A federal judge this week granted a request to unseal a large portion of the “road map” to the evidence against former President Richard Nixon, Politico reports.
Chief U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell on Thursday agreed to unseal a large part of the road map that was given to the House Judiciary Committee by a federal grand jury in 1974. It included a summary of evidence from different witnesses and supporting documents that detail the grand jury investigation into the Watergate scandal.
Geoffrey Shepard, an attorney from California who was a member of Nixon’s defense team, requested that the information about the grand jury’s proceedings be made public in 2011. His request for transcripts was denied by Judge Royce Lamberth, though the judge agreed that the road map should be released.
Howell ordered the National Archives to release the road map, which “consists of a two-page summary statement, followed by 53 individually numbered statements,” and 97 supporting documents, according to the judge’s order. Howell instructed the Archives to release the supporting documents, and to review the two-page summary and the 53 numbered statements for disclosure.
“We’re clearly making progress because the judge has asked for further efforts by the Department of Justice,” Shepard told Politico
“The central focus of my request is to know what prosecutors told the grand jury to convince them to adopt the road map as their own and to name Richard Nixon as a co-conspirator in the Watergate cover-up,” he added.
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