Former US Attorney General Eric Holder on Sunday night compared Donald Trump’s threat to seek the prosecution of Hillary Clinton over her missing emails to actions taken by President Richard Nixon at the height of Watergate.
“So @realDonaldTrump will ORDER his AG to take certain actions,” Holder tweeted Sunday night. “When Nixon tried that his AG courageously resigned. Trump is dangerous/unfit.”
Moments earlier, the Republican nominee had issued a remarkable threat.
“If I win (the election), I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation, because there has never been so many lies, so much deception,” he said, staring down his Democratic opponent, whom he warned would “be in jail” if he were in the White House.
Holder was referencing one of the darkest episodes of the Nixon presidency. In what is now commonly referred to as the “Saturday Night Massacre,” Nixon ordered his attorney general, Elliot Richardson, to fire the special prosecutor investigating the Watergate burglary.
Richardson resigned rather than follow the President’s request. When Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus was asked to do the same, he too refused and left the administration.
Nixon ended up outsourcing the deed to Robert Bork, who formally fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox.
News broke on the morning of Sunday, October 21, 1973. Less than a year later, on August 9, 1974, Nixon resigned in disgrace.