For those of you who lived through Watergate, his name is synonymous with the political intrigue of the 1970s. 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. PRESIDENT: No, it would be wrong. The public pressure was so great, Nixon had to appoint a new special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski. Richard Nixon resigned as president the next year. [6], Dean volunteered to write position papers on crime for Richard Nixon's presidential campaign in 1968. Was he hard-nosed and tough? A few specific examples of the Mueller findings and the Watergate parallels (HEADER CITES ARE TO VOLUME II): MUELLER REPORT RE MICHAEL FLYNN (PP. In 1973, John Dean was the star witness in the Watergate hearings. John Dean's memory: A case study. . After we settled the case, I started agreeing to do television, Dean said. Dean's first wife is Karla Ann Hennings, whom he married in 1962. Dean had had suspicions that Nixon was taping conversations, and he tipped prosecutors to question witnesses along this line, leading to Butterfield's revelations. But Dean understands how its not so easy to walk away from the center of power. They don't know whether to hire lawyers or not, how they're going to pay for them if they do. A Woman's View of Watergate, which came out in 1975, and I will highlight a few moments. 7 min read. For those of you who lived through Watergate, his name is synonymous with the political intrigue of the 1970s. Further compounding the situation in 2018, in response to press reports that McGahn had considered resigning over the direction to fire Mueller, Trump asked another White House official (Rob Porter, also an attorney serving as Staff Secretary) to tell McGahn to dispute the story and create a false record stating that he had not been ordered to have the Special Counsel removed. 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. The turning point came with the testimony of former White House counsel John Dean, whose weeklong account of Nixon's . 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. It may further involve you in a way you shouldnt be involved in this. 1 AND 182.). 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. DEAN: . Paperback. When Dean read that testimony in the summer of 1973 in front of a massive TV audience, he became the face of the Watergate conspiracy for most of America, according to Garrett Graff, author of Watergate: A New History.. 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. First, he is a key witness in understanding the Mueller Report. 88.). I never dreamed I would have to live in this bubble, Dean, 83, said in a Zoom interview from his Beverly Hills home. In his testimony, he implicated administration officials, including Mitchell, Nixon, and himself. John Dean, former counsel to President Richard M. Nixon, testifies before the Senate committee on the Watergate hearing in D.C. on June 27, 1973. We still love each other, Dean said. The books present documents, reliable sources, and official Watergate testimony by John Dean as persuasive arguments. It's written with Bob Altemeyer, and it's titled Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers. 6-7, 122-28, 131-32, 134, 147-48, ET AL):The Mueller Report addresses the question of whether President Trump dangled pardons or offered other favorable treatment to Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen and Roger Stone (whose name is redacted so I assume it is him based on educated conjecture) in return for their silence or to keep them from fully cooperating with investigators. Mr. McGahn has expressed concern about being caught between two branches of government in responding to this Committees subpoena for his documents and testimony. Search by keyword or individual, or browse all episodes by clicking Explore the Collection below the search box. For several reasons I believe he should testify. The depth of Deans Watergate insights is partly due to a defamation lawsuit he filed against St. Martins Press. Senator Barry Goldwater, in part as an act of fealty to the man who defined his political ideals. On April 17, 1973, Nixon told Assistant Attorney General Henry Petersen (who was overseeing the Watergate investigation) that he did not want any member of the White House granted immunity from prosecution. His testimony attracted very high television ratings since he was breaking new ground in the investigation, and media attention grew apace, with more detailed newspaper coverage. (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. [1] His family moved to Flossmoor, Illinois, where he attended grade school. He could be embarrassed. In June 1973, John Wesley Dean III, former White House counsel under President Richard Nixon, transfixed the nation with his one week of testimony before the Senate Watergate Committee chaired by . For those of you who lived through Watergate, his name is synonymous with the political intrigue of the 1970s. Legal experts weigh in, ChatGPT who? The following year, he became an associate deputy in the office of the Attorney General of the United States, serving under Attorney General John N. Mitchell, with whom he was on friendly terms. 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. In his testimony, Dean asserted that Nixon covered up Watergate because he believed it was in the interest of national security. The words Nixon used were strikingly like those uttered by President Trump. I was always interested in government. John Dean during the filming of Watergate: Blueprint for a Scandal in 2020. In the 1995 film Nixon, directed by Oliver Stone, Dean was played by David Hyde Pierce. WATERGATE: President Trump repeated efforts to have Attorney General Sessions reverse his recusal un-recuse himself to take control of the Special Counsels investigation parallels President Nixons attempt to control the FBI investigation through his former White House Counsel John Ehrlichman. 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. Copyright 2008 NPR. We were in his Executive Office Building office late on a Sunday night when he got up from his chair and walked to the corner of the room and in a stage-whisper asked me, I was wrong to offer clemency to Hunt, wasnt I? I responded, Yes, Mr. President, that would be an obstruction of justice. As I later testified, at the time it struck me his moving across the office and whispering was to keep what he was saying from being picked up by a hidden microphone in the room. [27], After it became known that Bush authorized NSA wiretaps without warrants, Dean asserted that Bush is "the first President to admit to an impeachable offense". Each days hearings are broken up into multiple parts, which are linked together and named as such. As Watergate broke, Haldeman and John Ehrlichman trusted their bright attorney to control the political fall out after the burglars were arrested, part of which involved him paying them large sums of money. Dean's testimony to the senators and at the 1974 trial of the chief conspirators (excepting the President) did not get him totally off the hook. 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. John Dean. Haldeman and Chief Advisor for Domestic Affairs John Ehrlichman, two of President Nixons closest advisors, who denied there was any White House wrongdoing; Alexander Butterfield, a former minor White House aide who revealed the existence of a secret audio tape-recording system that documented Oval Office conversations; and Rep. Barbara Jordan, a freshman member of the House Judiciary Committee, whose eloquent opening statement at the impeachment proceedings resonated throughout the hearing room and the nation. You cant look at Watergate today without looking through the lens or at least a filter of the Trump presidency, Dean said. [37][38], In September 2018, Dean warned against Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the United States Supreme Court,[39][40][41] a main concern being that the appointment would result in "the most presidential-powers-friendly court" in modern times. ". An obstruction of justice conviction prevented the former White House counsel from practicing law in Washington, D.C., and Virginia. Now, 40 years later, then some, Dean will return to Capitol Hill to testify before a different Congress about a different president. March 21, 1973: Dean tells Nixon there is a "cancer" on the presidency. It may just be too hot. 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 . The couple sued and eventually reached an undisclosed settlement. And if the cancer was not removed, the president himself would be killed by it. Check out this great listen on Audible.com. 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. John Dean's third day of testimony at the Watergate hearings in 1973. . His co-editor was Goldwater's son Barry Goldwater, Jr.[31], Historian Stanley Kutler was accused of editing the Nixon tapes to make Dean appear in a more favorable light. But he was told by his immediate boss, John Ehrlichman, that his post-White House career would be difficult if he left. A full cast of characters is available in our Gavel-to-Gavel exhibit. II, PP. Dean retired from investment banking in 2000 while continuing to work as an author and lecturer, becoming a columnist for FindLaw's Writ online magazine. 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 . What did Disney actually lose from its Florida battle with DeSantis? Continue reading. Dean also told the Senate Watergate committee that if testimony by Jeb Stuart Magruder, a former White House aide, was credible, the President probably had advance knowledge of plans to break into . I met with Kutak and his commission to provide my own insights. Conjugao Documents Dicionrio Dicionrio Colaborativo Gramtica Expressio Reverso Corporate. On their second break-in, on the night of June 16, hotel security discovered the burglars. It also came out that Gray had destroyed important evidence Dean entrusted to him. Watergate Hearings: John Dean's Opening Statement (1973) John Dean's statement 2011-04-07T03:55:01Z Maureen "Mo" Dean is known for sitting stoically just behind her husband during the . Dean briefly summarizes the takeaways from Comey's testimony and discusses the response by President Trump and his lawyer. Speaking of Betty Gilpin, John Dean is practicing his testimony, and Mo is advising him. Fired white House counsel John Dean testifies before the Senate Watergate Committee while his wife, Maureen, watches in Washington, June 28, 1973. Why Netflix is dabbling in livestreaming, How strong is Dominions defamation case against Fox News? They don't know what they're looking at. In that position, he became deeply involved in events leading up to the Watergate burglaries and the subsequent scandal and cover-up . The Jan. 6 committee's hastily scheduled hearing for Tuesday "better be a big deal," said a key Watergate scandal figure. This reporting out provision provides lawyers with leverage to stop wrongdoing if the client fails to take appropriate advice. 62-77): President Trump called Director Comey multiple times, against the advice of Don McGahn, to have him confirm that he, Trump, was not personally under investigation. John Wesley Dean III (born October 14, 1938) is an American former attorney who served as White House Counsel for U.S. President Richard Nixon from July 1970 until April 1973. Elizabeth Holtzman, a former member of Congress who served on the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate hearings, said in her interview he was an essential part of the criminal enterprise. Dean himself talks about how he crossed a moral line early in his White House tenure. After listening to Nixons March 21, 1973 secretly recorded conversation with me, Jaworski pursued more tapes as vigorously as had Cox. 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. 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. Such testimony against Nixon, while damaging to the president's credibility, had little legal impact, as it was merely his word against Nixon's. [26], His next book, released in 2006, was Conservatives without Conscience, a play on Barry Goldwater's book The Conscience of a Conservative. They don't know if they're a part of a conspiracy that might unfold. He is also the author of three books about television, including a biography of pioneer talk show host and producer David Susskind. After four months, however, the Watergate trial judge, John J. Sirica, reduced his sentence to time . The Real Housewives of Atlanta The Bachelor Sister Wives 90 Day Fiance Wife Swap The Amazing Race Australia Married at First Sight The Real Housewives of Dallas My 600-lb Life Last Week Tonight with John Oliver 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 . For whatever reason, President Trump did not follow up with the directive to fire Mueller and McGahn did not resign. It's written with Bob Altemeyer, and it's titled Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers. John W. Dean on the second day of testimony in front of the Senate Watergate Committee in 1973. The targets of the hacking were the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign, from which information was stolen and released to harm the Clinton campaign and in turn would help the Trump campaign. 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. June 25, 1973: White House counsel John Dean recounts his meetings with President Nixon to the Senate Watergate Committee: "I began by telling the President that there was a cancer growing on . DEAN: Thats right. (Following Coxs firing, a dozen plus bills calling for Nixons impeachment or creating a special prosecutor were filed in the House. [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. Haldeman and Chief . Ultimately, he became a witness for the prosecution. [15], Dean pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice before Watergate trial judge John Sirica on October 19, 1973. Neisser, U. In White House Plumbers, an upcoming HBO limited series, Dean is portrayed by Domhnall Gleeson. 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. in 1961. CNN Original Series Returns to the Scene of the Crime in "Watergate: Blueprint for a Scandal," Debuting Sunday, June 5. [13] It was alleged[who?] John W. Dean, former counsel to President Nixon, reflects on the much-anticipated testimony of former FBI Director James Comey before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday. Now he thinks Donald Trump is even worse", "Former White House counsel for Nixon: Trump scarier than Nixon", "John Dean warns Gates's testimony may be 'the end' of Trump's presidency", "Watergate Figure John Dean Says Rick Gates' Testimony Could Be The End Of The Trump Presidency", "Here Is What Brett Kavanaugh Said About Sexual Misconduct In His Hearings", "Kavanaugh hearing: John Dean warns of a Supreme Court overly deferential to presidential power", "John Dean: If Kavanaugh's confirmed, a president who shoots someone on Fifth Avenue can't be prosecuted in office", "Former Nixon White House Counsel Case Against Kavanaugh", "Richard Nixon's White House counsel says Jeff Sessions' ousting 'like a planned murder', "Watergate's John Dean Explains How Trump Planned Sessions' Firing 'Like a Murder' And Details How Mueller Could Protect the Probe", "House Judiciary Committee sets hearing on Mueller report with Nixon White House counsel John Dean", "Dems to call Watergate star John Dean to testify on Mueller report", "Nixon's Watergate lawyer says Trump's 2024 bid is 'a defense of sorts' against Jan 6 indictment but it won't matter because the committee has an 'overwhelming case', John Dean testifying at the Watergate Hearings, Worse Than Watergate: Former Nixon Counsel John Dean Says Bush Should Be Impeached, Doing Legal, Political, and Historical Research on the Internet Using Blog Forums, Open Source Dictionaries, and More, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Dean&oldid=1136144627, 20th-century American non-fiction writers, 21st-century American non-fiction writers, Lawyers disbarred in the Watergate scandal, People convicted in the Watergate scandal, People convicted of obstruction of justice, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles lacking reliable references from May 2021, BLP articles lacking sources from May 2021, Wikipedia articles needing page number citations from May 2021, Articles with unsourced statements from May 2021, All articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases, Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from May 2021, BLP articles lacking sources from October 2018, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 28 January 2023, at 23:30. I always envisioned going in and out of government. They don't know what their jeopardy is. Paramount to pay $122.5 million to settle lawsuit over CBS deal. And by early February 1974, this Committee formally commenced impeachment proceedings.) Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox was interested in meeting with Dean and planned to do so a few days later, but Cox was fired by Nixon the next day; it was not until a month later that Cox was replaced by Leon Jaworski. The book claimed Dean had learned about the operation from his wife. John Dean Predicts Criminal Case Against Trump After 'Powerful' New Testimony. 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. A former key witness in the Watergate investigation that brought down President Richard Nixon says indictments are on their way to Donald Trump. [9], In late March in Florida, Mitchell approved a scaled-down plan. Dean served as White House Counsel for President Richard Nixon from July 1970 until Ap. 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. at 257-258 (discussing relationship between impeachment and criminal prosecution of a sitting President)., Today, you are focusing on Volume II of the report. The case of Dean vs. Liddy was dismissed without prejudice. Cognition, 9(1), 122. My telling the Senate Watergate Committee of how so many lawyers found themselves on the wrong side of the law during Watergate hit a chord. John Dean's testimony this week before the House Judiciary Committee squarely placed the Mueller report's findings in the historical context of Watergate. Since we began, we have presented over 150 programs throughout the United States, reaching somewhere between 45,000 to 50,000 attorneys. As Nixons secret tape recordings reveal, President Nixon knew the statement was false, and suspected (correctly) that his former attorney general John Mitchell had approved the operation. President Richard Nixon speaks on the White House lawn prior to his trip to China in 1972. II, P. 32); his chief of staff Annie Donaldson made contemporaneous notes of McGahns conversations with the president (e.g., MUELLER RPT, VOL. Brownell, K. (2020). (1981). If the Watergate scandal happened today, Dean believes Fox News and other conservative outlets would give more oxygen to Nixons defenders and perhaps enable the disgraced president to at least finish out his term instead of resigning. Senator Russell Feingold, who sponsored the censure resolution, introduced Dean as a "patriot" who put "rule of law above the interests of the president." [42][43], On November 7, 2018, the day after the midterm elections, Trump forced Attorney General Jeff Sessions to resign. This small piece of testimony, of course, became highly significant for it led to the discovery of the secret White House taping system. PRESIDENT: You cant do it, till after the 74 elections, thats for sure. Cox had been appointed after President Nixon fired his Attorney General Richard Kleindienst in April 1973 and the Senate insisted a special prosecutor be appointed by Kleindiensts replacement, Elliot Richardson. McGahn decided he would resign rather than carry out the orders, not unlike Elliot Richardson and William Ruckelshaus when they refused to fire Cox. Ari Emanuel lets his AI alter ego open Endeavors earnings call, WGA chief negotiator David Young replaced due to illness ahead of key talks with studios, Hidden, illegal casinos are booming in L.A., with organized crime reaping big profits, Look up: The 32 most spectacular ceilings in Los Angeles, 19 cafes that make L.A. a world-class coffee destination, Best coffee city in the world? Rep. Collins calls John Dean the 'godfather' of obstruction of justice, John Dean considers Watergate a roadmap for Mueller Report. The Watergate Hearings, 50 Years Ago: Truth Was Not Up for Debate . The program, produced by Herzog & Company, delves into the archive of Watergate-related material Dean has accumulated and stored in his Beverly Hills home over the years, including his 60,000-word testimony to a Senate subcommittee originally written in longhand on yellow legal pads. Dean had originally been a proponent of Goldwater conservatism, but he later became a critic of the Republican Party. Well, John Dean has a new book. This is based on my count of FBI 302 reports cited in the Mueller Report. [11], On March 22, 1973, Nixon requested that Dean put together a report with everything he knew about the Watergate matter, inviting him to take a retreat to Camp David to do so. WATERGATE: Nixon used the possibility of presidential pardons to keep witnesses from fully testifying in legal proceedings, a practice that was condemned in the Articles of Impeachment drawn up by the House Judiciary Committee in 1974.
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