Rachel Maddow and Bag Man executive producer Mike Yarvitz talk with the three Spiro Agnew prosecutors who have the only experience in U.S. history prosecuting someone so close to the presidency.
The three assistant U.S. attorneys, Barney Skolnik, Russell “Tim” Baker, and Ron Liebman, who handled the Spiro Agnew case.About this episode:
But when Vice President Spiro Agnew gave that indignant speech talking about these people inside the Justice Department who are trying to destroy him, saying he would refuse to resign even if he was ever indicted, he was not talking about potential charges stemming from the Watergate investigation.JOHN CHANCELLOR: Washington was stunned today by the disclosure that Vice President Agnew is under criminal investigation by federal authorities in his home state of Maryland.
JOHN CHANCELLOR: The constitutional problems raised by the Agnew investigation are bewildering. We’ve never had a problem like this one before. JOHN CHANCELLOR: Spiro T. Agnew became a private citizen today, and less than one hour after his resignation as Vice President became official, he was convicted of a criminal charge of tax evasion.
But what the Attorney General Elliot Richardson believed, and what the prosecutors came to agree with was that the interests of justice would be best served if they did this deal.
So in 2018 with producer Mike Yarvitz, I made a seven-part podcast about it. And then we wrote a book about it. Now crucially of course, the defendant today is not a current official like Agnew was. He’s a former official. And the Justice Department has decided to go ahead and indict him and put him on trial. It never got to that point with Agnew because they let him agree to that plea deal where he agreed to resign, in effect, in order to make all his charges go away.
Those three young men are named Tim Baker and Ron Liebman and Barney Skolnik. And all three of them join us now.RACHEL MADDOW: We’re also joined by an even younger guy. Mike Yarvitz, my longtime producer and colleague. Mike and I made Bag Man together back in 2018. Hi Mike. Good to see ya.RACHEL MADDOW: Part of what happened with Agnew, in terms of that plea bargain, was thinking about what he had to trade away. And the biggest thing he had to trade away was his current office.
And we were, you know, young bullheaded and, and competent enough to be able to calculate whether or not we were comfortable entertaining that possibility. And the answer, of course, was no. I mean, I, I remember very well that, that was a big part of my own metamorphosis from he’s gotta go to jail, to how soon can we get his ass in court and have him resign? A big part of that was Nixon.
RON LIEBMAN: You know, there’s a, there’s an interesting sort of irony here. Agnew’s criminal problems ended his political career, and it’s quite possible that Trump’s criminal problems will enhance his political career.BARNEY SKOLNIK: But not to the point of his getting elected again. And you know, if he’s convicted and, and sitting in jail and he suddenly becomes president, can he pardon himself from a jail cell? Were those considerations top of mind for you at all when it came to, you know, the, the resolution of that case and, you know, as it relates to the current moment, how do you assess those possibilities when it comes to the former President who may soon be elected President in the course of...
RACHEL MADDOW: We’re talking with Tim Baker, Barney Skolnik, Ron Liebman, the federal prosecutors who brought charges against Vice President Agnew in 1973. We’ll be back with more, right after this. My primary reaction is and has been for months to be anxious and worried about our country, because he has the skill of a fascist to genuinely attract people with grievances and anger at their lives not being the way they want them to be.
RACHEL MADDOW: Tim, what was your reaction, or what’s been your reaction over time as we’ve seen these indictments of Trump? RACHEL MADDOW: If Trump is in the classified documents case facing a legal situation in which things don’t look good for him. The judge is letting the case proceed in a way that is fair and sort of straight down the middle. And the evidence is holding up and looks as strong in the courtroom as it does in the indictment.
Whereas for the reasons Ron has articulated, it’s not just a consideration. It’s a very powerful, again, for the third of the country that buys this stuff, it’s a very powerful argument regardless of what the deal says and whether it’s in writing and whether it has a seal on it. So we’re going to be posting this on July 3rd, which I believe is the 50 year anniversary to the day of a scene that we described in Bag Man which has stuck with me ever since, which was you guys crammed into George Bell’s Audi 100 driving from Baltimore to Washington, D.C. to go meet with Attorney General Elliot Richardson for the first time to brief him in person on what was going on with the Agnew investigation.
TIM BAKER: Yes. In a lot of ways, our principle concern was that the Department of Justice would take our case away from us. And so the first order of business was to es-- for George to establish our credibility that we in fact knew what we were doing. We had credentials, we had experience. None of us, I think, really thought about our age at all. It was a job we had to do. We did it. And our concern was that having built this case, that the Justice Department would, would not let three Baltimore federal prosecutors run with it. That was what was in our head.
He never again held a high kind of political office in Republican administrations. He got the throwaway jobs, and that was all because of Agnew, the part of the Republican party that never forgave him. And he knew it, and George knew it, and they didn’t blink. RON LIEBMAN: Jack Smith, from what I’ve seen on TV, has, you know, has real armed security with him because the times are different. And you know, it’s, he needs it. In 1973, we didn’t. We, you know, we just didn’t.
TIM BAKER: No no, the grand jury. Grand jury would’ve returned it, but it wouldn’t have been signed as indictment– federal indictments have to be, it wouldn’t have been signed by an authorized representative of the Department of Justice. The purpose of it would’ve been, you know, like a gigantic press release. And the press conference would’ve said, this is the Nixon administration doing it all over again, they’re covering it up. Imagine the firestorm.
RACHEL MADDOW:, I feel a little bit like this time in history is, is this moment that’s training us to, to push ourselves further and further into the, into the “what if” territory. Because all the things that were previously unthinkable just keep happening. All the things that seemed like, oh, that would pose a constitutional crisis, and then who knows what would happen — we’re now in the, who knows what would happen bit of territory.
TIM BAKER: I am not as sanguine as you all are that Trump cannot and will not win the 2024 election and become president again. I think he’s got a shot at it. I don’t underestimate it at all. And the consequences of that will be a, a disaster for our country. I really worry about it
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