Intercollegiate Studies Institute and Claremont Institute Peddle Conspiracy Blaming Deep State For Nixon’s Crimes
Delray Beach, Fl. — Truth Wins Out’s (TWO) research on Project 2025 linked JD Vance’s comments downplaying President Richard Nixon’s crimes, and blaming the Deep State, with the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and the Claremont Institute, which are on Project 2025’s Advisory Board. Vance has deep ties to these right-wing organizations, which helps explain why he promoted this bizarre conspiracy during his Thursday speech at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library.
“If Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be a 12-hour news story. The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy…the deep state took down Richard Nixon,” said Vance.
“JD Vance is parroting a bizarre conspiracy theory promoted by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and the Claremont Institute, two radical Project 2025 organizations,” said Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director Wayne Besen. “Our research has found that JD Vance is an ideologue with extensive ties to Project 2025, which explains some of the Vice President’s outlandish ideas.”
Truth Wins Out has released 800 pages of research with its series, “Behind the Mask: The Project 2025 Organizations Reshaping America, Volume I and Volume II.” Volume III will be released in autumn. The Claremont Institute can be found in Volume I, page 207. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute can be found in Volume II, page 98.
On February 12, 2026, ISI published two articles trying to show that Nixon has been “vindicated” for his crimes. The first is headlined “New Proof the Deep State Sabotaged Nixon”. The second article was titled, “Unpacking the Watergate Myth.” In the second piece, ISI discuses an article written by a second Vance-linked Project 2025 organization, The Claremont Institute:
In an essay for the Claremont Review of Books, Nathan Pinkoski challenges this narrative, calling it “the great cover-up of the last decades of the 20th century.” The real story of the Nixon presidency, Pinkoski argues, is that of a president trying—and ultimately failing—to rein in the subversive activities of his own military and intelligence agencies. In the end, Pinkoski concludes that the real Watergate scandal is the refusal to recognize and confront the workings of the deep state, as Nixon sought and failed to do.
ISI also interviewed failed GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, posting two videos on X, February 12 and February 13 2026, where Ramaswamy peddled the Nixon/Deep State conspiracy. In the Feb. 13 interview, Ramaswamy explained:
“Even if you think about Watergate, there is a lot more to the story than meets the eye. He [Nixon] says he’s going after the Deep State. He doesn’t quite do it. In fact, they use him to expand much of the Deep State. But if he’s saying it enough and he’s not actually doing it, it made him a bit of a sitting duck for exploitation.
And I think the lesson for today is we can’t just talk about gutting the bureaucracy or draining the swamp. You got to go in and do it. And, if not, you’re in some ways the worst position of all. You’ve put the enemy, that machine on notice, that you might have some risk for the machine, when the machine just crushes you, like they have to the citizens of this country for a long time.”
Additionally, Vance is connected to ISI through his mutual “friend” and political guru Curtis Yarvin, a fringe extremist with white nationalist views. Yarvin originally published an influential online blog under the name “Mencius Moldbug”, once writing, “I am not a white nationalist, but I do read white-nationalist blogs, and I’m not afraid to link to them…I am not exactly allergic to the stuff”.
ISI featured Yarvin in an eyebrow raising video discussion, which was part of the group’s controversial Project Cosmos. Among the questions the ISI video covers: “Should Americans embrace Caesarism?”
In the shocking video, Yarvin aggressively called for a total reordering of American society that relied, “on the state and state power.”
Yarvin waxed nostalgic for England’s Victorian Era, when “you were required to go to church every week. You were actually fined. Your name was written down in a little book. It was, in a way, it was a system of, you know, you would almost call it totalitarian in a way.” Yarvin continued:
“Your relationship with the state is intermediated through your church and basically your minister can drug test you. He can assign you work. He can put an air tag on you. He can tell you where to go, where not to go.”
“They certainly did not have a free press at that time and yet, you know, Elizabethan society, you know, produced the most, you know, amazing, you know, sort of artistic works of all of history…and so when you imagine basically like, you know, sort of uses of state power that really go far beyond, uh, anything that we’ve sort of considered here.”
Vance and ISI are also connected through conservative writer Rod Dreher, who said of the VP, “That man is the future of America.” Dreher, ISI, and Vance have a shared admiration for former Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán. Dreher moved to Budapest in 2022 to work closely with Danube Institute, a state-backed think tank that had been a vehicle for disseminating Orbán’s authoritarian propaganda.
Aside from ISI and the Claremont Institute, Vance has links to several Project 2025 Advisory Board groups, including: Forge Leadership Network, American Moment, the Heritage Foundation and Turning Point USA. He’s particularly invested in American Moment where he sits on its Emeritus Board.
After Vance’s ridiculous speech at the Nixon Library, Morning Joe’s host, Joe Scarborough, slammed Vance’s remarks:
“Listen, I know he didn’t go to his southern state school like me but what he’s saying is “ahistoric”, “stupid”, and “defining deviancy down”. He added: “Let’s just be really clear here that the vice president of the United States just said that the deep state went after Nixon. No! Richard Nixon used the deep state to go after political enemies, just like, well, your administration, Mr. Vice President – the FBI, the CIA. the DOJ – it sounds vaguely familiar, doesn’t it?
Truth Wins Out is a 501c3 nonprofit organization that works to advance liberty and democracy, protect the rights of LGBTQ people and other minorities, combat religious extremism, and fight against the spread of disinformation.
