'Watergate's Secrets and Betrayals': Nixon's Defense Team Gets a New Day in Court

In the summer of 2021, President Richard Nixon was put on trial nearly every day for six weeks. The trials came in the form of an off-Broadway play called "Trial on the Potomac," which imagined the president going through an impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate for his role in the Watergate scandal and subsequent cover-up.

Nixon's defense in the play is based on documents uncovered by Geoff Shepard, who worked as deputy counsel for Nixon's Watergate defense team. The audience became members of the Senate who, at the end of every performance, had to vote on whether Nixon was guilty of impeachable offenses. Of the dozens of performances, only one crowd ever voted to convict President Nixon.

Shephard, now in his late 70s, compiled the Nixon defense documents into a 2015 book, "The Real Watergate Scandal: Collusion, Conspiracy, and the Plot That Brought Nixon Down." Playwright and director George Bugatti adapted Shepard's nonfiction book into "Trial on the Potomac."

"Everyone talks about 'the smoking gun,'" Bugatti told Military.com, referring to the Nixon tapes transcript that many believed was proof Nixon was guilty of obstruction of justice. "But the smoking gun was shooting blanks."

Bugatti has now turned Shepard's foundational work into a new documentary film, "Watergate's Secrets and Betrayals," hosted by John O'Hurley ("Seinfeld").

Nixon technically never got his day in court. On Aug. 8, 1974, he announced he would resign the office of president of the United States at noon the next day. A month later, his successor, President Gerald Ford, pardoned the former president for any wrongdoing for which he might have been accused. The story of Watergate has gone unchallenged in popular memory ever since, painting a picture of a scandal-ridden Nixon pulling whatever "dirty tricks" necessary to avoid a prison sentence.

Shepard, a member of the former president's defense team, never accepted that narrative. He acquired the records of the Watergate special prosecutor and found what he believed were injustices committed against Nixon.

"That's what fascinated me about Geoff [Shepard's] story," Bugatti said. "It's as if a man hanged and then later there was information which showed he was not guilty -- or at least it could be argued that he was not guilty. There was not enough information there to present that case."

The case in favor of Nixon is rooted in Shepard's uncovered documents as well as Nixon's Oval Office tapes, all of which are analyzed by legal experts Andrew Napolitano, Laurence Silberman, Paul Diamond and law professor Stephen Saltzburg in the documentary. Rufus Edmisten, once deputy chief counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee, and Dwight Chapin, deputy aide to Nixon, offer their testimony via interviews while the film uses archival footage to dramatize scenes from the special prosecutor's documents.

"There's a great quote by Carl Sagan: 'It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken,'" Bugatti said. "I think the true students of history, people coming to this with an open mind, can be surprised by the gross injustice that was done by our Department of Justice. It's nothing less than shocking. They're going to be surprised that this could actually occur."

After the film's release, Shepard will release the documents related to the film and the Watergate special prosecutor on the "Watergate Secrets" website. Anyone interested in reading them will be able to download them or read them online.

"Watergate's Secrets and Betrayals" is set for an Aug. 8, 2024 release, marking the 50th anniversary of Nixon stepping down from office in 1974. For more information or to watch the movie, visit the "Watergate Secrets" website.

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