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. PRINTING OFFICE, 1974); AND SPECIAL COUNSEL ROBERT S. MUELLER, III, REPORT ON THE INVESTIGATION INTO RUSSIAN INTERFERENCE IN THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, VOLUMES I AND II (WASHINGTON, D.C: GOV. ". Season 1, Episodes 6 and 7 of Gaslit capture the testimonies Martha, John Dean (an attorney who served as the White House counsel . Deans immersion in Watergate since that time has been so deep, he never imagined what his life would have been without it. In this latest book, Dean, who has repeatedly called himself a "Goldwater conservative", built on Worse Than Watergate and Conservatives Without Conscience to argue that the Republican Party has gravely damaged all three branches of the federal government in the service of ideological rigidity and with no attention to the public interest or the general good. Starring Julia Roberts, Sean Penn, and Dan Stevens in the lead roles, Gaslit on Starz offers a glimpse into the extraordinary life of Martha Mitchell, the socialite who was kidnapped in an attempt to stop her from breaking the news about the Watergate break-in. OLC Op. But the litigation gave Dean access to files from the Watergate special prosecution archives, intensifying his expertise, and he entered the pundit class that emerged when cable news expanded in the mid-1990s. After four months, however, the Watergate trial judge, John J. Sirica, reduced his sentence to time . Ehrlichman said, If you leave, youll be persona non grata with this administration, so dont take a job where you need any connections to us. Of course, the jobs did want me to have relationships with the Nixon White House. John Dean. Because, you know, after everybody PRESIDENT: Thats right. For those of you who lived through Watergate, his name is synonymous with the political intrigue of the 1970s. Dean served as White House Counsel for President Richard Nixon from July 1970 until Ap. It certainly changed my career path. MUELLER REPORT RE EFFORTS TO PREVENT OR DISTORT DISCLOSURE OF THE JUNE 9, 2016 TRUMP TOWER MEETING (PP. 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 . In June 1973, as a young lawyer on Capitol Hill, I watched White House counsel John Dean testify before Sen. Sam Ervin's Watergate Committee from the row of seats behind the senators. This is based on my count of FBI 302 reports cited in the Mueller Report. Mr. McGahn is the most prominent fact witness regarding obstruction of justice cited in the Mueller Report. Let me briefly address the ethics question. [1] His family moved to Flossmoor, Illinois, where he attended grade school. Senator Barry Goldwater, in part as an act of fealty to the man who defined his political ideals. The Jan. 6 committee's hastily scheduled hearing for Tuesday "better be a big deal," said a key Watergate scandal figure. 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. His guilty plea to a single felony in exchange for becoming a key witness for the prosecution . 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 . Rep. Collins calls John Dean the 'godfather' of obstruction of justice, John Dean considers Watergate a roadmap for Mueller Report. Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. Items included in the Television News search service. John W. Dean was legal counsel to President Nixon during the Watergate scandal, and his Senate testimony lead to Nixon's resignation. Was he hard-nosed and tough? It may further involve you in a way you shouldnt be involved in this. Speaking of Betty Gilpin, John Dean is practicing his testimony, and Mo is advising him. In his testimony, he implicated administration officials, including Mitchell, Nixon, and himself. He admitted supervising payments of "hush money" to the Watergate burglars, notably E. Howard Hunt, and revealed the existence of Nixon's enemies list. 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. Michael and John dig deep into Watergate, January 6th, and DOJ. Part of his decision to cooperate with investigators was self-preservation, as he believed he was being set up to take the fall for the White Houses handling of the scandal. He was trying to shape my future testimony. I always envisioned going in and out of government. You have the problem of clemency for Hunt. 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. For high school, he attended Staunton Military Academy with Barry Goldwater Jr., the son of Sen. Barry Goldwater, and became a close friend of the family. Former Trump officials have been criticized for waiting to express their misgivings over what was happening in the White House until after they left and made book deals. Liddy presented a preliminary plan for intelligence-gathering operations during the campaign. Eight years ago, we created a course called The Watergate CLE. Spectators laughed, and soon the senator was "sputtering mad". Desperate mountain residents trapped by snow beg for help; We are coming, sheriff says, Newsom, IRS give Californians until October to file tax returns, Californias snowpack is approaching an all-time record, with more on the way, Column: A transgender patients lawsuit against Kaiser is a front for the conservative war on LGBTQ rights, Silent Coup: The Removal of a President,, Nixon hated PBS, but his Watergate scandal gave the fledgling network a major hit, From Chris Rock to the SAG Awards. John Dean during the filming of Watergate: Blueprint for a Scandal in 2020. 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. [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. They all would have expected to be out and that may put you in a position thats just . VS. HALDEMAN, 559 F.2D 31 (D.C. CIR. 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. (See U.S. June 1, 2022 1:43 PM PT. Shortly after Watergate, Dean became an investment banker, author and lecturer based in Beverly Hills, California. Nixon said, And, ah, because these people are playing for keeps, . [13] It was alleged[who?] WASHINGTON, June 27 Following is the transcript of a White House memorandum analyzing John W. Dean's. testimony on Watergate, as read during the Senate Water gate committee's hearings to day by . John Dean Predicts Criminal Case Against Trump After 'Powerful' New Testimony. Credit. But there is no question Mr. McGahn was a critical observer of these activities. . [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 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 did not complete the report. 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. [24] Also in 2006, Dean appeared as an interviewee in the documentary The U.S. vs. John Lennon, about the Nixon administration's efforts to keep John Lennon out of the United States. To the extent Mr. McGahn wishes to assert Executive Privilege or the Attorney-Client privilege, he can do so, but those privileges were waived regarding the material plainly set forth in the Mueller Report. For those of you who lived through Watergate, his name is synonymous with the political intrigue of the 1970s. But when Dean surrendered as scheduled on September 3, he was diverted to the custody of U.S. [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. This revised plan eventually led to attempts to eavesdrop on the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C., and to the Watergate scandal. [8][pageneeded], On January 27, 1972, Dean, the White House Counsel, met with Jeb Magruder (Deputy Director of the Committee to Re-Elect the President, or CRP and CREEP) and Mitchell (Attorney General of the United States, and soon-to-be Director of CRP), in Mitchell's office, for a presentation by G. Gordon Liddy (counsel for CRP and a former FBI agent). On August 2, 1974, Sirica handed down a sentence to Dean of one to four years in a minimum-security prison. One was destroying evidence. 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. 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. Dean is now the last man standing from that era, He is the last connection between this nation's authoritarian past and present. 1973, Nixon fired Dean. II, P. DEAN: Thats right. In the 2022 TV mini-series Gaslit, Dean was played by Dan Stevens. In that position, he became deeply involved in events leading up to the Watergate burglaries and the subsequent scandal and cover-up . Yes, Dean and Mo are still married. [6], Dean volunteered to write position papers on crime for Richard Nixon's presidential campaign in 1968. 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. First off . Stephen Battaglio writes about television and the media business for the Los Angeles Times out of New York. WATERGATE: The Comey firing echoes Nixons firing of Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox in the infamous Saturday Night Massacre in October 1973. Similarly, when President Nixon met with me on April 15, 1973, after my break with the White House, he raised the concern about the Hunt pardon again. "My feelings about Mr. Nixon remained the same until his death a tangle of familial echoes, affections, and curiosities never satisfied," Leonard Garment wrote in his 1997 autobiography, Crazy Rhythm: From Brooklyn and Jazz to Nixon's White House, Watergate, and Beyond.At first blush, Garment appeared an odd match for President Richard M. Nixon, the former a liberal Republican who . [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. We still love each other, Dean said. Again, McGahns testimony about these events, which are described in detail in the Mueller Report, are important for Congress to understand and, as noted later, claims of executive privilege or attorney-client privilege have been waived (because of disclosure of the Mueller Report authorized by President Trump, and the so-called crime-fraud exception to all privileges). WATERGATE: This is much like Richard Nixons attempt to get me to write a phony report exonerating the White House from any involvement in Watergate.