Agnew’s is a tale of a thoroughly corrupt occupant of the White House whose crimes are discovered by his own Justice Department and who then clings t… - Rachel Maddow

he was asked by his bosses to make a little detour to Brooklyn in 1940, to prosecute the Christian Front fascists — the seventeen guys who had stockpiled bombs and ammunition and U.S. military machine guns and then trained for a violent takeover of the federal government.

The German propaganda operation in America, according to the first U.S. academic study on the topic, identified these kernels of disturbance as “racial controversies, economic inequalities, petty jealousies in public life,” and “differences of opinion which divide political parties and minority groups.” Even the “frustrated ambitions of discarded politicians.” Germany’s agents were tasked with finding these fissures in American society and then prying them further apart, exploiting them to make Americans hate and suspect each other, and maybe even wish for a new kind of country altogether. A partisan, bickering, demoralized America, the Nazis believed, would be incapable of mounting a successful war effort in Europe. It might even soften us up for an eventual takeover.

The Nazi agent, as the senator’s ghostwriter, penned warnings that Americans should not believe “atrocity tales” about the Nazis, and that Germany posed no threat to the democracies of England and France.