Messitte: Where have you gone, Elliot Richardson?

As the nation goes down into a muddle of congressional committees, FBI investigations and leaked intelligence information into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, the example of Elliot Richardson’s five months as the nation’s top legal officer more than four decades ago remains a profile in courage that the country is sorely lacking today. Richardson’s story shows that even with our constitutional checks and balances, we still need our leaders to do the right thing when called upon.

A tried and true Republican from Massachusetts, Richardson staked out his judicial independence before he was even confirmed as attorney general in May 1973. While awaiting U.S. Senate approval to what would be the third of four cabinet posts he would hold during a distinguished public service career, Richardson willingly tied the appointment of Archibald Cox to be the Watergate special prosecutor to his own as the nation’s top lawyer. The congressional Watergate investigations were ramping up that spring and Richardson gave Cox a broad mandate to examine “all offenses arising out of the 1972 campaign.”

Richardson and Cox decided to wall the White House off from the investigation in order to keep impartiality and fairness at the center of their inquiry. More remarkably, Richardson allowed the special prosecutor to speak on the record to the media and gave him his word that Cox could be fired only for “extraordinary improprieties.” The arrangement was so important that Richardson staked his career on it. He even brought Cox, a constitutional legal scholar, along with him to his Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings to prove the point.

By October 1973, just five months into his tenure, Richardson faced an unappetizing plate of White House misconduct. Alongside the unspooling Watergate scandal, U.S. attorneys in Baltimore had the goods on Spiro Agnew, the sitting vice president.

And just as he should have done, without regard to partisan politics, Attorney General Richardson let the judicial chips fall just as they lay. He bluntly informed Nixon that his own vice president, the man he had entrusted to be a heartbeat away from the presidency for the past five years, faced as many as 40 possible indictable counts that included bribery and tax evasion. With Richardson standing behind the investigative work of the lawyers in Baltimore, Agnew pleaded no contest to tax evasion and became the second vice president in American history to resign from office.

Just 10 days after Agnew’s resignation, Richardson was once again in the middle of an unprecedented constitutional crisis that would cement his legacy. Cox demanded access to Nixon’s famous White House tapes to further illuminate scandals that went well beyond the Watergate break-in. Nixon responded by insisting that Richardson fire the Watergate special prosecutor. And Richardson flat out refused. He chose resignation over any compromise of his own sense of legal fairness and equal justice under law.

Whether or not the Trump campaign has colluded with the Russian government during the campaign, all those involved in the oversight process designed to uncover the truth should Elliot Richardson’s example close at hand. With the Trump administration dismissing the call for a special prosecutor as a partisan attack, the president twittering about wire tapping and McCarthyism without evidence and all but a few congressional Republicans trying to slow roll or divert the process toward leaks, where is today’s leader ready to rise above partisanship in search of the truth no matter where it leads?

In a twist of fate that Attorney General Jeff Sessions, FBI Director James Comey and Rep. Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee should heed, Richardson’s career didn’t suffer for standing up to Nixon. He would go one to serve as President Gerald Ford’s ambassador to the United Kingdom and as his last secretary of commerce. After he left government, Richardson received honorary degrees from colleges and a slew of awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998, just a year before he died at 79.

As of now, it is hard to see a future Presidential Medal of Freedom candidate in the Trump campaign-Russian intelligence imbroglio, but here’s hoping that Richardson’s example will light the way.

Zach Messitte is the president and professor of politics and government at Ripon College in Wisconsin. He is the co-author of a forthcoming book on Spiro Agnew with the University of Virginia Press.