Is It Watergate Redux For Lawyers?

It’s time for a history lesson from the Watergate days, 50 years ago, but first a quiz: how many lawyers were convicted of various crimes due to their involvement in any or all aspects of the Watergate scandal? You need more than the fingers on one hand, and the lawyers mentioned below are not all of them. And this list does not include former President Richard Nixon, who resigned and subsequently was pardoned by his successor, President Gerald Ford. Here are the main culprits….

John Ehrlichman was assistant to the president on domestic matters. He practiced in Seattle before joining the Nixon administration. Convicted of conspiracy to obstruct justice and perjury, he served 18 months in the federal pen. A graduate of Stanford Law, he was disbarred in Washington state. Nixon’s chief of staff, H. R. “Bob” Haldeman, was not a lawyer.

Then there was John Dean, White House counsel, whose testimony before the Watergate Committee (composed of Republicans and Democrats who worked together — what a fanciful concept today) riveted the nation, especially when he testified that he had told Nixon that there was a “cancer growing on the presidency.” Dean served four months in federal prison after pleading guilty to obstruction of justice. A graduate of Georgetown Law, he was disbarred in Virginia and now serves, among other activities, as a commentator on various media outlets.

And John Mitchell, attorney general from 1969 to 1972 when he resigned to become chair of Nixon’s reelection campaign, the Committee to Reelect the President, aka CREEP, an apt acronym as it turned out.) It was Mitchell, Nixon’s former law partner, who approved the use of $250,000 from a secret campaign fund to pay for the Watergate break-in. Convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and perjury for lying to a grand jury, Mitchell served 19 months in the federal pokey.

A Fordham University School of Law graduate, Mitchell was disbarred from both the New York Bar and the U.S. Supreme Court Bar. He’s also known (at least in my mind and others) for his comment about Katharine Graham, then the publisher of the Washington Post. When the Post’s Carl Bernstein was preparing a story about the Watergate break-in, he asked for comment from Mitchell after Bernstein had read him the first two paragraphs. Mitchell interrupted, screaming, “All that, you’re putting it in the paper? It’s all been denied. Katie Graham … is gonna get her tit caught in a big fat wringer if that’s published.”

Although Mitchell’s wife, Martha, was not an attorney and was told to keep away from the media, she did not do so, and was mocked and discredited for her truth-telling about Watergate. She was a whistleblower, who called for Nixon to resign in May 1973, a full 14 months before he did so. She spoke truth to power and paid dearly for it.

Donald Segretti was a graduate of UC Berkeley Law and was the attorney for CREEP. He ran a dirty tricks campaign against Democrats. Segretti pleaded guilty to three misdemeanor counts of distributing illegal campaign literature. He served four and a half months in custody. His California bar license was suspended for two years, and he subsequently ran for a judgeship, but withdrew after his Watergate participation became a campaign distraction.

Gordon Liddy got his law degree from Fordham University School of Law. A former prosecutor and FBI agent, Liddy was general counsel to CREEP. He directed the Watergate break-in and was convicted of conspiracy, burglary, and illegally wiretapping the Democratic Party’s headquarters at the Watergate Hotel. He was also convicted of conspiracy in the burglary of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office, and contempt of court. (Daniel Ellsberg had leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times to the outrage of the Nixon administration.) Liddy served four and a half years in federal prison after President Jimmy Carter commuted his 20-year sentence. Liddy was disbarred in New York.

Charles Colson was special counsel to Nixon and a graduate of George Washington University Law School. He served seven months in federal prison after pleading guilty to charges of obstruction of justice for attempting to defame Ellsberg. He was disbarred both in Virginia and D.C.

Watergate was peopled with lawyers. Two senators from the opposite sides of the aisle served together as Chair and Vice Chair of the Watergate Committee: Sam Ervin of North Carolina (he of the bushy eyebrows and an encyclopedic knowledge of the Constitution, who portrayed himself as just a country lawyer) and Howard Baker of Tennessee, who asked the seminal question at the hearings: “What did the president know and when did he know it?”

Consider the times then, and you notice there were no women in the Watergate rogues gallery. I mention that because of the three pleas so far by attorneys in the Georgia election interference case, two of the three are women: Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis. The third is Kenneth Chesebro.

Also under indictment but yet to either enter a plea or announce they’re ready for trial are these peeps, some of whom need no introduction: Rudy Giuliani; John Eastman, presently trying to salvage his California bar license; Jeffrey Clark, a former high-ranking figure in the DOJ, whose name came up time and again in the January 6 investigation; Ray Smith, an attorney for Trump’s 2020 election campaign in Georgia, accused of various charges; and Georgia attorney Robert Cheeley, accused of multiple conspiracy counts and other charges.

It was Ehrlichman who said of then acting FBI director L. Patrick Gray, “let him twist slowly, slowly in the wind.” Place your bets as to whether you think the same fate may await our former president in the Georgia election interference case.

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Jill Switzer has been an active member of the State Bar of California for over 40 years. She remembers practicing law in a kinder, gentler time. She’s had a diverse legal career, including stints as a deputy district attorney, a solo practice, and several senior in-house gigs. She now mediates full-time, which gives her the opportunity to see dinosaurs, millennials, and those in-between interact — it’s not always civil. You can reach her by email at [email protected].