The hashtag #FridayNightMassacre trended on Twitter after President Trump fired two top impeachment witnesses two days after he was found not guilty on two articles of impeachment passed by the House of Representatives in December.
Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman were both effectively fired late on Friday as Trump culls administration figures who testified under subpoena during the House impeachment investigation late last year.
The phrase recalls President Richard Nixon, who, in October 1973, instructed Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox. Cox had subpoenaed the White House for conversations between Nixon and White House counsel John Dean.
Nixon invoked executive privilege, but the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington ruled the president had to comply. Nixon attempted to hand over summaries of the recordings, but Cox refused to accept the redacted recordings. Nixon then instructed Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox, but the Justice Department’s second-in-command also refused and resigned.
Finally, U.S. Solicitor General Robert Bork stepped in as acting attorney general and fired Cox in what was referred to as the “Saturday Night Massacre.” House Democrats then launched impeachment proceedings, culminating in Nixon’s resignation on Aug. 9, 1974.
Twitter on Friday was also full of comparisons between Trump’s actions and a grisly scene from Martin Scorsese’s mob film Goodfellas, in which Robert De Niro’s character, “Jimmy the Gent,” kills several of his associates after they stole millions in a robbery.
The Friday night massacre is under way. Sondland. The Vindmans. Anyone who testified (and told the truth, by the way) seems targeted for this purge. https://t.co/osqBijBsgN
— Greg Miller (@gregpmiller) February 8, 2020
Yovanovitch forced into retirement.
Taylor forced back into retirement.
Vindman expelled from the NSC.
Sondland fired.
Sounds like a purge to me.
— Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) February 7, 2020
I guess now is a good time to remind folks that the “Saturday Night massacre” was mostly a series of resignations of people who refused to do Nixon’s dirty work. (Bork actually did it.)
— Amanda Carpenter (@amandacarpenter) February 8, 2020
First Vindman, now this. This is beginning to feel like the Layla scene in Goodfellas, when the clean up starts and the bodies begin piling up https://t.co/wu7pmYPBHU
— Charlie Mahtesian (@PoliticoCharlie) February 8, 2020
