Impeachment Hearings: House Judiciary Committee, July 30, 1974 (1/2)
Impeachment Hearings: House Judiciary Committee, July 30, 1974 (1/2)
[00.23.16] Mr. HUTCHINSON. How much time has the gentleman consumed? The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman has 40 seconds remaining out of the, 4 minutes which were yielded. The gentleman -an from Michigan. Mr. HUTCHINSON. I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Sandman. Mr. SANDMAN. Mr. Chairman, I just can't imagine what else some of these people here want to do to Richard Nixon. They want to throw him out of office for some of the most vague circumstances anybody ever heard of. You heard differences of notice, of fifth amendment, due process, modern times as Richard Nixon--maybe he doesn't have the same rights as 220 million other Americans. And then they adopted article. III. That impeaches him because he won't confess. They had no evidence and if you don't give me the evidence. then we are going to impeach YOU. That is a new one. And then, of course, the insult of them all, of article IV. They are going to throw him out because he, ended the war by bombing Cambodia. Anybody else would get a prize but this man was going to get impeached because he ended war that the two predecessors couldn't And now that is not good enough. They want to strip him of every asset that, he has got left, possibly make him go to jail for the rest of his life. Boy, is a generous crowd I just can't imagine why we can dream up all of these things. The extra emoluments. Do you know that one of those extra, emoluments or trips that Mrs. Nixon took on Air Force One? Did anybody ever question Jackie Kennedy eniiedY or- Lady Bird or anybody else'? But any least little thing that Richard does is a crime. Let me read the one thing that apparently has been tucked under the rug. The evidence that we get is always sketchy. It is never right to the point. And, of course,, he talked about an Internal Revenue agent talking about what happens in hypothetical cases. But look what Mr. Brown, chief intelligence man from the Baltimore office, March 22, 1974. That is pretty recent. He says, and quite honestly he said this because there were three people who had not been interviewed yet, and he said that if they were given immunity in this memo, possibly, they could shed some light that would connect Nixon into Some kind of fraud. But he did say this- He said, "To date, our investigation has revealed that for the following reasons we feel that -we could not"--emphasize not"- "sustain a 50 percent fraud penalty." That is from the, IRS. That is not speculation. That is -what they said about this awful guilty individual. I think this is awful important. Now, there are many other things that -we can say, but the law is clear. The law is clear, that to be guilty of fraud it must be done intentionally. It must be done willfully. And it must be done to defraud, to do something the law doesn't allow you to do. The law, is clear. it says you cannot be held for fraud if it result of a mistake. You cannot be held for fraud if you -rely upon the advice of an attorney. And this is -what Richard Nixon did, and everybody knows it. A fraud penalty cannot be sustained whenever the taxpayer relies upon the advice of his attorney, provided he gives his attorney all of the facts. Now, one outstanding point. Hubert Humphrey did exactly the same thing and nobody ever said a -word about Hubert taking a couple of hundred thousand dollars in a deduction. And so have some other people. There is no question that the papers were delivered to the Archives On time, There is no question about that. In the, interim' something else happened. This fraudulent taxpayer himself signed into law a law which changed the tax law. Now if be was going to be so interested in himself wouldn't he have made some, kind of a change in that? Of course be, would. Or he wouldn't have signed it if he was that kind of a person. But he -wasn't. He signed it into law. There was absolutely no intent to defraud here. Now, let me tell you one other thing which I think is awfully important, and 1 want to see these people who are, moving this resolution deny what I am. about to say. This bunch of baloney was supposed to be taken up this afternoon and not tonight, but there is a bigger audience on TV tonight than there was this afternoon. The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman has expired. [00.28.49]