeated Humphrey by nearly 500,000 votes (seven-tenths of a percentage point), with 301 electoral votes to 191 for Humphrey and 46 for Wallace.
When Nixon took office, about 300 American soldiers were dying each week in Vietnam, and the war was broadly unpopular in the United States, with ongoing violent protests against the war. The Johnson administration had agreed to suspend bombing in exchange for negotiations without preconditions, but this agreement never fully took force. According to Walter Isaacson, soon after taking office, Nixon had concluded that the Vietnam War could not be won and he was determined to end the war quickly. He sought some arrangement that would permit American forces to withdraw while leaving South Vietnam secure against attack.
Richard attended East Whittier Elementary School, where he was president of his eighth-grade class. His parents believed that attending Whittier High School had caused Richard's older brother, Harold, to live a dissolute lifestyle before he fell ill of tuberculosis (he died of it in 1933), so they sent Richard to the larger Fullerton Union High School. He had to ride a school bus for an hour each way during his freshman year and received excellent grades. Later, he lived with an aunt in Fullerton during the week. He played junior varsity football, and seldom missed a practice, though he was rarely used in games. He had greater success as a debater, winning a number of championships and taking his only formal tutelage in public speaking from Fullerton's Head of English, H. Lynn Sheller. Nixon later remembered Sheller's words, "Remember, speaking is conversation...don't shout at people. Talk to them. Converse with them." Nixon said he tried to use a conversational tone as much as possible.
Nixon had four brothers: Harold (1909–1933), Donald (1914–1987), Arthur (1918–1925), and Edward (1930–2019). Four of the five Nixon boys were named after kings who had ruled in medieval or legendary Britain; Richard, for example, was named after Richard the Lionheart.
In light of his loss of political support and the near-certainty that he would be impeached and removed from office , Nixon resigned the presidency on August 9, 1974, after addressing the nation on television the previous evening. The resignation speech was delivered from the Oval Office and was carried live on radio and television. Nixon said he was resigning for the good of the country and asked the nation to support the new president, Gerald Ford. Nixon went on to review the accomplishments of his presidency, especially in foreign policy. He defended his record as president, quoting from Theodore Roosevelt 's 1910 speech Citizenship in a Republic :
During the Watergate scandal, Richard Nixon and his administration were discovered to have been involved in a burglary attempt at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in 1972. After a heavily publicized investigation and televised hearings, Nixon was ordered by the Supreme Court to turn over tapes from the Oval Office ...
Gerald Ford succeeded Richard Nixon as U.S. president after Nixon resigned. He was Nixon’s second vice president. President Ford’s earliest acts included offering amnesty for those who had evaded the draft or deserted during the Vietnam War and pardoning Nixon for “all offenses against the United States.”.
Nixon also obstructed the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in its inquiry and authorized secret cash payments to the Watergate burglars in an effort to prevent them from implicating the administration. Several major newspapers investigated the possible involvement of the White House in the burglary.
At the Republican convention in 1952, Nixon won nomination as vice president on a ticket with Dwight D. Eisenhower, largely because of his anticommunist credentials but also because Republicans thought he could draw valuable support in the West. In the midst of the campaign, the New York Post reported that Nixon had been maintaining a secret “slush fund” provided by contributions from a group of southern California businessmen. Eisenhower was willing to give Nixon a chance to clear himself but emphasized that Nixon needed to emerge from the crisis “as clean as a hound’s tooth.” On September 23, 1952, Nixon delivered a nationally televised address, the so-called “ Checkers ” speech, in which he acknowledged the existence of the fund but denied that any of it had been used improperly. To demonstrate that he had not enriched himself in office, he listed his family’s financial assets and liabilities in embarrassing detail, noting that his wife, Pat, unlike the wives of so many Democratic politicians, did not own a fur coat but only “a respectable Republican cloth coat.” The speech is perhaps best remembered for its maudlin conclusion, in which Nixon admitted accepting one political gift—a cocker spaniel that his six-year-old daughter, Tricia, had named Checkers. “Regardless of what they say about it,” he declared, “we are going to keep it.” Although Nixon initially thought that the speech had been a failure, the public responded favourably, and a reassured Eisenhower told him, “You’re my boy.” The Eisenhower-Nixon ticket defeated the Democratic candidates, Adlai E. Stevenson and John Sparkman, with just under 34 million popular votes to their 27.3 million; the vote in the electoral college was 442 to 89.
Nixon spent his last years campaigning for American political support and financial aid for Russia and the other former Soviet republics. Nixon died of a massive stroke in New York City in April 1994, 10 months after his wife’s death from lung cancer. In ceremonies after his death, Pres. Bill Clinton and other dignitaries praised him for his diplomatic achievements. He was buried beside his wife at his birthplace.
Despite expectations from some observers that Nixon would be a “do-nothing” president, his administration undertook a number of important reforms in welfare policy, civil rights, law enforcement, the environment, and other areas.
Richard Nixon, arguably, tried to prolong the Vietnam War during the 1968 presidential campaign in an effort to win the presidency. Once he became president, he sought to establish enough stability in the region for the South Vietnamese government to take over. The result was an expanded U.S. military presence and increased military activity in neutral Cambodia. After hasty attempts of “ Vietnamization ”—the process of training and arming South Vietnamese troops for fighting alone after U.S. forces would pull out—all U.S. troops were evacuated by March 29, 1973.
His grades were excellent, at both Whittier College and Duke University's law school. His scholastic achievements were not enough, however, to get him the jobs he applied for with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and with several prestigious law firms. Nixon ended up in California, joining a Whittier law firm, ...
As vice president, Nixon burnished his reputation for foreign policy expertise with international travel to dozens of countries. His South American tour garnered international headlines when a mob in Caracas, Venezuela, stoned his motorcade.
Nixon spent much of 1961 writing a book, Six Crises, and contemplating his return to politics. In 1962, he ran for governor of California and lost big. After his last defeat, he held what he claimed was his "last press conference," angrily telling reporters, "You won't have Dick Nixon to kick around any more.".
Following Pearl Harbor, Nixon enlisted in the Navy. His naval career ended with the war and in 1945 he was looking for his next job just as a group of prominent Southern California Republicans were looking for a suitable congressional candidate.
Richard Nixon suffered two great personal losses as a young man: the deaths of his younger brother Arthur after a short illness and his older brother Harold after a long one. His school life brought a string of successes in endeavors common to politicians in training. He won debates and elections and leading roles in school dramatic productions.
Nixon won reelection in 1948 with the endorsement of both parties.
He was born in one small California town (Yorba Linda) and grew up in another (East Whittier). His parents were in some ways opposites—Frank Nixon was as ...
March 21, 1973. In a White House meeting, White House Counsel John Dean tells Nixon, “We have a cancer—within—close to the Presidency, that’s growing.”. He and Nixon discuss how to pay the Watergate bribers as much as $1 million in cash to continue the cover-up.
The Washington Post reports that Dean told Watergate prosecutors that he discussed the cover-up with Nixon at least 35 times. On June 25, Dean testifies before the Senate Select Committee about Nixon’s involvement.
The New York Times reports that McCord told the Senate Watergate Committee that a Republican group, the Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP) had made cash payoffs to the Watergate burglars.
The New York Times reports that McCord told the Senate Watergate Committee that a Republican group, the Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP) had made cash payoffs to the Watergate burglars.
In total, 41 people will receive criminal convictions related to the Watergate scandal.
An article in The Washington Post reports that a check for $25,000 earmarked for Nixon’s 1972 re-election campaign was deposited into the bank account of one of the men arrested for the Watergate break-in.
The Watergate Complex is an office-apartment-hotel building in the neighborhood of Foggy Bottom, Washington, DC., overlooking the Potomac River. Hoberman Collection/Corbis.
During his first meeting with Richard Nixon, Leonard Garment recalled, his senior partner was pretty clear about his vision for the firm. “He thought that what was right for him would also be good for the firm,” Garment said.
Nixon also proved highly adept at bringing in new clients. “For the young lawyers that wonder how business is gotten—it isn’t done always directly,” Nixon said . “It’s a matter of fact the most effective way is indirectly.”.
In 1959, Nixon was visiting Moscow when he and Soviet leader Khrushchev made a joint appearance at the American National Exhibition at Sokolniki Park. The exhibition was held to promote cultural understanding between Russians and Americans, but the two leaders took the opportunity to engage in an impromptu debate that started inside the kitchen of an American-style display house and continued all over the showroom floor, with the two men gesticulating and jabbing fingers at each other while reporters and photographers recorded everything. When they got to the Pepsi-Cola stand (which featured two different Pepsi drinks: one made in the United States and one made with Russian water), that’s when it happened.
In 1963, firm partners billed an average of 857 hours each, a decrease from 1962, when partners billed 929 hours each. In 1964, however, average partner billable hours shot up to 1,119 hours and hit 1,251 the following year. Nixon Mudge associates were likewise busy, seeing their average hours shoot up during that three-year span from approximately 1,500 hours a year to over 1,700.
Richard Milhous Nixon bounced back from election defeats by parlaying his legal career in New York City into a platform for the 1968 election, which he won as the Republican candidate. Photograph by Getty Images. As a result of this increase in business, Nixon’s partners at the firm saw their bank accounts swell.
According to a Price Waterhouse study, average operating income per partner increased from $46,150 in 1963 to $68,110 in 1964. The study, which compared Nixon Mudge to a group of 49 large firms in the United States, ...
This edited excerpt looks at how Nixon’s role as public partner at the firm was the ideal platform as he looked to reinvent himself after election losses in 1960 and ’62. Having his own firm gave Nixon access to deep-pocketed clients, allowed him to travel internationally and burnish his foreign policy credentials and, most importantly, ...
After Watergate, schools began to make legal ethics a required class. Bar examinations added an extra section on ethics. And nearly all states started requiring lawyers to attend annual continuing legal education programs focused on ethics and professional conduct.
In a 1998 law review article tracing attitudes toward lawyers, Marc Galanter, now a professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that public regard for lawyers was at an all-time high in the 1960s, when lawyers were viewed as fighting for justice and civil rights in real life and in the movies.
The large number of “discredited lawyers who figured so prominently among the Watergate villains” accelerated the decline in the public’s opinion of the profession, Galanter wrote.
But in the winter of 1971, Krogh refused to approve additional wiretaps sought by Liddy and the Plumbers. Eventually Krogh was re assigned to the post of undersecretary of Transportation. Krogh and Dean admit they were too young, too naive, too willing to do anything for their president.
The Kutak commission recommended that lawyers representing an organization be allowed to disclose confidential information concerning officers or employees who are violating the law.
Watergate clearly—and perhaps permanently—undermined public trust and confidence in government and its leaders. But the scandal also spurred a significant decline in public opinion of lawyers from which the profession has never fully recovered.
Dean tried to persuade Ehrlichman and Attorney General Richard Kleindienst that they needed to hire a criminal defense attorney to help them navigate their decision-making.
Following his resignation, the Nixons flew to their home La Casa Pacifica in San Clemente, California. According to his biographer, Jonathan Aitken, "Nixon was a soul in torment" after his resignation. Congress had funded Nixon's transition costs, including some salary expenses, though reducing the appropriation from $850,000 to $200,000. With some of his staff still with him, Nixon was at his d…