Veteran GOP conservative who called for Nixon’s resignation now champions Trump impeachment inquiry: ‘It was a pure shakedown’

In March 1974 — when the Watergate scandal was getting worse and worse for President Richard Nixon — conservative Republican Slade Gorton called for Nixon’s resignation. Five months later, Gorton (who was serving as attorney general for Washington State at the time) got his wish: Nixon resigned in August 1974, and Vice President Gerald R. Ford was sworn in as president of the United States. Gorton is now 91, and he is once again in favor of an impeachment inquiry against a Republican president — only this time, it’s President Donald Trump.

Gorton discussed the House impeachment inquiry against Trump during an interview with the Seattle Times. Many Republicans in Congress are insisting that Trump did nothing wrong on July 25, when he tried to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into investigating former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden. But Gorton (who represented Washington State in the U.S. Senate in the 1980s and 1990s) strongly disagrees, joining House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats in asserting that Trump seriously crossed the line by encouraging a foreign leader to investigate a political rival.

“I reached the conclusion that there are a dozen actions on this president’s part that warrant a vote of impeachment in the House,” Gorton told the Seattle Times’ Jim Brunner.

View the complete October 31 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.