“A Heartbeat Away, The Investigation and Resignation of Vice-President Spiro Agnew,” was authored by journalists Jules Witcover and Richard Cohen, in 1974, and it told the tale of how Spiro Agnew was compelled to vacate his office after pleading guilty to tax evasion for his failure to pay income tax on the numerous bribes and kickbacks that he received while governor of Maryland and vice-president of the US. He had been elected to that office on the GOP ticket headed by Richard Nixon and had taken office in 1968 and was reelected in 1972. Agnew had been a divisive force in American politics, and had attacked Democrats as being what he termed “radical liberals” and members of the media as “nabobs of negativity.” He spoke of what he termed “positive polarization” as he denigrated those who had opposed Republican policies and the continuing Vietnam War and he was considered to be a strong candidate for the GOP presidential nomination in 1976. But as Witcover and Cohen pointed out, there had long been rumors of the seemingly righteous and moralistic Agnew having taking bribes and extorting money from those who had contracts with the state of Maryland. And as MSNBC host Rachel Maddow told in a more recent podcast account of Agnew’s resignation titled “Bagman,” hundred dollar bills were not widely in circulation in that time, and the then vice-president used them on a frequent basis in his purchases when socializing with Frank Sinatra and other celebrities of his ilk that served to arouse suspicion as to their origins. The US attorney’s office in Baltimore, Maryland, began an investigation and in short order located several businessmen and architects who had contracted with that state when Agnew was it’s chief executive and had extorted cash from them, and that several of them were still making payments to him in his office in Washington DC. They documented how the sitting vice-president had been through in his demands for kickbacks from state vendors, and how even the companies that that operated the cigarette and other vending machines in state office buildings were required to make personal payments to him for the privilege of doing so. When news of the investigation became public, Agnew stated that he was confident that he would be exonerated, and defiantly said that he would not resign his office even if he was indicted. But resign he did, on October 10th, 1973, as he entered a plea of nolo contendre to one count of tax evasion in an agreement that spared him jail time in exchange for his resigning, but also released all of the evidence that the government had amassed that documented his guilt. The author’s document the dramatic scene in which Agnew entered his plea before the presiding federal judge, and observed that as the jurist asked him the questions that are asked of all defendants who enter such pleas in which he said that it was voluntarily given, and he had not been subject to pressure to do so, and was not under the influence of narcotics or drugs when he signed the plea deal. As he stood up to answer to each question posed to him, Witcover and Cohen said you could sense his power and authority ebbing out of him, and soon people were saying that Agnew, like many criminal defendants before him, had “copped a plea.” And a somewhat similar process may be played out in a criminal court in Manhattan, where former president Donald Trump is being subject to a proceeding in which he is not in control of and can not bully the judge who is presiding. The testimony that has been taken to date includes the underhanded arrangement that David Pecker detailed in which the Enquirer praised Trump in it’s coverage of him but also wrote fictional stories concerning his political opponents in the Republican presidential primary and later about Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. It has been said that criminal defense attorneys often encourage their clients to have family members and friends present in the gallery to indicate to the juries in their cases that there are people who care about them. But Trump’s family and friends do not seem to be in attendance at his trial, despite the fact that his daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner profited greatly off of his presidency, and as reported in the national media, Kushner is unabashedly cashing in on the international connections he made during his time in the White House as his father in law runs for the presidency again.
Against the Grain 