Washington (CNN) The National Archives released a central set of documents from the Watergate scandal on Wednesday, including a would-be indictment against President Richard Nixon, following a lawsuit pointing to its relevance in the current era.

The documents, known as the Watergate Road Map, as released Wednesday contained redactions and never-before-seen remnants of the investigation into Nixon but largely contained information previously made public, according to the Archives.

The group that petitioned for Wednesday's release had said in a September post that should special counsel Robert Mueller decide to issue a report to Congress, the Road Map would be one example to follow.

"If Mueller decides to send a report to Congress, perhaps through (Deputy Attorney General Rod) Rosenstein, the Road Map would be a vital touchstone for the public and Congress to assess his actions," the group wrote.

One document released Wednesday showed a series of charges drawn up against Nixon, who was never formally charged for crimes in the Watergate scandal and was pardoned by President Gerald Ford after he resigned.

The document is a draft, as noted in handwriting in the upper right-hand corner of the first page, dated February 1, 1974, a month before Nixon's co-conspirators were indicted.

The draft indictment showed that a grand jury planned to charge Nixon with bribery, conspiracy, obstruction of justice and obstruction of a criminal investigation. A month later, seven of Nixon's aides were charged with conspiracy and six were charged with obstruction of justice, but none were charged with bribery.

In September of this year, Jack Goldsmith and Benjamin Wittes -- a pair of writers for the prominent legal blog Lawfare -- and Stephen Bates, who worked for independent counsel Ken Starr, announced they were petitioning for the documents that Watergate special prosecutor Leon Jaworski sent to Congress as Nixon faced impeachment.

The group noted at Lawfare that while the Starr report during President Bill Clinton's tenure was made public, the analogous document during the Nixon administration had remained confidential for decades.

Protect Democracy, the legal group that brought the suit on the trio's behalf, said in a statement Wednesday that the Road Map "is a critical historical precedent for ensuring that the facts uncovered in special counsel Mueller's investigation become public and serve as the basis for whatever accountability is necessary."

Mueller is tasked with investigating potential coordination between Russia and President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign along with other relevant information that arises from the investigation. The former FBI director has rarely telegraphed his intentions, and it is unclear what form his final conclusions might take. Moreover, if there are any potentially criminal findings on Trump himself, Mueller may believe he is unable to indict the sitting President and would instead defer to Congress, which could initiate impeachment proceedings.

Wednesday's release highlighted the issue the legal system faced in the case of Nixon, where ultimately investigators were able to submit their grand jury's report through a judge to Congress.

and Bates Wittes, Goldsmithand Bates noted in October , when a judge called on the Archives to release the document, that "Geoffrey Shepard, a California lawyer who worked for Nixon, sought the Road Map's release some time back" as well.

As the Archives noted in a statement Wednesday morning, much of the information in the release was already in the public domain. But some of the documents themselves had not been in the public eye.

During the trial of Nixon's aides, the hush money and offer of pardons were treated as instances of obstruction of justice, according to Ken Hughes, a historian at the University of Virginia Miller Center who studies the White House tapes and Watergate.

Hughes said that while it was public knowledge that the grand jury wanted to indict Nixon, the charges themselves were never made public.

"The grand jury was able to discern that Nixon himself was a criminal, and the only reason that they did not indict him is because there was a question of whether or not a sitting President could be indicted," Hughes said.</s>WASHINGTON – U.S. archivists on Wednesday revealed one of the last great secrets of the Watergate investigation – the backbone of a long sealed report used by prosecutor Leon Jaworski to send Congress the evidence that led to the impeachment of President Richard Nixon.

The release of the 1974 impeachment referral came after a former member of Nixon’s defense team and three prominent legal analysts filed separate lawsuits seeking its release from grand jury secrecy rules. The legal analysts argued the report could offer a precedent and guide for special counsel Robert Mueller as his office addresses its present-day challenge on whether, and if so, how to make public findings from its investigation into Russia interference in the 2016 election, including any that directly involve President Donald Trump.

The legal specialists said they and Watergate veterans sought the release of the Jaworski report after more than four decades of secrecy because of the historic parallels they see to the current probe and the report’s potential to serve as a counterexample to the independent counsel Ken Starr’s report seeking president Bill Clinton’s impeachment.

The 453-page Starr report, written in 1998, deepened partisan divisions when its graphic detail and legal conclusions about Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky were immediately made public by House Republicans, who suffered an electoral backlash.

By contrast, the reputation of Jaworski’s report has fared far better, even as its bare-bones form remained a mystery. The Jaworski report is known colloquially known as the “Sirica road map,” for then-Chief U.S. District Judge John J. Sirica, who approved its creation and transmission to lawmakers

“There were no comments, no interpretations and not a word or phrase of accusatory nature. The ‘Road Map’ was simply that – a series of guideposts if the House Judiciary Committee wished to follow them,” the late Jaworski wrote in his 1976 memoir, “The Right and the Power: The Prosecution of Watergate.”

Sirica’s modern-day successor, Chief U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell of the District, on Oct. 11 ordered the disclosure of his report – with limited redactions – in response to petitions by California author and former Nixon deputy Watergate defense counsel Geoffrey Shepard and by Brookings Institution senior fellow Benjamin Wittes; Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor who led the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel under president George W. Bush; and Stephen Bates, a Las Vegas professor who co-wrote the Starr report with now-Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh and other members of Starr’s team.

In a statement Deana El-Mallawany, counsel for Protect Democracy, which represented the Wittes group, said, “The Road Map is a critical historical precedent for ensuring that the facts uncovered in Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation become public and serve as the basis for whatever accountability is necessary. Our democracy depends on it.”

The road map consists of a two-page summary, followed by 53 numbered statements, supported by 97 documents including interviews and tapes, according to information that the National Archives and Records Administration turned over to Howell.

While much of the report’s substance – including evidence of the Nixon campaign’s funding of the break-in of Democratic National Committee headquarters and the president’s role in the subsequent coverup – has long been public, its structure and potential to serve as a template for others remained under seal.

Bates said as a Starr prosecutor in 1997, he learned that despite the potential for the “road map” to present a legal model for future investigations, such as Mueller’s it was not publicly available when he asked the National Archives for a copy to study.

“It is one of the only precedents of a report that has had to go through that kind of process [under grand jury secrecy rules] to get to the House for consideration as grounds for impeachment,” Bates said in an interview. “If Mueller could say, ‘We have structured this report the way Leon Jaworski did in 1974, and Judge Sirica approved it,’ that might be persuasive in this case.”

Jaworski needed Sirica’s approval to send materials to Congress because they were covered under federal grand jury secrecy rules under a process overseen by the judge.

Jaworski faced a problem similar to one that may confront Mueller today: he had relevant evidence but not, he concluded, the constitutional authority to indict a sitting president. Congress had the authority to impeach Nixon, but not the evidence. In the end, the House committee sought access to evidence gathered by prosecutors, the grand jury adopted the road map, and Sirica and the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia authorized its transmittal under seal.</s>Highly secretive documents finally released Wednesday, including a draft of a would-be criminal indictment against former President Richard Nixon, could provide guidance for Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into President Trump, according to a group of legal analysts that sued to unearth the materials.

Specifically, the materials from Nixon special prosecutor Leon Jaworski are strikingly sparse and predominately factual, which could counsel Mueller against issuing long-winded legal conclusions or opinions. And the documents have largely been kept out of the public eye for decades, avoiding the political spectacle of the report released by independent counsel Ken Starr decades later, after his investigation of former President Bill Clinton.

Stephen Bates, who worked for Starr, and legal bloggers Jack Goldsmith and Benjamin Wittes won their battle to force the National Archives to unseal the so-called "Watergate Road Map" and its related documents last month in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, as they argued that the materials had significant political implications today that overrode any government interest in keeping them secret.

"As Mueller reportedly contemplates writing a 'report' on possible presidential obstruction of justice, there are two models available to him to the extent that he is contemplating an impeachment referral of some kind," the three analysts wrote on their blog in September. "One of those, the Starr Report, is well-understood and regarded by many commentators in a negative light. The other, the Road Map, remains secret more than 40 years after its transmission to Congress. Few people have even heard of it."

The salacious Starr report, released in September 1998, became both a political football and wrecking ball upon its release, with critics charging that it was an overtly political document. The beginning of the report contained something of a disclaimer, noting that "many of the details" contained inside "reveal highly personal information; many are sexually explicit. This is unfortunate, but it is essential."

But unlike the Starr report, the low-key Watergate Road Map is "almost entirely non-argumentative," the writers posted on Lawfare late Wednesday. "In this regard it is a world away from the Starr Report, which laid out a lengthy narrative and then included a set of legal interpretations arguing that the facts reported might be grounds for impeachment. The Road Map entirely lacks a thesis."

The legal analysts argued that the Watergate Road Map could offer insight into the ongoing legal debate as to whether a president constitutionally could be charged with obstruction of justice at all, as well as whether it would be appropriate under the special counsel statutes for Mueller to issue a public or confidential report on his findings -- should he issue a report at all.

"The document is ... keenly relevant to current discussions of how Mueller should proceed," Bates, Goldsmith, and Wittes added. "It is possible that it is even relevant to discussions taking place within the Mueller investigation itself."

The key takeaways for Mueller, the three legal analysts wrote after reviewing the Watergate Road Map: "First, less really is more. The document is powerful because it is so spare; because it is trying to inform, not to persuade; because it utterly lacks rhetorical excess."

Next: The "Road Map is extremely careful not to do — or seem to do — Congress’s job for it," they added. "[T]he Road Map simply gave Congress information to use as members saw fit and assiduously avoided instruction or didactic messaging as to how to put that information to use."

And finally: "The Road Map teaches an important lesson about restraint. ... Leon Jaworski wrote a meticulous 55-page document that contains not a word of excess. He transmitted it to Congress, where it did not leak. It is powerful partly because it is so by-the-book. Kind of like Bob Mueller." (Unlike the Starr report, which was written from the prosecutor's perspective, the Watergate Road Map released Wednesday is not written in Jaworski's voice. Instead, it is a court document, like the indictment.)

The records in the Watergate Road Map initially were provided to Congress under seal 45 years ago, on the order of federal appellate Judge John Sirica, after special prosecutor Jaworski argued he theoretically had enough evidence for criminal charges again Nixon, even though the Constitution seemingly did not permit a sitting president to face a criminal indictment.

FBI NOTIFIED OF ALLEGED SCHEME TO PAY WOMEN TO MAKE FALSE ACCUSATIONS AGAINST MUELLER

Sirica authorized the documents' confidential release to Congress in March 1974, after Congress already had initiated impeachment proceedings. Nixon ultimately resigned on Aug. 8, 1974, facing almost-certain impeachment and removal.

The draft indictment against Nixon contained charges of bribery, conspiracy, obstruction of justice and obstruction of a criminal probe -- and seven Nixon aides who were charged later were similarly hit with obstruction counts.

The indictment, which included in the top-right corner a handwritten notation that it was a "draft," read: “[F]rom on or about March 21, 1973…Richard M. Nixon unlawfully, willfully and knowingly did combine, conspire, confederate and agree together and with co-conspirators... to commit bribery... obstruct justice... and obstruct a criminal investigation.”

However, prominent legal analysts, including Harvard professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz, as well as the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, have long argued that a sitting president cannot be indicted -- even if he commits a crime.

"The grand jury was able to discern that Nixon himself was a criminal, and the only reason that they did not indict him is because there was a question of whether or not a sitting president could be indicted," University of Virginia Miller Center historian Ken Hughes said in an interview.

Speaking to Fox News' "The Ingraham Angle" exclusively on Monday, President Trump voiced his continued frustration with Mueller's probe, which he has long called a partisan "witch hunt" led by Democratic lawyers upset that he had won the 2016 presidential election. However, he also indicated that he might offer some cooperation as the investigation appears to wind down.

"It’s ridiculous that I have to do anything, because I didn’t do anything, but yes, we will probably do something, yes we will respond to questions," Trump told host Laura Ingraham.</s>WASHINGTON — U.S. archivists on Wednesday revealed one of the last great secrets of the Watergate investigation — the backbone of a long sealed report used by prosecutor Leon Jaworski to send Congress the evidence in the legal case against President Richard Nixon.

The release of the referral — delivered in 1974 as impeachment proceedings were being weighed — came after a former member of Nixon’s defence team and three prominent legal analysts filed separate lawsuits seeking its unsealing after more than four decades under grand jury secrecy rules. The legal analysts argued the report could offer a precedent and guide for special counsel Robert Mueller as his office addresses its present-day challenge on whether, and if so, how to make public findings from its investigation into Russia interference in the 2016 election, including any that directly involve President Donald Trump.

The legal specialists said they and Watergate veterans sought to have the Jaworski report made public because of the historic parallels they see to the current probe and the report’s potential to serve as a counterexample to the independent counsel Ken Starr’s report before President Bill Clinton’s impeachment.

The 453-page Starr report, written in 1998, deepened partisan divisions when its graphic detail and legal conclusions about Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky were immediately made public by House Republicans, who suffered an electoral backlash.

By contrast, the reputation of Jaworski’s report has fared far better, even as its bare-bones form remained a mystery. The Jaworski report is known colloquially known as the “Sirica road map,” for then-Chief U.S. District Judge John Sirica, who approved its creation and transmission to lawmakers.

“There were no comments, no interpretations and not a word or phrase of accusatory nature. The ‘Road Map’ was simply that — a series of guideposts if the House Judiciary Committee wished to follow them,” the late Jaworski wrote in his 1976 memoir, “The Right and the Power: The Prosecution of Watergate.”

The House Judiciary Committee recommended Nixon be impeached in July of 1974. He resigned before that recommendation moved ahead.

Sirica’s modern-day successor, Chief U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell of the District of Columbia, on Oct. 11 ordered the disclosure of Jaworski’s report by the National Archives and Records Administration — with limited redactions — in response to petitions by California author and former Nixon deputy Watergate defense counsel Geoffrey Shepard and by Brookings Institution senior fellow Benjamin Wittes; Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor who led the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel under president George W. Bush; and Stephen Bates, a Las Vegas professor who co-wrote the Starr report with now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and other members of Starr’s team.

In a statement Deana El-Mallawany, counsel for Protect Democracy, which represented the Wittes group, said, “The Road Map is a critical historical precedent for ensuring that the facts uncovered in Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation become public and serve as the basis for whatever accountability is necessary. Our democracy depends on it.”

The road map consists of a two-page summary, followed by 53 numbered statements, supported by 97 documents including interviews and tapes, according to information that the National Archives turned over to Howell.

While much of the report’s substance — including evidence of the Nixon campaign’s funding of the break-in of Democratic National Committee headquarters and the president’s role in the subsequent coverup — has long been public, its structure and potential to serve as a template for others remained under seal.

Bates said as a Starr prosecutor in 1997, he learned that despite the potential for the “road map” to present a legal model for future investigations, such as Mueller’s it was not publicly available when he asked the National Archives for a copy to study.

“It is one of the only precedents of a report that has had to go through that kind of process [under grand jury secrecy rules] to get to the House for consideration as grounds for impeachment,” Bates said in an interview. “If Mueller could say, ‘We have structured this report the way Leon Jaworski did in 1974, and Judge Sirica approved it,’ that might be persuasive in this case.”

Jaworski faced a problem similar to one that may confront Mueller: He had relevant evidence but not, Jaworski concluded, the constitutional authority to indict a sitting president. Congress had the authority to impeach Nixon, but not the evidence. In the end, the House committee sought access to evidence gathered by prosecutors, the grand jury adopted the road map, and Sirica and the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia authorized its transmittal under seal.

Howell, the judge who ordered the road map’s release, is also overseeing the Mueller grand jury, and as chief judge, would decide any similar release request were one made for that grand jury material.

In her order, she directed archivists to disclose 81 of 97 supporting documents that have been made public elsewhere, and to review the rest for release.
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Other veterans of past White House investigations differed on the Road Map’s lessons.

Paul Rosenzweig, who served on Starr’s team, said the document is important for historians, but that Justice Department regulations issued since then provide for Mueller to report to his supervisor, currently Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

Nick Akerman, who served as an assistant prosecutor on Jaworski’s team, said however it could provide a model for Mueller, particularly should his team decide the president engaged in wrongdoing but that department regulations do not allow them to seek an indictment or make a case for impeachment.

“It’s absolutely an approach he could take — simply giving them the facts, without coming to a conclusion,” Akerman said.</s>Highly secretive documents finally released Wednesday, including a draft of a would-be criminal indictment against former President Richard Nixon, could provide guidance for Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into President Trump, according to the group of legal analysts that sued to unearth the materials.

Stephen Bates, who worked for independent counsel Ken Starr, and legal bloggers Jack Goldsmith and Benjamin Wittes won their battle to force the National Archives to unseal the so-called “Watergate Roadmap” last month in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, as they argued that the materials had significant political implications today that overrode any government interest in keeping them secret.

“As Mueller reportedly contemplates writing a ‘report’ on possible presidential obstruction of justice, there are two models available to him to the extent that he is contemplating an impeachment referral of some kind,” the three analysts wrote on their blog Lawfare in September. “One of those, the Starr Report [that led to the impeachment of former President Bill Clinton], is well-understood and regarded by many commentators in a negative light. The other, the Road Map, remains secret more than 40 years after its transmission to Congress. Few people have even heard of it.”

The salacious Starr report, released in September 1998, became a political football and wrecking ball upon its release, with critics charging that it was an overtly political document. The beginning of the report contained something of a disclaimer, noting that “many of the details” contained inside “reveal highly personal information; many are sexually explicit. This is unfortunate, but it is essential.”

The Watergate documents, the analysts argued, also could offer insight into the ongoing legal debate as to whether a president constitutionally could be charged with obstruction of justice at all, as well as whether it would be appropriate within the special counsel statutes for Mueller to issue a public or confidential report on his findings — should he issue a report at all.

It remains unclear which course Mueller may take once he concludes his investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and related issues. The Watergate Road Map, now released in its entirety, could counsel his team to reveal its findings confidentially to Congress.

“The document is… keenly relevant to current discussions of how Mueller should proceed,” Bates, Goldsmith, and Wittes added. “It is possible that it is even relevant to discussions taking place within the Mueller investigation itself.”

The records in the Watergate Road Map initially were provided to Congress under seal 45 years ago, on the order of federal appellate Judge John Sirica, after special prosecutor Leon Jaworski argued he theoretically had enough evidence for criminal charges again Nixon, even though the Constitution seemingly did not permit a sitting president to face a criminal indictment.

FBI NOTIFIED OF ALLEGED SCHEME TO PAY WOMEN TO MAKE FALSE ACCUSATIONS AGAINST MUELLER

Sirica authorized the documents’ confidential release to Congress, which already had initiated impeachment proceedings and proceeded to use the files to bolster its investigations. Nixon ultimately resigned on Aug. 8, 1974, facing almost-certain impeachment and removal.

The draft indictment against Nixon contained charges of bribery, conspiracy, obstruction of justice and obstruction of a criminal probe — and seven Nixon aides who were charged later were similarly hit with obstruction counts.

The indictment, which included in the top-right corner a handwritten notation that it was a “draft,” read: “[F]rom on or about March 21, 1973…Richard M. Nixon unlawfully, willfully and knowingly did combine, conspire, confederate and agree together and with co-conspirators… to commit bribery… obstruct justice… and obstruct a criminal investigation.”

However, prominent legal analysts, including Harvard professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz, as well as the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, have long argued that a sitting president cannot be indicted — even if he commits a crime.

“The grand jury was able to discern that Nixon himself was a criminal, and the only reason that they did not indict him is because there was a question of whether or not a sitting president could be indicted,” University of Virginia Miller Center historian Ken Hughes said in an interview.

Speaking to Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle” exclusively on Monday, President Trump voiced his continued frustration with Mueller’s probe, which he has long called a partisan “witch hunt” led by Democratic lawyers upset that he had won the 2016 presidential election. However, he also indicated that he might offer some cooperation as the investigation appears to wind down.

“It’s ridiculous that I have to do anything, because I didn’t do anything, but yes, we will probably do something, yes we will respond to questions,” Trump told host Laura Ingraham.
After three prominent legal analysts (Geoff Shepard, Benjamin Wittes, Jack Goldsmith, and Stephen Bates) filed separate lawsuits seeking its unsealing and Chief Judge Beryl A. Howell, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, on Oct. 11 ordered the disclosure, the National Archives releases a set of documents from the Watergate investigation as a possible "road map" for the Mueller probe, including a would-be indictment against former president Richard Nixon.