For Nixon, the writing was on the wall weeks earlier that his administration would not survive, when three Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee announced that they would vote for his impeachment. When Nixon informed his family on Aug. 2 of his decision to resign, they implored him to reconsider. Three days later, however, a transcript of a June 23, 1972 conversation between Nixon and his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, was released. As UVA’s Miller Center relates, that transcript, which became the "smoking gun" investigators were desperate to discover, proved that Nixon had lied when he i...