When Presidents Go to Trial
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On Tuesday, April 4, former President Donald Trump was arrested and appeared in court for his arraignment in New York. The charges stem from hush money paid to Stormy Daniels in 2016, allegedly to cover up an extramarital\\xa0affair. The entire case leads to larger questions about how democracies, where everyone is supposed to be equal under the law, do or don\\u2019t hold their leaders to account. Guest host Ilya Marritz spoke with Rick Perlstein,\\xa0a journalist, historian, and author of\\xa0The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan,\\xa0about perhaps the most famous case of a former US president alluding punishment. On September 8, 1974, President Gerald Ford pardoned his predecessor, Richard Nixon, who resigned from office one month earlier. The pardon rocked a nation still in the throes of the Watergate scandal, and perhaps permanently\\xa0altered the trust of the public in the executive branch. But a quieter, separate movement had begun within the Republican Party.\\xa0Perlstein\\xa0explains how the groundwork for our struggle to prosecute, even the most guilty seeming presidents, can be traced back to that fateful fall day in 1974.
\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\nThis is a segment from our September 9, 2022\\xa0show,\\xa0Lock Him Up?.
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