Forgive me, dear friends, but I'm about to suggest you devote four hours of your life to listening to a podcast. Do it one chapter at a time but check out Bagman, a seven-chapter series produced by Rachel Maddow and her crew. It's the story of how Richard Nixon's Vice-President Spiro Agnew got caught dead-to-rights at the most basic, primitive form of political crime: Taking bribes. And it's also the story of how he sought to escape conviction and punishment by rallying his base against the press, attacking the prosecutors and using the power of his office to obstruct justice.
Ms. Maddow does not dwell overlong on the parallels to current events but she does point you towards that comparison. And even if you ignore that or don't see the similarities, it's still a helluva story that was not fully reported at the time, largely because Mr. Nixon's own concurrent scandals were more important and more colorful. Not only does Maddow cover the Agnew story in full but she and her team have unearthed large quantities of hitherto unknown facts and details. It's really a superb reporting job, involving as it does current-day interviews with reps from both Agnew's team of lawyers and from the squad prosecuting him.
As I said, it runs four hours and I certainly found it worth at least that much of my life. You can listen to or download all seven parts from just about any major disseminator of podcasts (iTunes, Stitcher, etc.) but the easiest might be this page where MSNBC has put them all up. How long they'll be there, I don't know so listen to Part One and see if you get as hooked on the story as I did. If so, download them all so you can listen to them when you can. And don't miss the part where investigators uncovered how Agnew, who routinely scolded Americans about morality and the sanctity of Family, was found to have a couple of mistresses.