WATERGATE: I am aware of no evidence that Nixon was involved with or had advance knowledge of the Watergate break-in and bugging, or the similar plans for Senator McGovern. Dean finally replied, "You're showing you don't know that subject very well." All except Parkinson were convicted, largely based upon Dean's evidence. PRESIDENT: No, it would be wrong. This is based on my count of FBI 302 reports cited in the Mueller Report. Liddy was ordered to scale down his ideas, and he presented a revised plan to the same group on February 4, which was also left unapproved. The press statement was false. The words Nixon used were strikingly like those uttered by President Trump. Was he hard-nosed and tough? June 27, 2022 05:36 PM. 90- 98): According to Mueller, in addition to McGahn, President Trump pressured former campaign aide Cory Lewandowski and White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus to curtail the Special Counsels investigation through Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who had recused himself from the investigation. Dean cites the behavior of key members of the Republican leadership, including George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Tom DeLay, Newt Gingrich and Bill Frist, as clear evidence of a relationship between modern right-wing conservatism and this authoritarian approach to governance. On their second break-in, on the night of June 16, hotel security discovered the burglars. The books present documents, reliable sources, and official Watergate testimony by John Dean as persuasive arguments. Dean insisted that Cohen be included in the series. [28] On March 31, 2006, Dean testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee during hearings on censuring Bush over the issue. Dean, an executive producer on the CNN project, helped wrangle some of the participants, including Alexander Butterfield, now 96, the deputy chief of staff who dropped the bombshell that Nixon had a taping system in the White House, which ultimately led to the presidents resignation in August 1974. He places particular emphasis on the abdication of checks and balances by the Republican Congress and on the dishonesty of the conservative intellectual class in support of the Republican Party, as a result of the obedience and arrogance innate to the authoritarian mentality. His guilty plea to a single felony in exchange for becoming a key witness for the prosecution ultimately resulted in a reduced sentence, which he served at Fort Holabird outside Baltimore, Maryland. (Mitchell would not admit this fact, even privately, for almost a year.) Fired white House counsel John Dean testifies before the Senate Watergate Committee while his wife, Maureen, watches in Washington, June 28, 1973. [29], Dean's 2007 book Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive and Judicial Branches is, as he wrote in its introduction, the third volume of an unplanned trilogy. It helped to reshape the public understanding of Watergate.. This sparked a sharp debate with Republican South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, who repeatedly asserted that Nixon authorized the break-in at Democratic headquarters. 24-48): When President Trump learned that his National Security Advisor Michael Flynn lied to the FBI and others about his telephone conversations with the Russian Ambassador to the United States regarding U. S. sanctions imposed because of Russias election interference, he met with FBI Director James Comey at a private White House dinner and asked for Comeys loyalty. II, P. 52), and McGahn is the only witness that the Special Counsel expressly labels as reliable, calling McGahn a credible witness with no motive to lie or exaggerate given the position he held in the White House. (MUELLER RPT, VOL. LOS ANGELES (Tribune News Service) After John Dean gave his historic 1973 testimony on the Watergate scandal that eventually brought down the Nixon White House, he wanted to move on with his life. Yet President Nixon knew that offering such pardons or giving pardons to try to control witnesses in legal proceedings was wrong. This is a taped except of Dean as he recalled that meeting with President Nixon. In short, the firing of FBI Director Comey, like Nixons effort to curtail the Watergate investigation, resulted in the appointment of Special Counsel Mueller. It may just be too hot. John Dean, a former White House counsel who . Watergate-John-Dean-June-25-1973 . . Records are described at an item level and all records contain brief descriptions and subject terms. And that destroys the case.. In 2001, Dean published The Rehnquist Choice: The Untold Story of the Nixon Appointment that Redefined the Supreme Court, an expos of the White House's selection process for a new Supreme Court justice in 1971, which led to the appointment of William Rehnquist. Fifty years later, that's how John Dean, the former White House counsel whose marathon testimony before the US Senate's Watergate Committee tipped the dominoes toward the ultimate resignation . Howard Hunt told me it would have exonerated Prez Nixon. [12], On March 23, the five Watergate burglars, along with G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt, were sentenced with stiff fines and prison time of up to 40 years. Neither of the two volumes are formally titled, but the first sentence of the second paragraph, on page 1 of Volume II states its focus: Beginning in 2017, the President of the United States took a variety of actions towards the ongoing FBI investigation into Russias interference in the 2016 presidential election and related matters that raised questions about whether he had obstructed justice. Volume II concludes on page 182: [I]f we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. However, the Special Counsels office was unable to reach that conclusion, so the report neither alleges criminal behavior by the president nor, as the report states, does it exonerate him. (SEE MUELLER REPORT, VOL. . Mea Culpa welcomes back a very special guest, John Dean. Dean commented on the removal in colorful terms, saying it "seems to be planned like a murder" and that Special Counsel Robert Mueller likely had contingency plans, possibly including sealed indictments. [25] Three years later, Dean wrote a book heavily critical of the administration of George W. Bush, Worse than Watergate, in which he called for the impeachment of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for allegedly lying to Congress. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Yet events in both 1972 and 2016 resulted in obstruction of the investigations. Mea Culpa welcomes back a very special guest, John Dean. . The Watergate Hearings Collection covers 51 days of broadcasts of the Senate Watergate hearings from May 17, 1973, to November 15, 1973, and seven sessions of the House impeachment hearings on May 9 and July 24 30, 1974. Stay up to date on new exhibits, special collections, projects, and more. For a short amount of time, President Donald Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen was set to appear before the House Oversight Committee to give public testimony relating to . [9], In late March in Florida, Mitchell approved a scaled-down plan. A former key witness in the Watergate investigation that brought down President Richard Nixon says indictments are on their way to Donald Trump. It was not until it was revealed that Nixon had made secret White House tape recordings (disclosed in testimony by Alexander Butterfield on July 16) and the tapes were subpoenaed and analyzed that many of Dean's accusations were largely substantiated. But on March 21, 1973, he went to the Oval Office and told Nixon there was "a cancer " on the presidency that would take them all down they didn't . In his testimony, Dean asserted that Nixon covered up Watergate because he believed it was in the interest of national security. Dean had originally been a proponent of Goldwater conservatism, but he later became a critic of the Republican Party. Gray said he had given FBI reports to Dean, and had discussed the FBI investigation with Dean on many occasions. The president lauded his efforts. Despite Deans courageous decision to testify against a sitting president, the series does not give him a free pass for his role in the Nixon administrations nefarious activities. Nixon met with me privately on the evening of April 15, 1973, to try to influence how I would relate the events, particularly our conversation of March 21, 1973, when I warned him of the cancer on the presidency. In the March 21 conversation, I tried to convince him to end the coverup, pointing out that paying hush money and dangling pardons constituted obstruction of justice, and that people were going to go to jail, myself included. A few specific examples of the Mueller findings and the Watergate parallels (HEADER CITES ARE TO VOLUME II): MUELLER REPORT RE MICHAEL FLYNN (PP. "I think a criminal case is going to come out of it," Dean predicted on CNN on Tuesday after hearings by the House committee investigating the Jan . 74-CCC-7004)", Doing Legal, Political, and Historical Research on the Internet: Using Blog Forums, Open Source Dictionaries, and More, "John Dean's Role at Issue in Nixon Tapes Feud", "Watergate's lasting legacy is to legal ethics reform, says John Dean", "John Dean helped bring down Richard Nixon. He said, "It's a nightmare. If it was a county sheriff they wouldnt [stay], Dean said. But Dean understands how its not so easy to walk away from the center of power. II, PP. "A concern . In July 1970, he accepted an appointment to serve as counsel to the president, after the previous holder of this post, John Ehrlichman, became the president's chief domestic adviser. The White House dissembled on the reason for firing Comey, but President Trump later admitted in a television interview that he made the decision because the thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story. Mr. Trump made similar remarks to visiting Russians in Oval Office. Rather I accepted the invitation to appear today because I hope I can give a bit of historical context to the Mueller Report. [4], After graduation, Dean joined Welch & Morgan, a law firm in Washington, D.C., where he was soon accused of conflict of interest violations and fired:[2] he was alleged to have started negotiating his own private deal for a TV station broadcast license, after his firm had assigned him to complete the same task for a client. Silent Coup alleged that Dean masterminded the Watergate burglaries and the Watergate coverup and that the true aim of the burglaries was to seize information implicating Dean and the former Maureen "Mo" Biner (his then-fiance) in a prostitution ring. I met with Kutak and his commission to provide my own insights. It's written with Bob Altemeyer, and it's titled Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers. According to the Mueller Report, President Trump directed Mr. McGahn to have the Special Counsel removed on June 17, 2017, over purported conflicts of interest. Watergate, the Bipartisan Struggle for Media Access, and the Growth of Cable Television. . All rights reserved. John Dean Predicts Criminal Case Against Trump After 'Powerful' New Testimony. After Comeys testimony to Congress on May 3, 2017, in which he declined to answer questions about whether the President was personally under investigation, the President decided to terminate Comey. Nixon also sought to influence my testimony after I openly broke with the White House and began cooperating with prosecutors and the Senate Watergate Committee. He received a Juris Doctor (J.D.) [Emphasis added.]. 9 Jun 2017. An . . Liddy presented a preliminary plan for intelligence-gathering operations during the campaign. . 171-181). [46][47], In 2022, Dean said the January 6 Committee had an overwhelming case against Trump.[48]. (Following Coxs firing, a dozen plus bills calling for Nixons impeachment or creating a special prosecutor were filed in the House. In an exchange with me on March 21, 1973, Nixon conceded such a use of the pardon power was improper: DEAN: Well, thats the problem. The turning point came with the testimony of former White House counsel John Dean, whose weeklong account of Nixon's . John Dean, President Richard M. Nixon's former . While I was an active participant in the coverup for a period of time, there is absolutely no information whatsoever that Trumps White House Counsel, Don McGahn, participated in any illegal or improper activity to the contrary, there is evidence he prevented several obstruction attempts. I had some unsolicited offers that I really wanted to explore. Mr. McGahn has expressed concern about being caught between two branches of government in responding to this Committees subpoena for his documents and testimony. The examples that follow are illustrative rather than exhaustive, and before turning to obstruction of justice, I must make brief mention of the underlying events to place the material in context: MUELLER REPORT VOLUME I: The underlying crimes were a Russian active measures social media campaign and hacking/dumping operations, which Mueller describes as a sweeping and systematic effort to influence our 2016 presidential election. But even then your point is that even then you couldnt do it. Dean was also receiving advice from the attorney he hired, Charles Shaffer, on matters involving the vulnerabilities of other White House staff. I began by telling the president that there was a cancer growing on the presidency. Spectators laughed, and soon the senator was "sputtering mad". Since 2011, I have been using the mistakes I made as a young White House lawyer to teach this rule of ethics with a continuing legal education partner, Jim Robenalt, who is here today. Now, 40 years later, then some, Dean will return to Capitol Hill to testify before a different Congress about a different president. Clearly, I am not here as a fact witness. But there is no question Mr. McGahn was a critical observer of these activities. [33], In speaking engagements in 2014, Dean called Watergate a "lawyers' scandal" that, for all the bad, ushered in needed legal ethics reforms. President Nixons direct interference with the Department of Justice, while facially proper under his Article II constitutional powers, was for the improper purpose of obstructing the investigation. [13] It was alleged[who?] While navigating the crisis together has strengthened their bond, Dean still has regrets over putting his wife through the extraordinary experience. He's penned five books about Watergate and 10 books in total; including his most recent tome, Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and his Followers. In a corporation, for example, the attorney would report up to the board of directors or a special committee of the board. Dean frequently served as a guest on the former MSNBC and Current TV news program, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, and The Randi Rhodes Show on Premiere Radio Networks. OLC Op. The program also includes one of the few current day public figures who can fully understand what Dean went through Trumps former longtime attorney Michael Cohen, who went to prison for tax evasion and campaign finance violations. When Nixon learned that Dean had begun cooperating with federal prosecutors, he pressed Attorney General Richard Kleindienst not to give Dean immunity from prosecution by telling Kleindienst that Dean was lying to the Justice Department about his conversations with the president. John W. Dean was legal counsel to president Nixon during the Watergate scandal, and his Senate testimony helped lead to Nixon's resignation. Brownell, K. (2020). In the 2022 TV mini-series Gaslit, Dean was played by Dan Stevens. The public pressure was so great, Nixon had to appoint a new special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski. Evidence: In a taped interview for the book "Silent Coup", when Dean was . On February 28, 1973, Acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee during his nomination to replace J. Edgar Hoover as director of the FBI. We respect each other. . Continuous coverage of the Watergate hearings in 1973 drew big audiences and viewer contributions. Reaction to Liddy's plan was highly unfavorable. Dean had had suspicions that Nixon was taping conversations, and he tipped prosecutors to question witnesses along this line, leading to Butterfield's revelations. (See Separation-of-Powers Principles Support the Conclusion that Congress May Validly Prohibit Corrupt Obstructive Acts Carried Out Through the Presidents Official Powers, MUELLER REPORT, PP. The day following Flynns resignation, President Trump in a one-on-one Oval Office conversation with Director Comey said, I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go., WATERGATE: In a like situation, when President Nixon learned of his re-election committees involvement in the Watergate break-in, he instructed his Chief of Staff, H. R. Haldeman, to have the CIA ask the FBI not to go any further into the investigation of the breakin for bogus national security reasons. President Nixon's aide John Dean is sworn in before the Senate committee conducting hearings on the Watergate break-in and the conduct of the Nixon administration, on June 1, 1973. Check out this great listen on Audible.com. John Dean, who served as White House counsel to President Richard Nixon and played a key role in the Watergate hearings in the 1970s, compared the findings in the Mueller report to Watergate . I dont think its an emotion that Donald Trump could ever muster.. I learned this fact from Robert Kutak, with whom I had a friendship from our days when we worked as staffers for Congress. John Dean. Dean's lawyer moved to have his sentence reduced and on January 8, Sirica granted the motion, adjusting Dean's sentence to time served, which was four months. He spent his days at the offices of Jaworski, the Watergate Special Prosecutor, and testifying in the trial of Watergate conspirators Mitchell, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Robert Mardian, and Kenneth Parkinson, which concluded in December. McGahn refused to follow the Presidents order, recalling the opprobrium that met Robert Bork following the Saturday Night Massacre. John Dean during the filming of Watergate: Blueprint for a Scandal in 2020. Eisenberg, MUELLER RPT, VOL. John Dean, the White House counsel to President Richard M. Nixon who was once dubbed the "master manipulator" of the Watergate scandal by the FBI, predicts . Through his lawyer, Cohen sought advice from Dean before testifying in 2019 to the House Oversight Committee, where he leveled allegations of criminal wrongdoing by Trump. By April 15, Nixon tried to tell me he was kidding about finding $1 million in hush money to pay the burglar defendants to maintain their silence. As Dan mentioned, in the summer of 1973, former White House counsel John Dean testified as part of the Senate's investigation into the Watergate break-in. [16], Neisser found that, despite Dean's confidence, the tapes proved that his memory was anything but a tape recorder. Trumps demands for unyielding loyalty from staff and statements such as asking Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find 11,780 votes that would overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election in the state rival what was heard on Nixons tapes, but were delivered with far less discretion. June 1, 2022 1:43 PM PT. This appears to have been well understood by McGahn and his lawyer, and I have read news accounts that McGahn has explained this concept to President Trump. June 17, 1972. What did Disney actually lose from its Florida battle with DeSantis? Los Angeles, David Lindley, guitarist best known for work with Jackson Browne, dies at 78, WGA asks members to vote on key demands in bargaining with studios, Alec Baldwin and Rust producers sued by crew members over fatal shooting, Rupert Murdoch admits he knew Fox News hosts endorsed false election fraud claims, deposition shows, Historic movie lot that gave Studio City its name to get $1-billion makeover. In 1991, the publisher released Silent Coup: The Removal of a President, which included an unfounded allegation that Dean ordered the break-in to remove information about a call-girl ring that serviced Democratic Party members. They don't know if they're a part of a conspiracy that might unfold. The Watergate Hearings, 50 Years Ago: Truth Was Not Up for Debate . from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1965. Stated a bit differently, Special Counsel Mueller has provided this committee a road map. Rep. Collins calls John Dean the 'godfather' of obstruction of justice, John Dean considers Watergate a roadmap for Mueller Report. His coverage of the television industry has appeared in TV Guide, the New York Daily News, the New York Times, Fortune, the Hollywood Reporter, Inside.com and Adweek. In the 1995 film Nixon, directed by Oliver Stone, Dean was played by David Hyde Pierce. Thats for sure. Armed with newspaper articles indicating the White House had possession of FBI Watergate files, committee chair Sam Ervin asked Gray what he knew about the White House obtaining the files. John Dean's statement to the House Judiciary Committee on June 10, 2019, as prepared for delivery. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. While Nixon had a dangerous lust for power, Dean still believes the 37th president and the only one to ever resign still compares favorably to Trump. It also came out that Gray had destroyed important evidence Dean entrusted to him. MUELLER REPORT RE EFFORTS TO PREVENT OR DISTORT DISCLOSURE OF THE JUNE 9, 2016 TRUMP TOWER MEETING (PP. On August 2, 1974, Sirica handed down a sentence to Dean of one to four years in a minimum-security prison. And politically, itd just be impossible for, you know, you to do it. Dean served as White House Counsel for President Richard Nixon from July 1970 until April 1973. John Dean's memory: A case study. [26], His next book, released in 2006, was Conservatives without Conscience, a play on Barry Goldwater's book The Conscience of a Conservative. Dean tried to leave the White House in September 1971, a year after he arrived and well before the Watergate break-in. But Deans inside knowledge on how the bungled burglary of Democratic National Committee headquarters on June 17, 1972, ultimately revealed an organized-crime-type mind-set within the Nixon administration has kept him on the contact list of TV news guest bookers for decades. Dean is now the last man standing from that era, He is the last connection between this nation's authoritarian past and present. Chairman Nadler, Ranking Member Collins, the last time I appeared before your committee was July 11, 1974, during the impeachment inquiry of President Richard Nixon. In that posit. It also prompts the interview subjects to note how the public based their opinions on Watergate on an agreed upon set of facts, a major difference from todays polarized and partisan media landscape. I always envisioned going in and out of government. The depth of Deans Watergate insights is partly due to a defamation lawsuit he filed against St. Martins Press. [44][45], In early June 2019, Dean testified, along with various U.S. attorneys and legal experts, before the House Judiciary Committee on the implications of, and potential actions as a result of, the Mueller report. MCGAHNS DILEMMA TESTIFYING BEFORE THIS COMMITTEE. John Dean, the former White House counsel to Richard Nixon, testified Monday that he sees "remarkable parallels" between Watergate and the findings of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report .