The following is excerpted from the Deseret News. To read the full article, CLICK HERE.
Recently named as second counselor in the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, President D. Todd Christofferson is known for his nearly two decades of service as an apostle and member of the church’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
Yet less widely known among Latter-day Saints is that long before President Christofferson became an apostle in April 2008, he was once a young law clerk who witnessed the unfolding investigation of President Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s.
“Judge (John J.) Sirica (the judge in the Watergate trials) and I were shocked as we heard Nixon calmly ask” how much money it would take to keep the Watergate burglars quiet, said then-Elder Christofferson in 2017 to faculty and students at Christ Church College in Oxford, England, as reported by Tad Walch.
President Christofferson and Judge Sirica were the first people outside the White House to hear Nixon’s secret Watergate tapes, which revealed that the former United States president had agreed to blackmail and had been involved in covering up the Watergate break-in.
“The judge and I couldn’t believe, didn’t want to believe what we were hearing,” President Christofferson said then. “And he (the judge) passed me a note suggesting we rewind the tape and listen again. Up to this point we both still hoped that the president was not really involved, but this was indisputable.”
Nixon’s “numbed conscience ran his presidency aground,” the Deseret News reported from then-Elder Christofferson’s 2017 talk at Oxford.
To read the full article, CLICK HERE.
