One of the real stars of the Watergate investigation that resulted in the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon was the secret source known as "Deep Throat" who provided crucial information to Washington Post investigative reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward.
Now, the ongoing investigation by Special Council Robert S. Mueller III is honing in on someone with his own code name: "Individual 1."
But the difference is that while "Deep Throat" was a secret source that led to the President's undoing, "Individual 1" is President Donald Trump, himself.
Today, the Washington Post reported that "new evidence from two separate fronts of special counsel Mueller's investigation casts fresh doubts on Trump’s version of key events involving Russia, signaling potential political and legal peril for the president."
The article points out that "Investigators have now publicly cast Trump as a central figure of their probe into whether Trump’s campaign conspired with the Russian government during the 2016 campaign.
"Together, the documents show investigators have evidence that Trump was in close contact with his lieutenants as they made outreach to both Russia and WikiLeaks — and that they tried to conceal the extent of their activities," the Post reported.
The two fronts cited by the Post involve a guilty plea last Thursday by Trump’s longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen for lying to Congress when he claimed Trump was not pursuing plans to build a Trump Tower in Moscow after January 2016. That, said the Post, casts doubts on Trump’s repeated claims that he had no business interests in Russia.
The second front was a draft special counsel document revealed Tuesday that indicates prosecutors are closely scrutinizing Trump’s interactions with a longtime adviser, Roger Stone, as he was seeking information about WikiLeaks’ plans to release hacked Democratic emails.
None of this can be good for "Individual 1," just as the info provided by Deep Throat to Woodward and Bernstein was not good for Nixon.
The last thing you want as president, I would assume, would be to be given a nickname by federal prosecutors in documents related to an investigation of your activities.
Donald Trump has always loved having a starring role, but I'm just guessing this isn't a role that he relishes.