Jill Wine-Banks was a prosecutor of the Watergate break-in scandal that caused U.S. President Richard Nixon to be forced to resign his presidency in disgrace on August 8, 1974. Ms. Wine-Banks is a legal analyst for NBC News. She appears often on television for interviews, sometimes comparing the Trump presidency to the Nixon-Watergate affair, and she is one of my favorite such commentators.
Ms. Wine-Banks wrote an article that was published today by NBC News entitled, “I investigated Watergate. Trump’s White House phone log gap is beyond suspicious.” I blogged recently about this new information about the 7.5 phone gap missing from the White House phone log on January 6th with the piece entitled “Trump Phone Gap Like Butterfield Tape Gap.” It may be “the smoking gun” like the 18.5 minute gap on the Butterfield tapes that sank Nixon.
This could turn out to be a huge deal. Ms. Wine-Banks says there are striking similarities between the two gap instances and, of course, some important differences. She was the main prosecutor who investigated and pursued information about the 18.5 minute gap on the tape of a Nixon phone conversation. Mary Rose Woods, Nixon’s longtime secretary, claimed that she pushed the wrong button while playing the tape of the phone call between Nixon and his White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman, and that caused the erasure of that phone call. Haldeman’s notes proved that Nixon and Haldeman were talking about their scheme to cover-up the break-in. Wine-Banks says she doesn’t believe that is what happened; rather, she believes that Nixon, Haldeman, or both together erased that portion of the tape, with Woods lying about it to cover for them.
Media reporting about this Trump White House phone log gap on January 6th have focused on the question of what and whose phones President Trump may have used in making outgoing phone calls during this seven hour and thirty-seven minute time period in which the White House has nothing on its phone log about any phone calls at all involving President Trump. It is very suspicious since he did use White House phones involving his phone calls before and after that time period that day.
But Wine-Banks also takes another perspective on this issue. She writes concerning the Trump White House phone log gap, “It is unlikely, even incredible, that no one called in to the president for 457 minutes during a crisis when he was in the White House. Even calls that go unanswered in the White House could be listed on officials logs.”
Wine-Banks concludes in her article, “It is often said that Nixon’s cover-up was worse than his underlying crime. The reverse is potentially true for Trump. Trump’s record gap is 25 times as long as Nixon’s, but his alleged crime could incalculable word.” Indeed, that’s why I blogged on July 28, 2018, “I think Trumpgate will make Watergate look like a Sunday school picnic,” which is my book Bible Predicts Trump Fall. That is, covering up a stupid break-in of the Democratic headquarters to get political dirt was nothing compared to what Trump and his aides may have done–TRYING TO OVERTHROW THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT!
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