I’ve been listening to the Rachel Maddow podcast, “Bag Man,” about former Vice President Spiro Agnew. That a story as juicy as the VPOTUS being taken down for accepting bribes in the White House by a young band of Maryland prosecutors who hadn’t set out to investigate him was lost to history is simply amazing, but it was even lost on many who lived through it because the big story of the day was the investigation of the POTUS who’d selected this criminal as his running mate.

Besides being a juicy story it’s also instructive. If I believed that #Individual1 read/listened to podcasts I’d think he was stealing his schtick from Agnew who insisted the investigation was a “witch hunt,” attacked as partisans the prosecutors who turned up the dirt, attacked the Attorney General who decided to move forward with the case, & attacked everyone else who didn’t back up his claims of innocence. Elected Republicans lined up to defend Agnew even before they knew the charges & evidence. Once they found out the charges & evidence were real & serious, many stuck with him anyway.

Fortunately John Mitchell (the new Attorney General at the time) who was already quite busy investigating Watergate realized that he had to not just take up this new investigation but also that he had to fast-track it so that this brazen criminal didn’t ascend to the Presidency (& become at least temporarily unindictable) when the Watergate investigation took down then-President Richard M. Nixon.

Fascinating as a stand-alone story, as a massive scandal little known to most, & also as a case study of how serial lying blustery criminals in high places react when caught.

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Videos

480 Minutes / 2023 Episode 13/Overall Episode 826