Nixon alum: Firing Rosenstein would be criminal

DW: Does the continuing saga surrounding US President Donald Trump, special counselor Robert Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who is overseeing the investigation, remind you of Watergate and the Nixon era?

Nick Akerman: Yes, it is coming around the same time of the year. The anniversary of the Saturday night massacre is coming up at the end of October, so it is clearly at the same time of the year eerily enough.

It is hard to say what is exactly going on here. One part of me thinks, this whole thing about Rod Rosenstein was just a setup to try and deflect attention away from the Kavanaugh hearings right now, which is what Trump's normal pattern is: to try to do something to get people's attention in a different direction. So, I am not sure how serious he is about this and whether this was just a deflection from Kavanaugh or whether he really is serious about getting rid of Rosenstein. 

Part of me believes that this thing is all a setup by Trump to begin with. The notion that Rosenstein was seriously talking about the 25th Amendment as to Trump is kind of ridiculous. The 25th Amendment is really kind of designed for the Woodrow Wilson situation, where he was basically non compos mentis and his wife was acting as president and he just had no ability to act as president. The whole process of removing somebody with the 25th Amendment is extremely complex. I think the whole idea that this was something that Rosenstein seriously thought about is just ridiculous and even the idea about taping Trump, I think, was more likely in jest.  

What would happen if Trump decides to fire Rosenstein?

Then the question would be who would take over in his capacity as the supervisor of the Mueller investigation, and that would be the solicitor general. He is the Justice Department person, and there is no reason to think he would do anything that would undermine that investigation. I just can't imagine, particularly at this point, anybody trying to undermine this investigation by getting rid of his staff when there have been so many indictments brought down and there is so much pending at this point. It would just be a major obstruction of justice.

On the other hand, I think this is well set up and positioned, that if something like this did happen, states' attorney generals would be able to fill the void here, because all of these people have basically provided statements. Even the Manafort plea is set up in such a way that the allocution, the statement that was made and the information, was extraordinarily long, 38 pages and lots of exhibits. I have never ever seen anything like it. And part of it was done so that the facts would be out there and could be used as admissions by state attorney generals to keep this thing going.

Read more: 12 Russian spies charged for hacking 2016 US presidential election

Just to be clear, if Trump fires Rosenstein, do you think it amounts to obstruction of justice?  

Absolutely. It all goes to his corrupt intent of trying to undermine this investigation. Even what he did with the jury in Virginia [where the first Manafort trial was held]. We never had a president of the United States going out and making statements about a case and saying that the defendant is a good guy and making favorable statements for Manafort. That in itself amounts to jury tampering. In fact, you even had jurors who afterwards made it pretty clear that they were influenced by that. Some of them were using the phrase "witch hunt," which is what Trump and his minions have been putting out there to try and influence juries that would be considering these kinds of cases. So, there is no question that he has made efforts to try and undermine all of this.

Read more: Donald Trump's ex-campaign chief Manafort pleads guilty

You were involved in the Watergate case. How would you compare Trump and Nixon?

Oh boy. Trump and Nixon, they are just two such different people. Nixon is certainly a much smarter guy, attuned in politics and didn't have so many of the crazy ideas like Trump has, for example with his tariffs stuff.

It is probably better to compare what is going on. And what I found most interesting is that where it started, with the Watergate break-in at the Democratic National Committee by a group of Cuban-Americans who were flown up by people in the White House to break in and search for whatever they were looking for. We don't exactly know what exactly they were looking for, and it doesn't seem to have been used.

And, in contrast, what we have here is a high-tech break-in by Russian operatives hacking into the Democratic National Committee and actually using that information to get a candidate elected as president. They were releasing stuff before the Democratic National Convention, they were acting as a campaign boiler room to counteract the Access Hollywood tape when that came out, and were releasing these emails at key points in the course of the campaign. And, of course, the question is: Were people in the campaign doing this in a conspiracy with the Russians? And I think that is the question Mueller is looking at right now, and what I think is that we will get answers to that in the near future.  

Read more: Trump accuses China of meddling in US midterms

Nick Akerman was an assistant special Watergate prosecutor under Archibald Cox and Leon Jaworski from May 1973 to October 1975.

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