President nixon also fired the person investigating his presidential campaign, Archibald Cox.
On the night of Saturday, October 20, 1973, President nixon ordered Cox’s firing. However, the person with authority to dismiss Cox, nixon’s Attorney General Elliot Richardson, refused to carry out the order. Instead, Richardson resigned. His deputy, William Ruckelshaus, then became acting attorney general, and also refused to obey the order. Ruckelshaus resigned too. That left Robert Bork, the solicitor general, as the highest-ranking official in the Justice Department. Bork carried out nixon’s order and dismissed Cox.
This accelerated public interest and outrage, this was a very public, and very brazen, attempt to derail efforts to investigate his crimes. The public reaction would force nixon to appoint another special prosecutor to replace Cox, and accelerated congressional interest in impeaching the president. A president had never brazenly fired an official charged with investigating the president’s conduct before.
Senior administration officials soon started resigning. The attorney general, Richard Kleindienst, nixon’s chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, and domestic policy adviser John Ehrlichman all resigned, and nixon fired White House counsel John Dean.
The reaction to the events was furious. It felt like we were in a banana republic. It was a major turning point in the scandal, and helped make impeachment feel like a real possibility.
The newspapers carried banner headlines. Within two days, 150,000 telegrams had arrived in the capital, the largest concentrated volume in the history of Western Union. Deans of the most prestigious law schools in the country demanded that Congress commence an impeachment inquiry. By the following Tuesday, 44 separate Watergate-related bills had been introduced in the House. Twenty-two bills called for an impeachment investigation.
President nixon also fired the person investigating his presidential campaign, Archibald Cox.
On the night of Saturday, October 20, 1973, President nixon ordered Cox’s firing. However, the person with authority to dismiss Cox, nixon’s Attorney General Elliot Richardson, refused to carry out the order. Instead, Richardson resigned. His deputy, William Ruckelshaus, then became acting attorney general, and also refused to obey the order. Ruckelshaus resigned too. That left Robert Bork, the solicitor general, as the highest-ranking official in the Justice Department. Bork carried out nixon’s order and dismissed Cox.
This accelerated public interest and outrage, this was a very public, and very brazen, attempt to derail efforts to investigate his crimes. The public reaction would force nixon to appoint another special prosecutor to replace Cox, and accelerated congressional interest in impeaching the president. A president had never brazenly fired an official charged with investigating the president’s conduct before.
Senior administration officials soon started resigning. The attorney general, Richard Kleindienst, nixon’s chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, and domestic policy adviser John Ehrlichman all resigned, and nixon fired White House counsel John Dean.
The reaction to the events was furious. It felt like we were in a banana republic. It was a major turning point in the scandal, and helped make impeachment feel like a real possibility.
The newspapers carried banner headlines. Within two days, 150,000 telegrams had arrived in the capital, the largest concentrated volume in the history of Western Union. Deans of the most prestigious law schools in the country demanded that Congress commence an impeachment inquiry. By the following Tuesday, 44 separate Watergate-related bills had been introduced in the House. Twenty-two bills called for an impeachment investigation.