From the New York Times, I'm Michael Babaro. This is the Daily.

Today, just three U.S. Presidents have confronted the possibility that members of their own party would support their impeachment.

Only one left office because of me.

My colleague Natalie Kydroef talked to White House reporter Peter Baker about what to expect this time.

It's Tuesday, October 1st.

Peter walk us through the extraordinary circumstances of the only time a president facing impeachment left office under pressure from his own party, Richard Nixon.

I refer, of course, to the investigations of the so-called Watergate Affair.

Well, this, of course, was two years into Watergate. There have been investigations for many, many months.

I believe the time has come to bring that investigation and the other investigations of this matter to an end.

One year of Watergate is enough.

And Nixon had basically survived it up until this point, and Republicans largely stayed with him. What really finally did him, yeah, what finally put things over the edge was something they call the smoking gun tape.

What did the president know and when did he know it? On July 16th, Alexander Butterfield, a former White House official, shocked the Senate Watergate Committee by saying the president's conversations were on tape.

And this particular tape of a conversation showed that Nixon, in fact, had ordered his aides to tell the CIA to block the FBI investigation into Watergate.

And the officials of the State Watergate Playa were engaged in the investigation and the police called the FBI and said that the situation has reached a level of the first stage of turn.

In other words, he had directly ordered the cover up. That was the bridge too far for the Republicans. That was the final straw.

Congress and Rhodes and Senator Scott and I have just concluded a visit with the president.

There's a dramatic moment when three senior Republicans from Congress, Barry Goldwater, John Rose, Hugh Scott, they come to the White House and they tell Nixon.

And we have told even that the situation is very gloomy on Capitol Hill and that it is a very distressing situation.

It's over. The time is up. He no longer has enough support to survive. That he's not only going to be impeached by the House but convicted by the Senate. He probably only has 10 Republican senators who are still willing to stand with him.

That's when they abandon him and it's only at that point that they abandon him.

I shall resign the presidency effective that known tomorrow, which of course prompted him to resign.

Rather than face the humiliation of impeachment and conviction by the Senate, he would short circuit the process and effect by saying I give up. I'm out of here.

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