Wherever Richard Nixon is today, I have no doubt he is smiling up at the Supreme Court. Just short of fifty years after he resigned from the White House, the nation’s highest court has come around to Nixon’s view that if the president does something it is by definition “not illegal.”
In May 1977 Nixon articulated this view during an interview conducted by the British journalist David Frost. Talking about the shady things Nixon had done to quash anti-Vietnam War protests and to covertly surveil activists, Frost asked Nixon, “What you are saying is there are certain situations… where the president can decide that it’s in the best interest of the nation or something and do something illegal?”
