At the height of the Watergate scandal, as Richard Nixon prepared to resign, the then-president still had a handful of unyielding Republican allies. One of them, Rep. Earl Landgrebe of Indiana, was asked about his perspective the day before Nixon left the White House in disgrace.
“Don’t confuse me with the facts,” the then-congressman told reporters. “I’ve got a closed mind.”
The comments came to mind again yesterday watching House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan on “Meet the Press.” NBC News reported:
Rep. Jim Jordan, the head of the Judiciary Committee, argued Sunday that federal agencies were handling President Joe Biden’s and former President Donald Trump’s classified documents cases differently. In an interview with Chuck Todd on NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” Jordan, R-Ohio, suggested that there was a double standard between the discovery of classified documents held by Trump at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida and the vice presidential papers found at Biden’s Delaware home and a Washington office.
The Ohio congressman, who’s more frequently seen on media outlets aligned with Republican politics, will lead his party’s new panel on the “weaponization” of federal powers, and he was eager to make the case that his initiative has merit. Jordan noted, for example, the FBI “raided the home of a former president 91 days before an election.”
First, it wasn’t a “raid.” Second, the search was executed at a glorified country club, not a house. Third, it was ahead of an election in which Trump wasn’t on the ballot.
But as the “Meet the Press” host was quick to remind his guest, the contextual details matter, too.
“There was nine months between the initial action. … the [National] Archives requested documents before they even turned it over to the Justice Department,” Todd explained. “The subpoena was issued 60 days before they actually executed a search warrant.”
The host went on to point to a series of…
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