McGahn decided he would resign rather than carry out the orders, not unlike Elliot Richardson and William Ruckelshaus when they refused to fire Cox. 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. John Dean's testimony this week before the House Judiciary Committee squarely placed the Mueller report's findings in the historical context of Watergate. Was he hard-nosed and tough? This is a taped except of Dean as he recalled that meeting with President Nixon. John Deans statement to the House Judiciary Committee on June 10, 2019, as prepared for delivery. 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. He was convicted of conspiracy to obstruct justice and sentenced to one to four years in prison. Stated a bit differently, Special Counsel Mueller has provided this committee a road map. Shortly after the Watergate hearings, Dean wrote about his experiences in a series of books and toured the United States to lecture. In 2006, he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee investigating George W. Bush's NSA warrantless wiretap program. 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. Petersen informed Nixon that this could cause problems for the prosecution of the case, but Nixon publicly announced his position that evening. 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. The investigation revealed that Nixon had a tape-recording system in his offices and that he had recorded many conversations. The president lauded his efforts. 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. The depth of Deans Watergate insights is partly due to a defamation lawsuit he filed against St. Martins Press. In the summer of 1973, former White House Counsel John Dean testified as part of the Senate's investigation into the Watergate break-in. | J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo. Why Netflix is dabbling in livestreaming, How strong is Dominions defamation case against Fox News? Such testimony against Nixon, while damaging to the president's credibility, had little legal impact, as it was merely his word against Nixon's. Dean tried to leave the White House in September 1971, a year after he arrived and well before the Watergate break-in. Dean's testimony before the House was watched by some 80 million Americans. 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 . "A concern . 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. Dean a young, highly ambitious, Porsche-driving, tassel-loafer-wearing lawyer when he joined the ultra conservative Nixon minions ended up getting fired in 1973 once it became clear he would implicate the president in the cover-up. Dean briefly summarizes the takeaways from Comey's testimony and discusses the response by President Trump and his lawyer. [21] This theory was subsequently the subject of the 1992 A&E Network Investigative Reports series program The Key to Watergate.[22][23]. . 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. According to Dean, modern conservatism, specifically on the Christian Right, embraces obedience, inequality, intolerance, and strong intrusive government, in stark contrast to Goldwater's philosophies and policies. 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. His first memoir, Blind Ambition, was turned into a TV movie in 1979. WATERGATE: The Comey firing echoes Nixons firing of Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox in the infamous Saturday Night Massacre in October 1973. 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 . Dean also asserts that Nixon did not directly order the break-in, but that Ehrlichman ordered it on Nixon's behalf. 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. 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. Ehrlichman said, John, youll have better job offers after Nixon gets reelected. Yeah, making license plates.. Each days hearings are broken up into multiple parts, which are linked together and named as such. 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. 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. Mea Culpa welcomes back a very special guest, John Dean. 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. He resides in Beverly Hills, California. Like Comey, Cox was charged with investigating wrongdoing by the President and his advisors and Cox refused an ultimatum from the White House to limit his access to the secret White House tapes by accepting written transcripts, prepared by the White House and verified by a near deaf senior member of the U.S. Senate, former judge John Stennis, rather than allowing Cox to listen to the tapes. [15], Dean pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice before Watergate trial judge John Sirica on October 19, 1973. It certainly changed my career path. Jim is a trial attorney and a partner in a major multi-state law firm. They don't know what their jeopardy is. They don't know if they're a part of a conspiracy that might unfold. 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. Specifically, the burglars were interested in information they thought was held by DNC head Lawrence F. O'Brien. Rule 1.13 further provides that when an attorney representing an organization encounters ongoing crime or fraud, he or she must first try to solve the problem within the organization, by going up the ladder to the highest authority that can address the problem. (Following Coxs firing, a dozen plus bills calling for Nixons impeachment or creating a special prosecutor were filed in the House. 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 . If the problem cannot be solved internally, Model Rule 1.13 provides that an attorney may report out, despite his or her confidentiality, what is going on, despite his duty of confidentiality or the attorney-client privilege. All believed that they could rely on the President to offer clemency under the Presidents pardon power. On August 2, 1974, Sirica handed down a sentence to Dean of one to four years in a minimum-security prison. Let me briefly address the ethics question. Rep. Collins calls John Dean the 'godfather' of obstruction of justice, John Dean considers Watergate a roadmap for Mueller Report. In the preface to his 2006 book Conservatives Without Conscience, Dean strongly denied Colodny's theory, pointing out that Colodny's chief source (Phillip Mackin Bailley) had been in and out of mental institutions. His testimony during the Watergate scandal helped bring down Nixon. While navigating the crisis together has strengthened their bond, Dean still has regrets over putting his wife through the extraordinary experience. 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. Former White House counsel John Dean, a key figure in the Watergate scandal that toppled former President Richard Nixon, testifies before a House Judiciary Committee hearing titled, "Lessons from . DEAN: Thats right. [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. 7 min read. (Mitchell would not admit this fact, even privately, for almost a year.) . 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. Will Dominion-Fox News lawsuit be different? Mr. McGahn is the most prominent fact witness regarding obstruction of justice cited in the Mueller Report. For those of you who lived through Watergate, his name is synonymous with the political intrigue of the 1970s. Spectators laughed, and soon the senator was "sputtering mad". For those of you who lived through Watergate, his name is synonymous with the political intrigue of the 1970s. Using Altemeyer's scholarly work, he contends that there is a tendency toward ethically questionable political practices when authoritarians are in power and that the current political situation is dangerously unsound because of it. 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. In short, the firing of FBI Director Comey, like Nixons effort to curtail the Watergate investigation, resulted in the appointment of Special Counsel Mueller. 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. Since we began, we have presented over 150 programs throughout the United States, reaching somewhere between 45,000 to 50,000 attorneys. It was a very sympathetic and very believable portrait, said Graff. Learn how and when to remove this template message, United States House Committee on the Judiciary, 1973 Watergate Hearings; 1973-06-25; Part 1 of 6, Impeachment process against Richard Nixon, Master list of Nixon's political opponents, Committee for the Re-Election of the President, The Rehnquist Choice: The Untold Story of the Nixon Appointment that Redefined the Supreme Court, Presentation by Dean and Barry Goldwater, Jr. on, Worse than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush, "The Nation: How John Dean Came Center Stage", "1973 Watergate Hearings; 1973-06-25; Part 1 of 6", "Virginia State Bar Attorney Records Search (citing to 12 November 1973 revocation of license following hearing of Disciplinary Board, VSB Docket No. DEAN: . 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.
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