Ex-Watergate prosecutor says evidence in impeachment inquiry ‘clearly’ points to Trump

A prosecutor who investigated former President Nixon during the Watergate scandal said the evidence in the impeachment inquiry launched against President Trump differs from Nixon’s impeachment investigation because the allegations of wrongdoing all point directly toward Trump. 

Former prosecutor Nick Akerman told The Washington Post that, during the Watergate scandal, prosecutors struggled to pinpoint Nixon’s role in the allegations of wrongdoing leveled at the White House. 

“Here, you’ll have that in spades,” Akerman said. “All these individuals, all testifying that this is what happened … it’s just cascading at this point.” 

{mosads}A slate of Trump aides and appointees have testified before lawmakers since House Democrats launched the impeachment inquiry against Trump last month. 

George Kent, the deputy assistant secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs, spoke to lawmakers at the Capitol Tuesday in a closed-door testimony about the president’s contacts with Ukraine.

On Wednesday, Michael McKinley, a former top adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, arrived at the Capitol to discuss Pompeo’s role in the Trump administration pressuring Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.

Fiona Hill, a former special assistant to the president who specialized in European and Russian affairs, testified Monday that Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland pursued a “shadow campaign,” dictating policy on Ukraine.

Former Ukraine special envoy Kurt Volker and former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch also offered testimonies about the impeachment inquiry to lawmakers, among others like Sondland.  

Akerman alleged that, unlike Nixon’s loyal team of aides and employees, Trump’s allies may not be as open to guarding the president’s contacts with Ukraine.

“This is a situation where you’ve got a lot of people who are career people, extremely smart people who certainly don’t want their reputations smeared,” Akerman said. “Trump had to use these foreign services people and professionals. He didn’t speak Ukrainian and Russian. He couldn’t communicate his threat without these people. He was forced to use people whose loyalty was to the U.S. government and Constitution and not to him.”

He said the common theme among all of the witnesses, whether or not they are a Trump ally, is that “You’ve got Trump clearly involved.”

Democrats launched an impeachment inquiry into Trump late last month after a whistleblower complaint emerged alleging that Trump held up hundreds of millions in aid to Ukraine in exchange that the Ukrainian president “look into” the Bidens. No evidence of criminal wrongdoing from the Bidens has emerged.