House Judiciary Committee

The House Judiciary Committee entered the Watergate crisis as the congressional body charged with investigating whether a president should face impeachment. Acting for the full House of Representatives, it began the first such inquiry in more than a century. Its role brought the criminal investigation’s evidence into the constitutional process for judging presidential conduct, even as prosecutors argued that an incumbent president could not be indicted.

Constitutional Role and Investigative Mandate

The committee acted on behalf of the House of Representatives, whose constitutional authority to impeach is described as its “sole power to impeach.” The inquiry concerned possible action against President Richard Nixon for conduct potentially amounting to high crimes and misdemeanors. The book presents the committee not as a body conducting an ordinary legislative review, but as the institution beginning a rare investigation with the possibility of presidential impeachment at its center.

The scale of the moment is underscored by the length of time since the previous investigation of its kind: more than one hundred years. The committee’s work therefore opened an exceptional constitutional process, while leaving the decision about impeachment to the House as a whole. If the House impeached, the Senate would sit in judgment at a trial, presided over by the Chief Justice of the United States.

Evidence Referred from the Watergate Investigation

The committee’s inquiry developed alongside the criminal proceedings arising from the Watergate cover-up. On March 1, a Washington grand jury indicted seven former White House and campaign aides for conspiracy to obstruct justice: H. R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, Charles Colson, John Mitchell, Gordon Strachan, Robert Mardian, and Kenneth Parkinson. Beyond those indictments, the grand jury supplied John Sirica with a briefcase containing a report and accompanying evidence concerning the case against the president.

The report’s route reflected a constitutional constraint. Prosecutors had argued strongly that the Constitution precluded indicting an incumbent president, and the grand jurors recommended that the report and evidence instead be turned over to the House committee. The referral did not itself decide whether Nixon should be impeached; it placed material gathered by the criminal investigation before the institution empowered to consider that question.

The Inquiry Amid Calls to Move On

The committee began its investigation against the backdrop of Nixon’s public appeal to put Watergate aside. On January 30, addressing a joint session of Congress and a national television audience, he concluded his State of the Union message by declaring, “One year of Watergate is enough,” and urging the country and Congress to turn to more urgent matters. The House inquiry represented a different institutional response: rather than treating the passage of a year as a reason to close the matter, it opened a process to examine whether presidential conduct warranted impeachment.

The book frames the committee’s significance through the division of constitutional responsibilities. The grand jury investigated and assembled evidence; prosecutors maintained that criminal indictment of a sitting president was unavailable; and the committee began the House’s inquiry into possible impeachment. The committee thus became the point at which the Watergate investigation’s evidence met the House’s distinct constitutional power.