‘Bigger Than Watergate’? Both Sides Say Yes, but for Different Reasons

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump and his critics actually agree on something. If a column he read in a magazine is correct, he wrote on Twitter on Thursday, “this is bigger than Watergate!”

Never mind that he was thinking of something different than his adversaries when they use the same phrase. Trump was referring to what he deems a deep-state conspiracy to get him. His detractors are referring to the various scandals swirling around Trump.

Watergate has long been the touchstone for modern American scandal, the mountain of misconduct against which all others are judged. In the 44 years since Richard M. Nixon resigned, virtually every political investigation has been likened to the one that brought down a president, the suffix “gate” applied to all sorts of public flaps, no matter how significant or trivial.

But rarely has the comparison been as intense and persistent as during the 16 months since Trump took office — a comparison deployed by both sides in hopes of shaping the narrative of wrongdoing. What started out as an inquiry into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election has mushroomed into questions of perjury, obstruction of justice, conspiracy, abuse of power, illicit spying, hush money, tax fraud, money laundering and influence peddling.

Depending on what is eventually proved, the core scandal could rival Watergate, in which a “third-rate burglary” of Democratic National Committee headquarters ultimately revealed a wide-ranging campaign of political sabotage and spying to influence the 1972 presidential election and undercut perceived rivals. In the current case, a hostile foreign power sought to sway the 2016 election and there is evidence that at least some people in Trump’s circle were willing to collaborate with it to do so.

Nixon ordered the firing of Archibald Cox, the Watergate special prosecutor, and was ultimately undone by a secret tape recording of him requesting that his aides use the CIA to impede the FBI investigation into the burglary. Trump fired James Comey, the FBI director originally leading the investigation, and has repeatedly pressured the Justice Department and special counsel to shut down the inquiry and investigate his Democratic rivals instead.

“Watergate pales, really, in my view, compared to what we’re confronting now,” James R. Clapper Jr., the former director of national intelligence, has said. David Corn, an author of “Russian Roulette,” a book about the case, has described it as “much bigger than what happened in Watergate.” After Comey’s dismissal, James Fallows wrote in The Atlantic that “this scandal looks worse than Watergate.” Carl Bernstein, one of The Washington Post journalists who led the coverage of the Nixon scandal, has said this appears “worse than Watergate in many, many ways.”

Like Hillary Clinton and the “vast right wing conspiracy,” Trump and his allies are trying to focus attention on the conduct of their pursuers, arguing that the FBI or the special counsel investigating Russia’s involvement in the election have themselves stepped over the line. The president’s tweet on Thursday seized on a column in a conservative magazine asserting that the FBI most likely had a confidential informant inside Trump’s campaign in 2016.

Trump extrapolated that to imply that his predecessor, President Barack Obama, had planted a spy on his team. “Wow, word seems to be coming out that the Obama FBI ‘SPIED ON THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN WITH AN EMBEDDED INFORMANT,'” he wrote. “If so,” he added, “this is bigger than Watergate!”

Neither the original column by Andrew C. McCarthy in National Review nor a follow-up directly claimed that Obama or any of his political appointees had anything to do with the “spy” even if the FBI did have an informant. But that theory fits the larger case that a politically compromised intelligence apparatus manufactured an investigation. The president has advanced the premise in sometimes sensational and uncorroborated ways, as when he accused Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower, an assertion dismissed by Trump’s own Justice Department. But questions persist about the FBI’s use of a dossier financed by Clinton’s campaign and the Democrats to obtain a secret warrant against an adviser to Trump.

To Trump’s allies, that was, yes, bigger than Watergate. “Our sources are telling us that the abuse of power is far bigger than Watergate,” Sean Hannity, the Fox News host and friend of Trump’s, said in January. “I have long said it is worse than Watergate,” agreed Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa.

Trump’s theory of the case has been bolstered by some investigators who have gotten in trouble. Two former members of the team working for the special counsel, Robert Mueller, wrote text messages that expressed political views critical of Trump. Andrew G. McCabe, the former deputy FBI director, was fired for not being forthcoming with an inspector general looking into his conduct.

The bigger-than-Watergate analogy, of course, is one of the most overused tropes in American politics. To hear some tell it, Chappaquiddick, Iran-Contra, the Keating Five, Whitewater, the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal and the CIA leak case were all worse than Watergate. George W. Bush’s whole presidency was “Worse Than Watergate,” according to the title of a 2004 book written by none other than John Dean, the Watergate figure. Politico actually tabulated 46 scandals or other furors that have been declared worse than Watergate.

Among the most prolific purveyors of bigger-than-Watergate comparisons has been Trump.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s investigation into Obama’s birth certificate “could dwarf Watergate,” Trump wrote in 2012.

“Benghazi is bigger than Watergate,” he wrote a few months later.

Hillary Clinton’s private email server “is bigger than Watergate,” he wrote in 2016.

The decision to begin an investigation into his 2016 campaign? “Bigger than Watergate!” he wrote this year.

In seeking to undercut the legitimacy of the current investigation, Trump seized on the first anniversary of Mueller’s appointment on Thursday to denounce it as a politically inspired waste of time and resources, in some ways echoing Nixon who at a similar point declared that “one year of Watergate is enough.”

“Congratulations America,” Trump wrote, “we are now into the second year of the greatest Witch Hunt in American History...and there is still No Collusion and No Obstruction. The only Collusion was that done by Democrats who were unable to win an Election despite the spending of far more money!” Trump has made a point of saying again and again that there was “no collusion,” but as documents released this week make clear, there was at the very least attempted collusion. His son Donald Trump Jr.; his son-in-law, Jared Kushner; and his campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, met with Russian visitors during the campaign after being promised incriminating information about Clinton as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”

The Trump team members said the meeting did not yield the dirt on Clinton that they had hoped for, but they were willing to meet with visitors advertised as working on behalf of the Russian government to get it. They have argued that there was nothing wrong with this because any campaign would be eager to obtain damaging information about an opponent.

In marking the anniversary of Mueller’s appointment, Trump was returning to his argument that the inquiry had now gone on too long, a complaint made by other presidents under scrutiny. But it can be much worse. The Watergate investigation took more than two years from the burglary to Nixon’s resignation. Whitewater lasted six years and Iran-Contra seven.

An exception was Kenneth W. Starr’s investigation into Bill Clinton’s false statements under oath about his affair with Lewinsky, an inquiry that took just eight months. But speed was not much comfort to Clinton since it ended with an impeachment referral to Congress.