Richard Nixon's Watergate Scandal Led to His White House Administration Being Branded 'The Most Corrupt in History'
The justice department is taking a fresh look at the Watergate investigation..
Oct. 2 2026, Published 3:15 p.m. ET
Richard Nixon's Watergate investigation is back under the spotlight 52 years after he was removed from the White House, RadarOnline.com can reveal.
President Donald Trump's Department of Justice is reportedly taking another look at the scandal that led to Nixon's impeachment and eventual resignation.
Was There 'Misconduct' in the Watergate Investigation?
The scandal led to the resignation of Richard Nixon.
A bombshell new report in The Wall Street Journal claims the DOJ, now run by President Trump's former personal attorney, Todd Blanche, is looking into allegations that the special prosecutors who investigated the famed Watergate break-in committed "misconduct."
According to the news outlet, justice officials invited Geoff Shepard – an 81-year-old former Nixon aide turned Watergate historian and revisionist – to the DOJ to present his theory of what really happened 50 years earlier.
But, much like Trump today, Nixon faced a myriad of scandals and allegations before Watergate was even a drip in the nation's consciousness.
"The tragic, inexorable, indisputable fact remains that Richard Nixon presided over the most corrupt administration in the history of the Republic," one political insider said. "Corrupted by cash, rivers of it, gathered illegally or by muscle and intimidation, laundered abroad, stashed in boxes and safes, never accounted for and distributed to burglars and for the most nefarious of enterprises."
Richard Nixon's List of Corruption
His downfall began with a break-in at the Watergate complex in Washington.
The insider said the Nixon Administration was "guilty of an unprecedented systematic assault on our democratic society," with similar accusations and allegations Trump currently faces.
For instance, a Congressional subcommittee found that $17million was spent on Nixon's estates in California and Florida. No other president before Trump had ever been accused of using so much federal money to improve his personal property.
Additionally, in his first four years in the White House, Nixon reportedly underpaid his taxes by more than $400,000.
Richard Nixon 'Secretly Taped' White House Guests
Nixon has since been labeled one of the most corrupt presidents in US history.
Perhaps most famously, Nixon ordered the installation of a comprehensive secret tape apparatus to record every conversation in the Oval Office. Every visitor, from foreign heads of government to White House staffers were unaware that their conversations were being taped.
After the Watergate break-in, Nixon promised to deliver certain tapes, crucial to the investigation. Howevr, the White House suddenly and belatedly announced that some of them did not exist. A taped conversation between Nixon and his lawyer, John Dean, was found to have an 18minute "deliberate" erasure."
'There is a Parallel' Between Nixon and Trump
Never Miss an
Daily updates from the heart of Hollywood, right to your inbox
By entering your email and clicking Sign Up, you’re agreeing to let us send you customized marketing messages about us and our advertising partners. You are also agreeing to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
The Trump administration is considering taking a new look at the scandal.
The new investigation comes at a moment when the Nixon legacy is increasingly compared to Trump's presidency, something referenced by even some of the top members of the Republican Party.
During remarks at the Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, Calif., this summer, Vice President JD Vance made the comparison explicit.
"If you look at the story of how the deep state took down Richard Nixon, it’s not all that different from what the same groups of people—the same institutions—tried to do to Donald Trump in the first Trump administration," Vance said. "There is a parallel."
