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Ready to Argue. In this kind of atmosphere, the humor, understandably, was either black or a very dark shade of gray. At a party at the home of Peter Malatesta, Agnew's political handyman, the pianist glided into an old favorite —"Don't throw bouquets at me... Don't laugh at my jokes too much ..." Listening, Murray Chotiner, Nixon's longtime adviser, took the cigar out of his mouth and cracked: "That's the Vice President singing to the President." Malatesta, the nephew of Bob Hope, quickly whispered into the ear of the pianist, who then swung into Getting to Know You. "And that," said Malatesta, "is the President singing to the Vice President."
While Agnew kept his counsel, the men around him kept passing the word that the Vice President would not quit under fire—it just was not his nature. Indeed, as the week went on, Agnew seemed to be physically bracing himself for a fight. His face, always angular, took on a new grimness, and his eyes, always narrow when he is angry, became tight slits.
Legally, Agnew could fight an indictment for any possible transgressions so much more effectively as Vice President that it made no sense for him to resign unless he could have engineered a deal. The President could not force him to quit; he had been elected by the voters just as Nixon had.
What is more, Agnew has had a team of attorneys preparing to fight the grand jury's investigation. The team is headed by Judah Best, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney who now practices in Washington. Assisting Best are Martin London and Jay Topkis, two lawyers from the New York firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.
Agnew's lawyers argue that the Vice President cannot be indicted for anything he did unless he is first removed from office by being impeached by the House of Representatives and found guilty by the Senate.
Should Agnew succeed in persuading the courts that he cannot be indicted before he is impeached, an odd impasse might ensue. The Democratic leadership of the House of Representatives is by no means sure it can impeach Agnew for offenses committed before he became Vice President (see page 15). If that proves so, in theory at least, Agnew could escape both being indicted in Maryland—if the courts ruled that he could not be tried while a Vice President—and being impeached on the Hill. But if the evidence against him is truly compelling, that logic would not likely be allowed to stand, for he would then surely have to resign as Vice President—and thereby become indictable.
In the dark of these nights, a part of Agnew must be tempted to quit. He realizes that he is an embarrassment to the White House. He knows that he has all but lost his chance to be the Republican candidate in 1976. And he must be tired of being humiliated by the President. Back in 1971, Agnew felt so strongly about his poor relationship with his remote boss and about the snubs of Ehrlichman and Haldeman, that he talked privately to friends about resigning then and there. The reason he stayed on is that he was convinced it would appear he was quitting so as not to risk the humiliation of having Connally replace him on the ticket in 1972.