Shorts: What a Watergate Document Can Teach the House Judiciary Committee
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 31 January 2019
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
While researching the Watergate Road Map, Benjamin Wittes discovered a letter written by the then-Chairman of the House Committee on the Judiciary Peter Rodino to the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. In the letter, Rodino requested that any material relevant to the House’s impeachment inquiry be transferred to his committee. This morning, Wittes analyzed in a Lawfare article how the letter could instruct current Chairman of the Judiciary Committee Jerry Nadler on what steps he can take to ensure his committee properly executes its constitutional obligation. In the latest edition of the Lawfare Podcast Shorts, you can listen to that article in-full, read by the author.
Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad free version of the LawFair |
| 0:07.2 | podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:14.7 | That's patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:18.2 | Also check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair no bull, |
| 0:27.2 | and the aftermath. |
| 0:29.2 | I'm Benjamin Wittis and this is the LawFair podcast January 31st, 2019. |
| 0:39.2 | Today an article that we ran this morning on LawFair entitled What an Old Watergate |
| 0:46.2 | Document Can Teach the House Judiciary Committee By Me. |
| 0:51.8 | The chairman of the House Committee on the Judiciary faced a vexing problem. |
| 0:56.0 | Pressure for impeachment was building, but while lots of evidence against the president |
| 1:00.6 | was public key pieces of it were not, they were rather in the hands of a special prosecutor |
| 1:05.6 | who didn't work for Congress. |
| 1:07.8 | The prosecutor's job was to prosecute crimes not to evaluate the president's fitness |
| 1:12.6 | for office. |
| 1:14.0 | That latter job lay with the chairman and his committee who didn't have access to the |
| 1:18.0 | prosecutor's evidence. |
| 1:20.0 | So the House Judiciary Committee chairman wrote a letter requesting that the evidence be |
| 1:24.3 | turned over. |
| 1:25.3 | Quote, the House and the Judiciary Committee are under a controlling constitutional obligation |
| 1:31.7 | and commitment to act expeditiously in carrying out their solemn constitutional duty. |
| 1:37.2 | Wrote Chairman Peter Rodino in a letter dated March 8th, 1974 to John Siricca, the chief |
| 1:44.1 | judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Lawfare Institute, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Lawfare Institute and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.