Commentary “Dirty tricks” was a term used to describe the behavior of operatives within the Nixon administration to smear the reputations of opponents and undermine the appeal of certain politicians. Fifty years ago, these dirty tricks included a false allegation that Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson (D-Wash.) had fathered an illegitimate child with a 17-year-old girl and the break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C., when Nixon aides and operatives attempted to find materials the Nixon team could use against his perceived “enemies.” Dirty tricks are not to be confused with negative campaigning, which at least has some component of truth, but a filing by special counsel John Durham that alleges the 2016 presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton paid a technology company to “infiltrate” or “spy”—the word Donald Trump uses—on his presidential campaign and later while he was president, goes beyond dirty tricks into the illegal. In a court filing, Durham alleges …