For What it’s Worth: Warren Hecht

As everyone is probably aware, there is a special election in the 27^th Assembly District to complete the term of Daniel Rosenthal, who resigned to take a position with the UJA. I will not address the quality of the candidates or who to vote for. There are plenty of people already doing that. Instead, I will focus on why for this race it is even more important than usual to have a strong showing by the Orthodox Jewish community.

As my regular readers know, a month ago I had to return a guinea pig we adopted to the animal shelter because he did not get along with the one already at my home. For the last month, I looked at possible replacements with no success. I couldn’t immediately adopt from the same place because they have a thirty-day rule of no adoptions after returning an animal. On day thirty, I returned with my daughter Tovah, who had been with me when we adopted Squirrel last September.

I can spend a complete column addressing the Republican presidential candidate (minus one - Trump) debate or the 19 defendants in the Georgia criminal case going to the jail to be processed. I will try to combine both with a common theme.

On August 3, former President Donald Trump appeared in Federal District Court in Washington DC to be arraigned on a four-count indictment, namely: Conspiracy to Defraud the United States, Conspiracy to Obstruct an Official Proceeding, Obstruction of and Attempt to Obstruct an Official  Processing, and Conspiracy against rights to vote and have the vote counted. Much of the information in the indictment was previously made public through the January 6 Commission Hearing and Report. As special prosecutor Jack Smith said, you should read the indictment before jumping to conclusions. Thus, I will let you read the indictment for yourselves and instead comment on some of the responses to the indictment.

On August 14, Donald Trump and eighteen others were indicted by a Fulton County, Georgia, grand jury. It will be known by some as “the night the indictment went down in Georgia,” or by others, “the night they drove old Trumpy down.” All of the defendants will have Georgia on their mind, since they will be waiting a long time for a trial; I doubt this case will be tried before the election, and I expect that it will be the last of the four cases tried. The unknown is whether the defendants will band together or some of them will try to cooperate as part of a plea deal.

On July 24, 1974, the United States Supreme Court ordered President Richard Nixon to turn over recordings he had made in the White House. The most famous recording was the tape with an eighteen-and-a-half-minute gap, which occurred during Nixon’s meeting with his chief of staff Bob Halderman. This meeting was right after the break-in of Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Hotel. Nixon’s Secretary, Rose Mary Woods, claimed that the gap occurred because she accidentally erased the tape while answering the phone. No one bought her story. Within three weeks, Nixon was gone, having resigned the presidency. At that time, Nixon still had the support of the Republican base. However, the leadership of the party, including Senator Barry Goldwater, thought that this conduct warranted removal and asked Nixon to resign.