(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . A Nixon-wasn’t-framed Counterattack [1] ['Major Kong', 'Belinda Ridgewood'] Date: 2026-10-06 In his October 5, 2026 Substack post, “Rewriting History Won’t Change the Truth”, Adam Kinzinger highlights, and counters, the Republicans’ current campaign to rehabilitate Richard Nixon as a way of claiming both he and Donald Trump are framed by the Deep State. https://www.adamkinzinger.com/p/rewriting-history-wont-change-the Kinzinger includes this recent video of Rep. Riley Moore (R, WVa) by way of illustration of how the Republicans are going about it. This YouTube link is an excerpt from C-Span’s coverage of a “Grand Strategy Summit” at the Richard Nixon foundation. In this excerpt, Rep. Moore claims Nixon was framed by the Deep State, and says “You’ve seen that in the New York Times reporting with Rosen, the truth is now out there”. James Rosen’s Op-Ed can be found here: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/08/opinion/trump-nixon-watergate-radford.html?unlocked_article_code=1.GVE.-fAa.i4U8PmazQSPX&smid=url-share. In the video snippet, Rep. Moore talks about how Nixon nobly kept “the truth” secret, as it was more important to him to protect the public’s faith in public institutions. But he implies that “the truth” Nixon was covering up was “the truth” of Watergate. It wasn’t. The thing Nixon was keeping secret – and that was kept secret at his own desire for decades afterwards – was that senior Military officers were spying on his and Kissinger’s work opening up China through Pakistan, and had amassed a pile of documents with some very sensitive information in them. Rosen quotes Nixon’s sworn testimony, where Nixon says: “It was here that the so-called Plumbers did a remarkable job. And despite the terribly wrong and stupid things they did in the Watergate thing, they should be well remembered for what they did here.” Rep. Moore slanders the Watergate Special Prosecution Force by claiming Nixon was framed. But he also gift-wraps, for any plaintiff, two things: proof that he’s lying, and proof of his own malice, because the Rosen coverage he references quotes Nixon himself contradicting Rosen’s lie. We’ve seen the power of E. Jean Carroll’s defamation suit against Mr. Trump to keep the fact of his evil conduct, and his lies about it, in the headlines. A defamation suite here could also create the headlines that would undermine the Right’s Deep State theory – because there isn’t a bunch of liberal civil servants deliberately making it difficult for legal Republican policies to be implemented. Who could bring that case? Members of the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, or others who were involved in the investigation, are still living. Nick Ackerman, an assistant Watergate Special Prosecutor from 1973 to 1976, is has written about this claim in MS Now about this already. https://www.ms.now/opinion/watergate-nixon-deep-state-trump-doj-conspiracy-theory. He’s a perfect example of someone whose professional reputation and legacy is being tarred by this lie. The special prosecutors themselves (Archibald Cox, Leon Jaworski, Henry Ruth, and Charles Ruff) have passed away, but some states allow defamation actions by a dead person’s estate. Who would they sue? At the least, Rep. Moore, and possibly also Geoff Shepard, a former Nixon aide who, Kinzinger says, “has spent decades arguing Nixon was set up” including a recent two hour briefing to the DOJ entitled “Watergate as Lawfare”. Or JD Vance, for that matter. It’s likely the same claim will be made by others, because “Nixon was framed” seems to have become a Republican talking point. Lies don’t become sanitized by being adopted by a political party. Getting hold of the talking points memo just allows one to sue whoever is directing this absurdity, along with everyone who adopts it. The funny thing is, Rosen’s article doesn’t just hand proof to the plaintiff in such a case. It also is a warning to the Republicans in office – or about them, to Trump. President Trump should be worrying about his own senior appointees: “There it was, finally, the secret Nixon had sought to keep under wraps: It was not the far left that most actively sought to sabotage the Nixon-Kissinger foreign policy but the hard right, not lowly pencil pushers in the civil service but the most senior commanders at the Pentagon.” [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/10/6/800108299/community/a-nixon-wasnt-framed-counterattack/ Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/