He said he had found information via the Nixon tapes that showed what the burglars were after: information on a kickback scheme involving the Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida. McGahn refused to follow the Presidents order, recalling the opprobrium that met Robert Bork following the Saturday Night Massacre. Dean then served as associate director of the National Commission on Reform of Federal Criminal Laws for approximately two years. 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. Granted immunity, Dean laid out in stunning detail . Well, John Dean has a new book. Liddy presented a preliminary plan for intelligence-gathering operations during the campaign. Dean's testimony to the Senate the year before implicated Nixon in the Watergate affair. Gray said he had given FBI reports to Dean, and had discussed the FBI investigation with Dean on many occasions. 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. 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. Model Rule 1.13 provides that a lawyer representing an organization represents the entity and not the individuals running the entity. For whatever reason, President Trump did not follow up with the directive to fire Mueller and McGahn did not resign. (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. . 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.. For those of you who lived through Watergate, his name is synonymous with the political intrigue of the 1970s. Let me briefly address the ethics question. Thats for sure. Now, 40 years later, then some, Dean will return to Capitol Hill to testify before a different Congress about a different president. But even then your point is that even then you couldnt do it. In Watergate, the lesson learned was that no person, even the President, was above the law. 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. [21] This theory was subsequently the subject of the 1992 A&E Network Investigative Reports series program The Key to Watergate.[22][23]. 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. This is a taped except of Dean as he recalled that meeting with President Nixon. This press statement put a coverup in place immediately, by claiming the men arrested at the Democratic headquarters were not operating either in our behalf or with our consent in the alleged bugging attempt. 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. Deans words on tape can be heard in the British documentary TV series Watergate. Later Nixon worked directly with Henry Petersen, the top Justice Department official in charge of the Watergate investigation, once I had broken with the White House. The image of her calmly seated behind her husband throughout the hearings became one of the most memorable tableaus of the 1970s. In his testimony, he implicated administration officials, including Mitchell, Nixon, and himself. Dean had had suspicions that Nixon was taping conversations, and he tipped prosecutors to question witnesses along this line, leading to Butterfield's revelations. Dean finally replied, "You're showing you don't know that subject very well." 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. "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 . untenable at some point. What did Disney actually lose from its Florida battle with DeSantis? The books present documents, reliable sources, and official Watergate testimony by John Dean as persuasive arguments. Brownell, K. (2020). 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. After his plea, he was disbarred. First off . Dean's testimony before the House was watched by some 80 million Americans. 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 . Certain aspects of the scandal came to light before Election Day, but Nixon was reelected by a landslide. ". Watergate Lawyer John Dean Predicts Legacy Of Jan. 6 Investigation Into Trump. 1 AND 182.). 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. In short, McGahns loyalty is to his client, the Office of the Presidency, not the occupant. A full cast of characters is available in our Gavel-to-Gavel exhibit. Reaction to Liddy's plan was highly unfavorable. There is no one alive closer to the Watergate scandal than Dean, and now he offers a definitive and deeply personal look at the events that changed his life forever in the four-part documentary series Watergate: Blueprint for a Scandal. The program premieres Sunday on CNN. Dean also asserts that Nixon did not directly order the break-in, but that Ehrlichman ordered it on Nixon's behalf. The burglars' first break-in attempt in late May was successful, but several problems had arisen with poor-quality information from their bugs, and they wanted to photograph more documents. [Emphasis added.]. Dean settled the defamation suit against Colodny and his publisher, St. Martin's Press, on terms that Dean wrote in the book's preface he could not divulge under the conditions of the settlement, other than that "the Deans were satisfied." from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1965. Chairman Nadler, Ranking Member Collins, the last time I appeared before your committee was . [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. 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. Continue reading. 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. [46][47], In 2022, Dean said the January 6 Committee had an overwhelming case against Trump.[48]. Nine months into the mushrooming scandal, Dean bargained for immunity and won himself a lenient prison term by delivering the sensational, if deeply flawed, testimonybefore the klieg lights of the Senate Watergate committee (1973), the House Judiciary Committee (1974), and the trial of U.S. v. Mitchell (1974)that helped convict Nixon's . [1] His family moved to Flossmoor, Illinois, where he attended grade school. John Mitchell, Nixon's most trusted adviser and former attorney general, had taken charge of the Committee for the Re-election of the President (CRP) and authorized the Watergate break-in on 17 . An obstruction of justice conviction prevented the former White House counsel from practicing law in Washington, D.C., and Virginia. Speaking of Betty Gilpin, John Dean is practicing his testimony, and Mo is advising him. And politically, itd just be impossible for, you know, you to do it. 78-90, 113-133): According to Muellers account, Don McGahn played a critical role in interdicting the Presidents express efforts to fire Special Counsel Mueller. (Following Coxs firing, a dozen plus bills calling for Nixons impeachment or creating a special prosecutor were filed in the House. . Mr. McGahn is the most prominent fact witness regarding obstruction of justice cited in the Mueller Report. 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. March 23, 1973: The McCord letter is made public by Judge Sirica in open court at McCord's sentencing hearing. | J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo. 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 Jun 2017. John Deans statement to the House Judiciary Committee on June 10, 2019, as prepared for delivery. Cooper asked Dean, whom the FBI dubbed the "master manipulator" of the Watergate scandal when he flipped to cooperate with prosecutors against Nixon, how high the bar must be for the Justice Department to pursue the charges against Trump. The depth of Deans Watergate insights is partly due to a defamation lawsuit he filed against St. Martins Press. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. This is part one of John W. Dean's testimony before the Senate Watergate Committee. I 2, cl. Specifically, the burglars were interested in information they thought was held by DNC head Lawrence F. O'Brien. Each days hearings are broken up into multiple parts, which are linked together and named as such. 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. It also led to the creation of the PBS NewsHour.. He's penned five books about Watergate and 10 books in total; including his most recent tome, Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and his Followers. March 21, 1973: Dean tells Nixon there is a "cancer" on the presidency. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. [16], Neisser found that, despite Dean's confidence, the tapes proved that his memory was anything but a tape recorder. In July 1973, evidence mounted against the president's staff, including testimony provided by former staff members in an investigation conducted by the Senate Watergate Committee. Dean is now the last man standing from that era, He is the last connection between this nation's authoritarian past and present. . 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. [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. For those of you who lived through Watergate, his name is synonymous with the political intrigue of the 1970s. Former White House Counsel John Dean's testimony in the Watergate investigation helped topple Richard Nixon's presidency. Accordingly, I sincerely hope that Mr. McGahn will voluntarily appear and testify. We also talked with Michael Frisch, a friend who is the Ethics Counsel at Georgetown University Law Center. 1973, Nixon fired Dean. 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. In the 1995 film Nixon, directed by Oliver Stone, Dean was played by David Hyde Pierce. Well, John Dean has a new book. His silence is perpetuating an ongoing coverup, and while his testimony will create a few political enemies, based on almost 50 years of experience I can assure him he will make far more real friends. In the 2022 TV mini-series Gaslit, Dean was played by Dan Stevens. [30], In 2008, Dean co-edited Pure Goldwater, a collection of writings by the 1964 Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. John Dean's testimony this week before the House Judiciary Committee squarely placed the Mueller report's findings in the historical context of Watergate. It helped to reshape the public understanding of Watergate.. . Watergate-John-Dean-June-25-1973 . . Dean's first wife is Karla Ann Hennings, whom he married in 1962. I would like to address a few of the remarkable parallels I find in the Mueller Report that echo Watergate, particularly those related to obstruction of justice. "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 . Eisenberg, MUELLER RPT, VOL. [14], When it was revealed that Nixon had secretly recorded all meetings in the Oval Office, famous psychologist and memory researcher Ulric Neisser analyzed Dean's recollections of the meetings, as expressed through his testimony, in comparison to the meetings' actual recordings. 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). His guilty plea to a single felony in exchange for becoming a key witness for the prosecution . In 1992, Dean hired attorney Neil Papiano and brought the first in a series of defamation suits against Liddy for claims in Liddy's book Will, and St. Martin's Press for its publication of the book Silent Coup by Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin. After hearing of Colodny's work, Liddy issued a revised paperback version of Will supporting Colodny's theory. The point is: Richard Nixon knew he could not use his pardon power, unrestricted as it is in Article II, for the improper purpose of gaining the silence of witnesses in legal proceedings.