As a 30-year-old lawyer, Evan Davis spent six months working on the House Judiciary Committee legal team investigating the Watergate scandal. It turned out to be a formative experience for him, in several ways.
Most dramatically, Davis played a key role in the discovery of the “smoking gun tape.” After examining phone records, he suggested that the committee subpoena a White House recording from June 23, 1972. It caught President Richard Nixon asking aides to intervene with the Central Intelligence Agency to halt investigation of the Watergate break-in. Three days after the release of the tape in August 1974, Nixon resigned.
