Stephen Battaglio writes about television and the media business for the Los Angeles Times out of New York. With his plea to felony offenses, Dean was disbarred as a lawyer in Virginia and the District of Columbia.[18][19]. In the 2022 TV mini-series Gaslit, Dean was played by Dan Stevens. 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 . [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. In short, the firing of FBI Director Comey, like Nixons effort to curtail the Watergate investigation, resulted in the appointment of Special Counsel Mueller. 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. A former key witness in the Watergate investigation that brought down President Richard Nixon says indictments are on their way to Donald Trump. But the CNN series is the first time hes told his story in a documentary, which drills down into how and why Richard Nixon looked for dirt on his opponents and detailed accounts of his criminal actions to cover it up. It certainly changed my career path. [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. 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. Let me briefly address the ethics question. A full cast of characters is available in our Gavel-to-Gavel exhibit. 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. 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. Evidence: In a taped interview for the book "Silent Coup", when Dean was . Rather I accepted the invitation to appear today because I hope I can give a bit of historical context to the Mueller Report. Dean concludes that conservatism must regenerate itself to remain true to its core ideals of limited government and the rule of law. Dean served as White House Counsel for President Richard Nixon from July 1970 until Ap. The Oval Office exchange between the President and Haldeman was on June 23, 1972, six days after the after the arrests at the Watergate complex. [Emphasis added.]. John W. Dean was legal counsel to President Nixon during the Watergate scandal, and his Senate testimony lead to Nixon's resignation. 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. April 6, 1973: White House counsel John Dean begins cooperating with federal Watergate prosecutors. His testimony during the Watergate scandal helped bring down Nixon. 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. In many ways the Mueller Report is to President Trump what the so-called Watergate Road Map (officially titled Grand Jury Report and Recommendation Concerning Transmission of Evidence to the House of Representatives) was to President Richard Nixon. Gray's nomination failed and Dean was directly linked to the Watergate cover-up. He had only a limited attorney-client privilege when interacting with the President and advisors and the privilege belongs to the Office in any event. [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. 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, P. 32); his chief of staff Annie Donaldson made contemporaneous notes of McGahns conversations with the president (e.g., MUELLER RPT, VOL. 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. Yeah. The Jan. 6 committee's hastily scheduled hearing for Tuesday "better be a big deal," said a key Watergate scandal figure. 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. He has been a go-to talking head whenever a presidential scandal is brewing, and the twice-impeached Donald Trump whose desperate attempt to stay in the White House after losing the 2020 election remains under investigation has kept him busy as a CNN contributor. Stated a bit differently, Special Counsel Mueller has provided this committee a road map. PRINTING OFFICE, 2019). 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. For those of you who lived through Watergate, his name is synonymous with the political intrigue of the 1970s. 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. For those of you who lived through Watergate, his name is synonymous with the political intrigue of the 1970s. This is extremely important because the false information contained in "Blind Ambition" directly contradicts his sworn testimony to the Senate Watergate Committee. Ultimately, he became a witness for the prosecution. When Colson relayed President Nixons positive response, Hunt pled guilty and the so-called Cuban American defendants followed his lead and pled guilty, as well. in 1961. [13] It was alleged[who?] 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. 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 . John Dean, a former White House counsel who . March 21, 1973: Dean tells Nixon there is a "cancer" on the presidency. The public pressure was so great, Nixon had to appoint a new special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski. At first, he shredded incriminating files. Dean had originally been a proponent of Goldwater conservatism, but he later became a critic of the Republican Party. Nixon vigorously denied all accusations that he had authorized a cover-up, and Dean had no corroboration beyond various notes he had taken in his meetings with the president. 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. Shortly after the Watergate hearings, Dean wrote about his experiences in a series of books and toured the United States to lecture. [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. Speaking of Betty Gilpin, John Dean is practicing his testimony, and Mo is advising him. First, he is a key witness in understanding the Mueller Report. The book claimed Dean had learned about the operation from his wife. An obstruction of justice conviction prevented the former White House counsel from practicing law in Washington, D.C., and Virginia. Liddy presented a preliminary plan for intelligence-gathering operations during the campaign. They don't know whether to hire lawyers or not, how they're going to pay for them if they do. They don't know what their jeopardy is. And that destroys the case.. On their second break-in, on the night of June 16, hotel security discovered the burglars. The Mueller Report offers a powerful legal analysis that, notwithstanding the fact the pardon power is one of the most unrestricted of presidential powers, it cannot be used for improper purposes. Specifically, the burglars were interested in information they thought was held by DNC head Lawrence F. O'Brien. I began by telling the president that there was a cancer growing on the presidency. [21] This theory was subsequently the subject of the 1992 A&E Network Investigative Reports series program The Key to Watergate.[22][23]. Journalists Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein and Lesley Stahl also offer their recollections on the story that helped make their careers. This is part one of John W. Dean's testimony before the Senate Watergate Committee. WATERGATE: The Comey firing echoes Nixons firing of Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox in the infamous Saturday Night Massacre in October 1973. 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. . . Mr. McGahn has expressed concern about being caught between two branches of government in responding to this Committees subpoena for his documents and testimony. . His guilty plea to a single felony in exchange for becoming a key witness for the prosecution . 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. John Dean Predicts Criminal Case Against Trump After 'Powerful' New Testimony. McGahn decided he would resign rather than carry out the orders, not unlike Elliot Richardson and William Ruckelshaus when they refused to fire Cox. In both situations the White House Counsel was implicated in the coverup activity. He could be embarrassed. In the 1999 film Dick, Dean was played by Jim Breuer. And by early February 1974, this Committee formally commenced impeachment proceedings.) I had some unsolicited offers that I really wanted to explore. Dean was the first administration official to accuse Nixon of direct involvement with Watergate and the resulting cover-up in press interviews. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. In Watergate, the lesson learned was that no person, even the President, was above the law. He is also the author of three books about television, including a biography of pioneer talk show host and producer David Susskind. Yet events in both 1972 and 2016 resulted in obstruction of the investigations. Watergate Lawyer John Dean Predicts Legacy Of Jan. 6 Investigation Into Trump. 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. Granted immunity, Dean laid out in stunning detail and intricacy how the President not only knew . His deputy, William Ruckelshaus, also refused to fire Cox and also resigned, with the next man in succession, Solicitor General Robert Bork carrying out the presidents order to terminate Cox. Im learning things that I had never known about what had happened and why it happened.. (See U.S. 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. (Mitchell would not admit this fact, even privately, for almost a year.) Records are described at an item level and all records contain brief descriptions and subject terms. Dean is known for his role in the cover-up of the Watergate scandal and his subsequent testimony to Congress as a witness. . The Mueller Report, like the Watergate Road Map, conveys findings, with supporting evidence, of potential criminal activity based on the work of federal prosecutors, FBI investigators, and witness testimony before a federal grand jury. That didnt happen.. 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. Yet President Nixon knew that offering such pardons or giving pardons to try to control witnesses in legal proceedings was wrong. 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. HANSEN: John Dean's testimony would prove to be prophetic - perhaps even self-fulfilling. John Dean during the filming of Watergate: Blueprint for a Scandal in 2020. June 1, 2022 1:43 PM PT. [33], In speaking engagements in 2014, Dean called Watergate a "lawyers' scandal" that, for all the bad, ushered in needed legal ethics reforms. 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. Thats for sure. [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). Paperback. Rep. Collins calls John Dean the 'godfather' of obstruction of justice, John Dean considers Watergate a roadmap for Mueller Report. John Dean was born in Akron, Ohio, and spent a significant part of his life in Marion. 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. In the summer of 1973, former White House Counsel John Dean testified as part of the Senate's investigation into the Watergate break-in. "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 . 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. Granted immunity, Dean laid out in stunning detail . It also led to the creation of the PBS NewsHour.. Accordingly, I sincerely hope that Mr. McGahn will voluntarily appear and testify. I was always interested in government. They don't know what they're looking at. 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. 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. Senator Russell Feingold, who sponsored the censure resolution, introduced Dean as a "patriot" who put "rule of law above the interests of the president." Dean insisted that Cohen be included in the series. The couple sued and eventually reached an undisclosed settlement. 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. Before that, I am so deep in the weeds of Watergate. In the summer of 1973, former White House Counsel John Dean testified as part of the Senate's investigation into the Watergate break-in. DEAN: Im not sure that youll ever be able to deliver clemency. | J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo. Ehrlichman said, John, youll have better job offers after Nixon gets reelected. Yeah, making license plates.. 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. Dean did not complete the report. . 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. 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. The investigation revealed that Nixon had a tape-recording system in his offices and that he had recorded many conversations. When Cox refused this arrangement, Nixon ordered his Attorney General to fire Cox, which Richardson refused to do and resigned himself. 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. 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 . Each days hearings are broken up into multiple parts, which are linked together and named as such. It's an unpleasant place. 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. 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. (1981). 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.