The Watergate Special Prosecution Force (WSPF) did not terminate after President Nixon resigned August 8, 1974. Indeed, the prosecutors continued to investigate many facets of the Nixon presidency for some time. Some of these actions are stunning. Geoff Sheppard posted a memo that has to be seen to be believed: In September 1974, Phillip Lacovara suggested to Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski that Ford's pardon of Nixon violated WSPF regulations, and was thus invalid. While the President usually has the absolute power to grant pardons of federal offenses, President Ford constrained his own powers by agreeing to the WPSF regulations. You wonder where Jack Smith and Robert Mueller got the idea that everything the President does is obstruction of justice?
Speaking of obstruction, there is a fascinating article in the New York Times Magazine by James Rosen, titled "The Secret History of the Deep State." He reveals seven pages of never-before-seen grand jury testimony from 1975 between former-President Nixon and WSPF prosecutors. The story is very long, and I cannot do justice to it in a single post.
The biggest takeaway is that an Navy enlisted man, Yeoman Charles Radford, who worked in the White House, was a mole. No, not for the Soviets, but for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He would routinely make copies of documents from Nixon administration officials and share them with people in the Pentagon. Radford would pilfer documents from Henry Kissinger and Alexander Haig and make copies of them.
