First of three parts
A huge and heavily graying crowd of perhaps 1,000 Democrats and other anti-Trump’ers roared into a Karen Bass town hall last evening, loudly cheering for the impeachment, if not burial, of still-new President Trump.
You knew the audience was on the senior side of maturity when, in response to a question, 99 percent of the audience raised their hands to say they remember the Watergate Hotel break-in 45 years ago.
Nailing Mr. Trump early and often, U.S. Rep. Bass, Culver City’s Congressional delegate, fronted the evening of anti-Trump jubilation that taxed the capacity of sprawling Marina Middle School.
Nary a kind word escaped the lips of star panelists John Dean, one of the ex-con lawyers from the Nixon Watergate scandal, and former intelligence analyst Malcom Nance, who repeatedly reminded forgetful persons in the audience that he appears regularly on television.
Both have called for President Trump’s impeachment, even though Mr. Dean stressed that “this is very early in the process.”
Ms. Bass warmed up the panelists by cracking that “he has not even been in office a hundred days, and it feels like two years.”
Mr. Nance, a retired Naval officer, was not so sure the hour is early.
Standing stoutly, confidently astride merely rumored Russian links between and among the president, his primary aides and Kremlin leaders, Mr. Nance is convinced the Trump-Putin connection is true.
He believes November’s election was illegally tilted by Russia, and that the confluence of evidence will bring down the president.
“Let me get back to what is likely to catch Trump — or be the smoking gun,” said Mr. Dean, alluding to his belief Mr. Trump is hiding his Russian connections . “Nixon denied that he had knowledge of the (break-in) coverup in speeches and in press conferences.
“His defense was that he didn’t know of the coverup until I told him on March 21 (1973) when I informed him it was a cancer on his presidency. He said that was the first he knew of a coverup.
“That was a preposterous lie. The Supreme Court forced him to reveal his tapes. It was shown that in the first week after the Watergate arrests (June 1972), Nixon had instructed his chief of staff to have the CIA go to the FBI and get them to stay out of the part of the investigation that might affect the CIA. That was the lie he got caught in.
“For Trump to find himself in a situation like that,” said Mr. Dean, “we have a lot of miles, a lot of days, a lot of lies to go.”
(To be continued)