john dean watergate testimony john dean watergate testimony

He studied at Colgate University and the College of Wooster in Ohio before earning a Juris Doctor (J.D.) 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.. 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. 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. It helped to reshape the public understanding of Watergate.. John W. Dean (center) with his wife, Maureen, and John's lawyer, Charles N. Shaffer, in 1974. 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. This is part one of John W. Dean's testimony before the Senate Watergate Committee. We respect each other. 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 II, p. 1 that one of the reasons the Special Counsel did not make charging decisions relating to obstruction of justice was because he did not want to potentially preempt [the] constitutional processes for addressing presidential misconduct. The report then cites at footnote 2: See U.S. CONST. Dean has been particularly critical of the party's support of Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump, and of neoconservatism, strong executive power, mass surveillance, and the Iraq War. Dean's testimony to the Senate the year before implicated Nixon in the Watergate affair. March 23, 1973: The McCord letter is made public by Judge Sirica in open court at McCord's sentencing hearing. While navigating the crisis together has strengthened their bond, Dean still has regrets over putting his wife through the extraordinary experience. It may just be too hot. Weekend Edition revisits audio from Dean's testimony. 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. Model Rule 1.13 provides that a lawyer representing an organization represents the entity and not the individuals running the entity. In Starz's new Gaslit, premiering Sunday, central Watergate figure John Dean is played by Dan Stevens. After we settled the case, I started agreeing to do television, Dean said. He chronicled his White House experiences, with a focus on Watergate, in the memoirs Blind Ambition (1976) and Lost Honor (1982). [17] Neisser did not explain the difference as one of deception; rather, he thought that the evidence supported the theory that memory is not akin to a tape recorder and instead should be thought of as reconstructions of information that are greatly affected by rehearsal, or attempts at replay. Dean's testimony before the House was watched by some 80 million Americans. [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. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. In it, he asserts that post-Goldwater conservatism has been co-opted by people with authoritarian personalities and policies, citing data from Bob Altemeyer. Dean commented on the removal in colorful terms, saying it "seems to be planned like a murder" and that Special Counsel Robert Mueller likely had contingency plans, possibly including sealed indictments. 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. 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. All except Parkinson were convicted, largely based upon Dean's evidence. He shares his story in the series "Watergate: Blueprint for a Scandal." It . 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. from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1965. John Dean during the filming of Watergate: Blueprint for a Scandal in 2020. (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. Michael and John dig deep into Watergate, January 6th, and DOJ. It's written with Bob Altemeyer, and it's titled Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers. In a corporation, for example, the attorney would report up to the board of directors or a special committee of the board. Will Dominion-Fox News lawsuit be different? But Dean understands how its not so easy to walk away from the center of power. 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. 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. It may further involve you in a way you shouldnt be involved in this. Dean briefly summarizes the takeaways from Comey's testimony and discusses the response by President Trump and his lawyer. Richard Nixon resigned as president the next year. VS. HALDEMAN, 559 F.2D 31 (D.C. CIR. The materials were contributed to the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) by the Library of Congress in 2017. Credit. After his plea, he was disbarred. 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. 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." March 21, 1973: Dean tells Nixon there is a "cancer" on the presidency. The depth of Deans Watergate insights is partly due to a defamation lawsuit he filed against St. Martins Press. ART. [citation needed], Dean continued to provide information to the prosecutors, who were able to make enormous progress on the cover-up, which until then they had virtually ignored, concentrating on the actual burglary and events preceding 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. But he was told by his immediate boss, John Ehrlichman, that his post-White House career would be difficult if he left. MUELLER REPORT VOLUME I: The Mueller Reports finds no illegal conspiracy, or criminal aiding and abetting, by candidate Trump with the Russians. Dean married Maureen (Mo) Kane on October 13, 1972. 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. 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. [28] On March 31, 2006, Dean testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee during hearings on censuring Bush over the issue. Weekend Edition revisits audio from Dean's testimony. 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. In the summer of 1973, the Watergate hearings held the country spellbound. . WATERGATE: I am aware of no evidence that Nixon was involved with or had advance knowledge of the Watergate break-in and bugging, or the similar plans for Senator McGovern. "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 . Jim is a trial attorney and a partner in a major multi-state law firm. [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. 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. 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. MUELLER REPORT RE EFFORTS TO CONTROL ATTORNEY GENERAL SESSIONS (PP. Nixon fired Dean on April 30, the same day he announced the resignations of Haldeman and Ehrlichman. He resides in Beverly Hills, California. 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. In White House Plumbers, an upcoming HBO limited series, Dean is portrayed by Domhnall Gleeson. Howard Hunts lawyer sought assurances through Nixons Special Counsel Chuck Colson that Hunt would not spend years in prison if he pled guilty in the trial before Judge Sirica in January 1973. 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. Spectators laughed, and soon the senator was "sputtering mad". McGahn refused to follow the Presidents order, recalling the opprobrium that met Robert Bork following the Saturday Night Massacre. John Dean, a former White House counsel who . 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. 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. II, PP. Mr. Trump asked Comey to lift the cloud of the Russia investigation by saying so to the public. 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. John Dean sits with his wife, Maureen, waiting to testify before the Senate Select Committee on Watergate in 1973. Evidence: In a taped interview for the book "Silent Coup", when Dean was . Dean frequently served as a guest on the former MSNBC and Current TV news program, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, and The Randi Rhodes Show on Premiere Radio Networks. The Watergate Hearings Collection covers 51 days of broadcasts of the Senate Watergate hearings from May 17, 1973, to November 15, 1973, and seven sessions of the House impeachment hearings on May 9 and July 24 30, 1974. . He could be embarrassed. (Mitchell would not admit this fact, even privately, for almost a year.) 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. In the summer of 1973, former White House Counsel John Dean testified as part of the Senate's investigation into the Watergate break-in. Such testimony against Nixon, while damaging to the president's credibility, had little legal impact, as it was merely his word against Nixon's. The Watergate Hearings, 50 Years Ago: Truth Was Not Up for Debate . Senator Russell Feingold, who sponsored the censure resolution, introduced Dean as a "patriot" who put "rule of law above the interests of the president." [46][47], In 2022, Dean said the January 6 Committee had an overwhelming case against Trump.[48]. On this episode of the Mea Culpa Podcast, Michael Cohen welcomes back a very special guest, John Dean. Search by keyword or individual, or browse all episodes by clicking Explore the Collection below the search box. Nixon chose not to disclose the information he did have in order to protect his friend Mitchell, believing that revealing this truth would destroy Mitchell. An obstruction of justice conviction prevented the former White House counsel from practicing law in Washington, D.C., and Virginia. Watergate prosecutors & Sirica knew John Dean committed many crimes. Mea Culpa welcomes back a very special guest, John Dean. . 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. Gjon Mili . And youre gonna have the clemency problem for the others. But I think he could experience shame. [13] It was alleged[who?] LOS ANGELES (Tribune News Service) 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. "[35][36], In February 2018, Dean warned that Rick Gates's testimony may be "the end" of Trump's presidency. With his plea to felony offenses, Dean was disbarred as a lawyer in Virginia and the District of Columbia.[18][19]. [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. 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. In short, McGahns loyalty is to his client, the Office of the Presidency, not the occupant. First, he is a key witness in understanding the Mueller Report. CNN Original Series Returns to the Scene of the Crime in "Watergate: Blueprint for a Scandal," Debuting Sunday, June 5. It also came out that Gray had destroyed important evidence Dean entrusted to him. 1973, Nixon fired Dean. Specifically, the burglars were interested in information they thought was held by DNC head Lawrence F. O'Brien. The press statement was false. Watergate Lawyer John Dean Predicts Legacy Of Jan. 6 Investigation Into Trump. Former White House Counsel John Dean, who was a key figure in the Watergate scandal, arrives to testify before the House Judiciary Committee as the panel seeks to compare the investigations during President Richard Nixon's administration and that of President Donald Trump, on Capitol Hill Monday. Mueller refutes the dubious contention that when the president exercises his Constitutional powers, he is not subject to federal criminal laws. Dean served as White House Counsel for President Richard Nixon from July 1970 until April 1973. 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. 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. All rights reserved. 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 . Dean had had suspicions that Nixon was taping conversations, and he tipped prosecutors to question witnesses along this line, leading to Butterfield's revelations. 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. His guilty plea to a single felony in exchange for becoming a key witness for the prosecution . 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. It was not until it was revealed that Nixon had made secret White House tape recordings (disclosed in testimony by Alexander Butterfield on July 16) and the tapes were subpoenaed and analyzed that many of Dean's accusations were largely substantiated. Eight years ago, we created a course called The Watergate CLE. His first memoir, Blind Ambition, was turned into a TV movie in 1979. Meanwhile, John Dean (Dan Stevens) was reportedly aware of the break-in plans and later tried to cover it all up. For those of you who lived through Watergate, his name is synonymous with the political intrigue of the 1970s. Why Netflix is dabbling in livestreaming, How strong is Dominions defamation case against Fox News? Petersen provided Nixon with confidential information from the prosecutors and the grand jury proceedings. [5], Dean was employed from 1966 to 1967 as chief minority counsel to the Republicans on the United States House Committee on the Judiciary. In 2006, Dean testified before the Senate Judiciary Commit . A full cast of characters is available in our Gavel-to-Gavel exhibit. About two months later, on June 25, 1973, Dean started delivering his testimony in front of the Senate Watergate Committee, during which he spoke about . 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. Since we began, we have presented over 150 programs throughout the United States, reaching somewhere between 45,000 to 50,000 attorneys. MUELLER REPORT RE TERMINATION OF COMEY (PP. Im learning things that I had never known about what had happened and why it happened.. PRESIDENT: You cant do it, till after the 74 elections, thats for sure. II, P. 52), and McGahn is the only witness that the Special Counsel expressly labels as reliable, calling McGahn a credible witness with no motive to lie or exaggerate given the position he held in the White House. (MUELLER RPT, VOL.