Woodward and Bernstein say Trump's efforts to overturn the election was a deception that 'exceeded even Nixon's imagination'

• Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein are known for uncovering the Watergate scandal during the Nixon era.
• Woodward and Bernstein said Trump was more corrupt than Nixon.

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein said former President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election was something not even former President Richard Nixon would have imagined.

In an op-ed in The Washington Post, the two reporters known for uncovering the Watergate scandal said they thought Nixon defined corruption until they saw Trump's presidency.

In 1972, the Nixon administration coordinated a break-in at the Democratic National Committee's headquarters. The administration attempted to cover up its involvement until Nixon was forced to resign in 1974.

Woodward and Bernstein said the news media, the Senate Watergate Committee, special prosecutors, a House impeachment investigation, and the Supreme Court exposed Nixon's conduct, a contrast to Trump's attempt to prevent the peaceful transition of power.

"These instruments of American democracy finally stopped Nixon dead in his tracks, forcing the only resignation of a president in American history," the reporters wrote.

As for Trump, Woodward and Bernstein said his "diabolical instincts exploited a weakness in the law," referring to the 1887 Electoral Count Act.

"In a deception that exceeded even Nixon's imagination, Trump and a group of lawyers, loyalists and White House aides devised a strategy to bombard the country with false assertions that the 2020 election was rigged and that Trump had really won," they said.

In the weeks leading up to the certification, Trump and his allies continued to claim that he lost the election because it was rigged, even waging lawsuits in several key states.

"We watched in utter dismay as Trump persistently claimed that he was really the winner. 'We won,' he said in a speech on Jan. 6 at the Ellipse. 'We won in a landslide. This was a landslide.' He publicly and relentlessly pressured Pence to make him the victor on Jan. 6,"

Trump supporters on January 6,2021 stormed the Capitol. Woodward and Bernstein said Trump's actions were "clearly sedition — conduct, speech or organizing that incites people to rebel against the governing authority of the state. Thus, Trump became the first seditious president in our history."

Insider has reached out to Trump's representative for comment.