Page 2 - Fire Cox News Today

In, and we need a special counsel. i cannot advise on what exactly senate tactic would get us there. the republicans have a majority in the senate, and so they can confirm a special counsel or an fbi director without any democratic votes. so i dont know what the tactic should be in terms of senate tools to try and push this ball along, what we need to do is get a special counsel and an fbi director, both of whom are beyond political approach. >> jon: as you know, any person basically in the fede...

The saturday night massacre. investigating the water gate scandal stemming from the 1972 reelection campaign. it revealed the president had secret over office reportings. they issued a subpoena seeking toez tapes. he offered up summaries. >> he offered to try to gain access to the tapes. >> he rejected that offer and stood by his temperature power. >> he waited for weekend when he ordered him the fire cox. he pledged not to stand in the way of the investigation. >> mr. cox will have full indepen...

There was a special prosecutor who had been appointed who was demanding richard nixons famous tapes and nixon was refusing to give them up and so nixon finally decided hes going to fire cox but to do that he had to get his attorney general to do it. the attorney general was elliott richardson, an upstanding gentleman from massachusetts. he said, absolutely not. i will quit before that happens. so he quit. the number two was a man named william ruk kels house. he wouldnt do it either. he also qui...

Officially refused to comply with that order. he said he would release summaries of the tapes instead. he also ordered cox, the special prosecutor, to stand down in the court fight and to accept that he would not be getting access to the tapes. cox responded to this by calling a press conference the national press club and saying he would defy the presidents order and he would keep trying to get the tapes. which brings us to saturday, october 20th, 1973. and 6:30 washington time that evening, ne...

>> nixon ended up summoning his solicitor general, a right wing former yale law professor, robert bork, to the white house. he was sworn in as acting attorney general and carried out the presidents order to fire cox. the saturday night massacre represented a traumatic suspenseful and unprecedented constitutional crisis. it also became a critical turning point in the watergate story, the moment that nixon lost the country, the moment his beloved silent majority turned on him, the moment that made...