"We Know"

I feel like trying to find more allusions/double meanings/lyrical shoutouts in "Hamilton" is kind of a fool's quest at this point because it's been so thoroughly analyzed by so many people, but every once in a while I stumble across something that I don't think I've seen before, or at least haven't put words to in this way.

"We Know" is about Hamilton being confronted with evidence of his payments to Reynolds, which his political enemies naturally assume means he was taking advantage of his political position to engage in inappropriate financial gain. And although he was doing some morally questionable stuff, there was nothing illegal or unpatriotic about it. So he overshares and lashes out:

As you can see I kept a record of every check in my checkered history.
Check it again against your list 'n see consistency.
I never spent a cent that wasn't mine.
You sent the dogs after my scent, that's fine.
 

So "check"/"checkered" is a loose callback to the chess motifs that we've had going on throughout, and Miranda notes (in "Hamilton: The Revolution") that this part has some of his favorite internal rhyming. Nothing new here.

But. Checkered history, the dogs, and "I did some bad stuff but I didn't embezzle public money"? I think this is a historical callback. And like Nixon, Hamilton came out of that encounter with the upper hand...only to squander it all later.