COMMITTEE OF SENATOR ERVIN

a reference to a committee formed in the 1950s that censured United States Senator Joseph Raymond McCarthy (1908–1957) who was investigating the unproven charges of communist infiltration in the high echelons of the United States government. United States Senator Samuel James Ervin, Jr. (1896–1985) was a member of the committee. In the 1970s, Ervin became best known as the chairman of a committee for conducting the investigation into the illegal presidential campaign activities of president Richard Nixon (1913–1994), which eventually led to Nixon's 1974 resignation.