that the president has, today, requested and accepted the resignation of john dean from his position house counsel. okay. >> good evening. in recent months, members of my administration and officials of the committee for the re-election of the president, including some of my closest friends and most trusted aides, have been charged with involvement in what has come to be known as the watergate affair. in any organization, the man at the top must bear the responsibility. that responsibility, therefore, belongs here in this office. i accept it. and i pledge to you tonight from this office that i will do everything in my power to ensure that the guilty are brought to justice and that such abuses are purged from our political processes in the years to come, long after i have left this office. ♪ >> i don't think that he has anything to do with it. i really don't. >> well, i don't blame the president. i think his associates fooled him quite a bit. >> many more things are bothering america than watergate, like the high price of meat, you know, and the high cost of living. >> as of now, we d

former nixon white house council john dean and former watergate special prosecutor.

tape that he had committed numerous criminal acts. >> the moment of truth came when i listened to john dean and richard nixon in the march 21 cancer on the presidency conversation where john comes into the president, lays out everything has been done as if the president didn't know giving him the benefit of the doubt saying you need to save the presidency. i will plead guilty. others need to plead guilty. we have committed crimes and nixon rejects that proposal and said we need to keep this going a little bit further. we need to get the money. i can get the money. i know where it can be gotten. when i first listened to that and brought leon in to listen to it personally, that was the moment for me when i said richard nixon cannot survive as president. he has associated himself with the conspiracy to obstruct justice. encouraged it to be continued. how can he possibly survive this? >> i want to pause for a second and say how cool it is just to have three of you here and the other guests we're going to have and just how weird life is. could you ever have imagined back then that one day you'd

john dean in 1973 had just left the nixon white house under contentious circumstances when dean was called to testify before congress before the senate watergate committee. that dean testimony ended up being blockbuster stuff about the watergate cover up and the president's role in it and dangling pardons to people to shut them up and intimidating witnesses and obstruction of justice and the nixon enemies list and even from john dean they got the first inkelings that there might be a white house taping system. >> the president began asking me a number of leading questions which was some what unlike his normal conversational relationships i had with him which made me think that the conversation was being taped and a record was being made to protect himself. i do not in fact know if such a tape exists but if it does exist and has not been tampered with and is a complete transcript of the entire conversation that took place in the president's office i think this committee should have this tape because i believe it would corroborate many of the things this committee has asked me to testify abo

john dean knows all about this. he's been through similar. laura coates is an expert, as is garrett graff, the author of "mueller's war." let's talk about this. laura, the legal angle here, mueller lays out a key reason why obstruction by trump failed. it's because people around him had refused to carry out orders. okay. i just wand to read that part. "the president's efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful largely because of persons who surrounded the president declined to carry out orders or see to his requests." that is volume two, page 158. the president was protected by the people around him but his intent is still there. so did he obstruct? >> well, absolutely, according to the mueller report. remember, the idea that there were adults in the room is comfortable. however, obstruction is a crime where if you endeavor to do so, meaning you even try to do so, even if it's not successful, even if you don't under mine or stop an investigation, which none of the things that were outlined by what you talked about, those

as john dean did on march 21.s were totally lacking, the colsons of the world, the kissingers of the world. >> that's the speech that trump ought to listen to. >> that's what's so interesting is that with nixon, you know, and most presidents, they surrounded bill protection, not just secret service but layers to protect their own opinions from the rest of the country so that they show people what they want to show and in that speech, you do see this naked nixon. you see this -- you see all this stuff coming out. and with president trump because of twitter, you really do get a sense on whether you think he should be tweeting or not and that whole discussion, it is a fascinating realtime, it's like you don't have to wait for the trump tapes. it's all happening in realtime on twitter. >> much of what nixon did in secret in private, clement sit, hush money, is all out there in the open with donald trump. it's as though it's a stickup in broad daylight. >> long before president trump called cnn fake news, nixon's naibo

back now with john dean and we're joined now by jack quinn. welcome, jack, to the program. thank you so much for joining us. i'm going to start with you. >> thank you. >> this is what george conway writes, he said the president may have the raw constitutional power to say squelch an investigation or pardon a close associate. but if he does so, not to serve the public interests, but to serve his own, he surely could be removed from office, even if he has not committed a criminal act. is conway right, jack? >> absolutely. you cannot exercise presidential powers corruptly. and there's nothing more corrupt than exercising your presidential powers in order to protect yourself from a legitimate law enforcement investigation. i do think it's worth mentioning, by the way, that, you know, a lot of this discussion in the earlier part of the show turns on this whole question. i mean, the attorney general parachuted into this, which is

>> as the country watched white house counsel john dean turn on his president. >> i began by tellings a cancer growing on the presidency. >> dean testified that the watergate burglars were blackmailing white house aides. >> the white house was now being directly subject to blackmail and i didn't know how to handle it. >> i told him i could only make an estimate that it might be as high as a million dollars or more. he told me that that was no problem. >> it was john dean's word against the president of the united states. >> for nothing less than richard nixon's presidency may ride on whether the public believes john dean or not. >> most republicans continued to stand by their president. but then, from a little known white house aide a dramatic twist. >> my name is alexander porter butterfield. >> are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the oval office of the president? >> i was aware of listening devices, yes, sir. >> it was a bombshell. >> the pressure is on the president to produce those tapes. >> had it not been for the tapes i'm convinced richard nixon would

i want to bring john dean in now. telligence chairman thinks mueller will have to testify. here's what he told wolf. >> i think it is inevitable that bob mueller is going to have to testify, and i would presume that he may testify before multiple committees. the judiciary committee will be predominantly interested in the criminal side. we're interested in how this investigation began, and it may even be ongoing. we don't know. and that is this began as a counterintelligence investigation over concerns that the president or people around him may be compromised, wittingly or unwittingly. we don't know if that's even going to be a part of the mueller report. >> john dean, i mean, you know, you're no stranger to having to testify before congress. is schiff right, though? will we see mueller testify on capitol hill publicly? >> i don't know if it will be public or not, but if he's in front of the intelligence committee, it's more likely to be a closed session, but if he goes in front of the judiciary committee, it's more li

john dean from watergate and carrie cordero. bill barr said he would provide explanations for his redactions and there was concern he wouldn't do that. how big of a deal is that? >> it's important because it will actually give congress some information upon which to make decisions about things they might want to challenge. so, for example, if he marks information that is redacted because it's classified, maybe that's the kind of information that the intel committees would say specifically they want to see but wouldn't be information that congress would subpoena, information that he remarks as 6e, protected by grand jury rule 6e, that would be the type of information that the judiciary committee may consider going to a court. it could be very useful for members of congress to decide which information they'll fight about and which they're not. >> so, what do you make of the fact that barr refused to directly answer so many questions? including have you talked to the white house about this? saying he doesn't recall while mueller di

would have had john dean's word against richard nixon's. and when it's the word of a staffer who is facing imprisonment versus the president, the american people choose the president. i think nixon would have ended his term. >> all right, let's talk about what happens when an extrovert in an extroverts job finds himself facing impeachment. the point has been made that it was 80 years before the first impeachment, another century before the second, what are we to make of the fact that it was 25 years between nixon's impeachment and bill clinton's? >> yeah, interesting because in fact, he had people who had been involved in the previous impeachment now engaged in that same issue. that didn't happen under nixon, nobody in the nixon case had been involved with johnson. in this case the first lady herself served on the staff of the house judiciary committee during the nixon impeachment. she had drafted memos, had been involved in legal research. she was involved. a lot of the other figures involved, from the water gate prosecution, sam dash, bec

when john dean said the president was part of the cover-up, a lot of americans didn't believe him.e victory in 1972. it took a lot of -- it took a long time for that respect for nixon to erode. part of it eroded because nixon released these transcripts of tapes that had been requested by the special prosecutor, and the public was dis -- was really disappointed in the amorality of his language and then when nixon said time and again, i was not involved in the cover-up, and the supreme court forced the president to release tapes and those tapes showed that he was part of the cover-up, the transcripts did, the public lost whatever respect it had for nixon. by the end of his presidency, he was only supported by a little over 20% of the american people, and he had lost the complete support of republicans and democrats in congress. he was forced out. he had no place to go. he would have been removed by the senate. there's little doubt of that. >> and it's interesting because so many historians and experts believed that, you know, he was qualified to be president and it's amazing just to

while the president is cultivating and aggravating his very own 21st century john dean problem and the white house is trying to figure out how they can block that probably inevitable testimony from don mcgahn. meanwhile, the democrats in congress are over the course of this week, they have been assessing their options for how to deal with the white house and the administration now that the president has decreed that all subpoenas will be defied, that no information will be handed over to congressional investigations but they will not allow the handing over of any documents, they will not allow any testimony, even with legally actionable subpoenas. well, how are they going to enforce that? what are their options? bloomberg was first to report this week at the judiciary committee, the chairman there, jerry nadler, considering fines, financial penalties for any person who does not comply with the subpoena from congress. now there has also reportedly suggested that federal officials who refuse to obey subpoenas could even be jailed. and i know that sounds jarring, but that prospect has now

up front you np john dean. and former deputy assist attorney general under president clinton, bob lichlt it john, according to the attorney general, temperature's actions everything he did which the attorney general knew we would see subsequent to the press conference and we would read all the efforts to impede the investigation, and that that was simply due to a quote sincerely belief the investigation was undermining his presidency. angry and frustrated barr says. do you buy it? >> i don't. he sounds more like a personal attorney, defense attorney for the president rather than the attorney general. who has taken an oath to support and defend the constitution. indeed, erin there is about 45 years of norm precedent that says you don't do the sort of thing that barr is doing. it's the post watergate norm he violated and brought us back to nixonian type relationships between justice and the white house. >> so, bob, there were several instances in in press conference which i have to kelm emphasizing came before we

former nixon white house counsel, john dean , is here an the author of the "peop "the pe court." >> good evening, could this concern of a cover up? >> specifically we saw a back and forth where team mueller was calling out team barr because they know, first of all, we start with "the new york times," team barr says, we could not use team mueller's summary because it was with sensitive information and grand jury information, executive privilege. and then three hours later "the washington post" had team mueller saying wait a minute, we wrote those report specifically so it could be used. i looked back at some of the old report, the star report from the clinton era, they each included simple one-page summary that were designed for immediate release with nothing complicated in them. it is completely i mplausible that the mueller team would make a mistake to write a summary like this and exposes bar being not credible. >> barr is fumbling on his collusions raised many questions. it is very -- something is a miss, sounds like he's been instructed for the boss to watch out for his best interest

former nixon white house counsel john dean is here, as well as jed sugarman, the author of "the people's courts." good evening to both of you. good to see you. jed, i'm going to start with you. there are major discrepancies between what barr wrote in that four-page letter and what mueller reportedly said was alarming and significant evidence that trump obstructed justice. could this infighting signal concerns of a cover-up? >> i think it does signal some concerns, and i think specifically we saw a back and forth where team mueller was calling out team barr because they know -- so, first of all, we start with "the new york times" report from last night where team barr says to "the new york times," we couldn't go with these executive summaries, right? team mueller wrote summaries. we can't use them because they were intermingled with sensitive information, grand jury information, executive privilege, and then three hours later "the washington post" has team mueller saying, wait a second, we -- we wrote those reports -- we wrote those summaries specifically so that they could be used, right

the problem was that it would have been he said and john dean said. then it was john dean said and it's corroborated by all the tapes. >> this thing jumped out at me. we have the trump tower meeting and the trump tower meeting and public reporting and a long section on the report. there is this question, did the president know about it or not? does don, jr. say i have this meeting and the russians want to offer dirt. here's what the report said. the office found no documentary evidence showing he is made aware of the meeting before it occurred. >> that's consistent with what mueller said in the beginning. there are a lot of holes in the evidence. the best evidence to contradict barr that there was no spying on the trump campaign is po compare the russian indictments with what mueller was not able to find. >> great point. they have eyes into that russian operation. they show up in the indictments. they don't have eyes. very clearly don't have eyes into the campaign. >> exactly. that's why they don't have it. right in the outset, mueller makes it clear

. >>> outfront now john dean former nixon white house counsel. dana bash back with me process. who do believe, the mueller report, sworn penalty under penalty of prison time from don mcgahn por the president's tweet. >> i think to state the question answers the question, jim. it's conspicuous here. mcgahn is not going out and lie. he did go under oath. so it really -- it's a tweet against under oath testimony. also it's clear from the report there is substantial evidence to support him. what's that mean? it means that he probably came back to the office and told others in the office who have now testified about it. he may have made a memorandum for the record. there's probably lots of corroboration. so i think the president is in trouble trying to push in one too hard. >> dana, mcgahn, he is mentioned more than 150 times in the mueller report. i'll quote again mueller rights when this office first interviewed mcgahn about the topic he was reluctant to share detailed information about what occurred and only did so after continuing questioning. and the information didn't just come

>> john dean said he thinks there is a cancer in the presidency. p. but dean said this is grim. this is not a healthy presidency and he's not sure if we can wait until 2020 to decide the fate. >>> thank you. stay with us. we have more on the breaking news. democrats reject attorney general william barr's less redacted version of the mueller report. has been excellent. they really appreciate the military family and it really shows. with all that usaa offers why go with anybody else? we know their rates are good, we know that they're always going to take care of us. it was an instant savings and i should have changed a long time ago. it was funny because when we would call another insurance company, hey would say "oh we can't beat usaa" we're the webber family. we're the tenney's we're the hayles, and we're usaa members for life. ♪ get your usaa auto insurance quote today. what dit looks like georgeailure having a busy day. ♪ the beat goes on george has entresto, a heart failure medicine that helps his heart... so he can keep on doing what he loves. i

. >> joining us now is former nixon white house counsel, john dean, and carl bernstein, author, along with bob woodward of the original, all the president's men. carl, i mean, this culture of dishonesty, i think is a phrase that sort of will live on for a while. >> it's not just a culture of dishonesty, it's a culture of presidential contempt for the law and the norms of the presidency and the conduct of the government in this country. this is something apart from what we've seen before. the only thing that comes near it in our modern history is watergate and we go through that report and we see time and time again the president lies at every turn. >> but there's a lot of people watching that who say, look, a lot of politicians lie. all politicians lie. >> first of all, all politicians, all people in positions might sometimes trim the truth a bit. i don't know. this is something apart from what we've seen in the presidency, except with the possible exception of nixon. and what we also see here is that there is a report that has been prepared by mr. mueller, who was praised by the pres

joining us is john dean, who was former nixon white house counsel and also max boot, author of "the road not taken, edward landsdale and the american tragedy in vietnam." also steve cortez, a cnn political commentator. max, just in terms of substance of what secretary clinton is saying, whether or not she's the right voice for it as she herself raises in the piece, the idea that it's not a binary choice, either go for impeachment hearings or go to impeachment or do nothing, she's saying there's essentially this middle way. >> yeah, i think it's basically called kicking the can down the road, anderson. i'm not disagreeing with her advice. this is in fact what speaker pelosi is choosing to do, to hold these hearings and build up an evidentiary base and create popular revulsion against donald trump. they're dreaming if they think there's any set of facts that they can possibly come out with that will cause a single republican to ever vote for impeachment of donald trump. so at the end of the day they're still going to face that difficult choice. are they going to push a motion of impeachmen

they were john dean, who happened to be white house counsel. so it's fully appropriate for this congress to call don mcgahn, who happens to be -- or happened to be white house counsel. >> don mcgahn was subpoenaed by the house judiciary committee yesterday, and that will apparently be the first witness subpoena that the trump white house will fight in the house judiciary committee's hearings about the mueller report. in an interview with "the washington post" tonight, president trump said, "there is no reason to go any further, especially in congress where it's very partisan. obviously very partisan." a former watergate prosecutor told "the washington post," "it seems to me executive privilege was waived when mcgahn was permitted to give testimony and be interviewed by special counsel mueller. i don't see how the white house can expert executive privilege with something that has already been revealed." jerry nadler, the chairman of the house judiciary committee, issued a statement saying this. "as such, the moment for the white house to assert

i want to bring in john dean, he was president nixon's white house counsel during watergate and playedringing down the former president. mr. dean, thanks for joining us. big picture, what is your reaction to the mueller report? >> well, jake, what i did is i looked on my shelf for the watergate committee report. i looked at the iran/contra report. i also looked at the ken starr report which is too big to bring to the set here. it's four volumes, over 2,000 words. and i've read all of those. and in 400 words, mr. -- this report from the special counsel is more damning than all those reports about a president. this is really a devastating report. >> and yet, it concludes there's insufficient evidence to say that the president and his team conspired with russia which was the most important part of the investigation, one might argue. >> exactly. you know, and i think we've also lost some of the context of what's going on here. this was a campaign that trump has all but admitted was not a serious presidential campaign. it was a branding under taking. and they wanted all the help they could

joined by also former republican house intelligence committee mike rogers, former nixon white house john dean and dana bash. >> chairman rogers, i'm just wondering what you make of this report. >> i don't think the 400-page report is going to be the summation of donald trump's summer camp experience. i mean, clearly there has been some problems and he's had people around him have some problems and i think the report is more likely to do that, but if the conclusion from the report was there was no conclusion definitively -- yes, collusion and on the obstruction of justice they couldn't make the determination. they might find all of the ancillary material that would support one way or another and that's just going to be political fodder for the next two years. i think they need to let barr go through his review and then press event the report and find out if it reflects what the body of the report reflects. >> dana, barr's review, there's a number of criteria that the department of justice says he will use in order to redact things. his grand jury testimony is things that current investigations

that john dean. of watergate fame knows a thing or two about presidential handle. actually, he uncovered papers of warren harding that were previously unknown to biographers and he argued he deserves a little bit better than the place that the historians have given. it's up for you to decide. next, franklin pierce. poor franklin pierce. irnew hampshire's only presiden or the first place the kansas nebraska act in him and he had a bit of a drinking problem. but you might also remember you know anything about him he came into office with the tremendous tragedy they had three sons he'd already lost two of them and the third a young boy named benny died in front of his wife and himself as their train capsized on their way to washington. he carried his son's dead body up from the accident his wife had a hard time rirecovering fr that and spent much of the first couple years in the white house on the second floor of the residence rating writing letters to their dead son. in pierce's case he had a hard time focusing and assembling his cabinet which combined the her. next

the biographer we selected was john dean. that john dean of watergate fame that knows a thing or two about presidential scandals. papers of warren harding that were previously unknown to biographers and argues that he deserves a little bit better than the place the historians have given him. it is up for you to decide. next is franklin pierce. new hampshire's only president. 41st place. he also had a bit of a drinking problem. in might remember that came to office with a tremendous tragedy. they had three sons, you have lost two of them. and the third died in front of his wife and himself as their train capsized on their way to washington. he carried his son's dead body up from the accident and his wife had a hard time recovering from that. they spent much of the first couple of years on the second floor writing letters to her dead son. it is a very tragic story. he had a hard time focusing and assembling his cabinet, understandably. it put him behind the curve. next up, andrew johnson. 42nd place. david stewart is the biogra

you'll be interested to know the biographer chose for his chapters john dean. yes, that john dean. of watergate who knows a thing or two about presidential scandals. and actually he uncovered papers that were papacy unknown to biographers and he argues that he deserves a little bit better than the place that historians have given. it is up for you to decide. next, franklin pierce. poor franklin pierce. new hampshire's only president, 41st place, the kansas nebraska act did him in.he also had a bit of a drinking problem. but you might also remember if you know anything about him that he came to office with a tremendous tragedy. he had three sons and hearing loss two. the third one died in front of his wife and himself as their train capsized on their way to washington.he carried his son's dead body up from the accident. his wife had a very hard time recovering from that and spent much of the first couple of years in the white house on the second floor in the residence. he had a hard time getting his cabinet which put them behind the curve. next up, andrew johnson. 42nd place. david

and nixon white house counsel john dean. so many things to talk about. cohn is the mode el of a good lawyer in president the's mind is terrifying. he lost his license for unethical behavior. that's the least of all the things he did. the great irony the president might be angry at mcgahn according to the "new york times" rudy giuliani is going after him. it's his actions that saved president trump. >> that's true. partially. what mcgahn was able to show and what's in the special counsel report, is that it shows he was able to testify to trump's intent. or endeavor to obstruct justice. he does so in detail. he cited some 529 times in mueller's report he's been interviewed by the fbi on five occasions. late as february 28 this year. so he's been deeply involved. i'm sure trump hasn't read the record. i suspect his staff have. and realize this is a key witness. in the future for proceedings. >> one of the messages if the white house if president trump and rudy giuliani are going after don mcgahn now, doesn't that send a message to everybody in the white hou

counsel and you expect that he is going to testify before congress, do you think that is akin to john dean testifying in 1973 over watergate? or having had this report come out and all of the details come out, do you think there is not much that he will add that will surprise us? >> i don't know what he can add. what he said was extraordinarily surprising and disturbing. >> in your report. >> yeah. he said that the president had told him to lie and told him that he ought to first help get mr. mueller fired. and then he told him to lie about that order. >> hearing him say -- if he testifies and we hear him say that as opposed to just read it, is that a game changer to you? >> i think it's a very significant episode as part of a litany of different things that have been laid out in the mueller report that suggest the president's intent was to obstruct the investigation. >> thank you so much for coming in and giving us your insight. we appreciate it. >>> she spells out her policies like a professor. will that help senator elizabeth warren as she takes on the democratic field? if she is the pr

i want everyone to listen to what former nixon white house counsel john dean had to say after readings report. >> what i did is looked in my shelf for the watergate report, the iran/contrareport, i also look at the ken starr report, which is too big to bring to the set here. it's four volumes, over 2,000 words. i've read all of those, and in 400 on words -- this report from the special counsel is more damning than all those reports about a president. this is really a devastating report. >> tim, do you agree? >> well, i -- >> more than any of those? >> well, i respectfully disagree with mr. dean about watergate. i think the watergate, the number of crimes that president nixon committed and those around him committed were much larger than at least what we have evidence of at the moment, but in terms of a pattern of conduct that suggested dishonorable president, this particular mueller report puts president trump in the same family of misdeeds as those that we associate with some around ronald reagan and with richard nixon. there's no doubt in the summer of 1974, republicans and some of

john dean and garrett graff are here. good evening, gentlemen. john, i want to start with you. one of the very first lines in mueller's report reads, the russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion. yet here's jared kushner saying that it's no big deal. is he being purposefully misleading about what the russians did? >> when i first read his remarks, i wasn't sure. then i watched him on the clip that you just used, and he had obviously planted that seed in his head and then found the opportunity to use it. and i think it's a devastating misstatement. it's misleading. it's absolutely incorrect. the man has either not read the report, or he's intentionally trying to mislead, and he's not in a good position to be doing that. >> mm-hmm. >> garrett, listen, he says a couple of facebook ads, but facebook says russians reached 126 million people from 2015 to 2017, and that's just one social media platform. if you look at all these groups and how many followers they had, i read it in the open at the top of this show, in the previou

it was only when john dean was basically richard nixon's don mcgahn, when he spilled some beans on nationalan shifting. right now we are moving toward possible impeachment. if they make it impossible for him to testify. they have no legal basis to do it. they can drag it out in the courts for a while. then we have no choice but to move ahead more rapidly. not less. >> do you think the evidence of obstruction and criminal intend that mueller lays out against trump is legally impeachable? >> i think there's no doubt that it is overwhelming evidence of an endeavour to undermine an important legal inquiry into what the russians did to our democracy, and what role the trump people had in it. that's meeimpeachable if anythi is. i want to stress that volume i of the report, which does as you report, not conclude there was conspiracy, makes it overwhelming case that there was collusion. that there was an attempt by trump and his minuions. some of it was out in the open. russia, if you have the emails, we want to see them. he was asking them on hack in. he used it through wikileaks, which he mention

it was only live testimony of people like john dean in the nixon case that brought us to the very end of that troubled dpre presidency. it will be divisive but we are already deeply divided. i think he's probably right. i don't pretend to have a crystal ball that even after the live testimony, the senate, will still be in donald trump's hip pocket and will acquit. for goodness sake, if this isn't enough to establish the need to put every senator on record as to whether they take their oath to uphold the constitution seriously, i can't imagine what would be. keep in mind the dangerous precedent that would be set if the house says, well, we've heard the evidence, never mind. that would mean that donald trump in a potential second term or any future president, would know there is no limit to what that president can get away with. i think it's time to stand up for principle and not focus entirely on the political fall out. >> bob bennett, let me quickly ask you. we have about 30 seconds left. i'm sorry to do it this way. what about the president's legal jeopardy and the roughly 15 legal c

and nixon white house counsel john dean. so many things to talk about.n is the mode el of a good lawyer in president the's mind is terrifying. he lost his license for unethical behavior. that's the least of all the things he did. the great irony the president might be angry at mcgahn according to the "new york times" rudy giuliani is going after him. it's his actions that saved president trump. >> that's true. partially. what mcgahn was able to show and what's in the special counsel report, is that it shows he was able to testify to trump's intent. or endeavor to obstruct justice. he does so in detail. he cited some 529 times in mueller's report he's been interviewed by the fbi on five occasions. late as february 28 this year. so he's been deeply involved. i'm stlump hasn't read the record. i suspect his staff have. and realize this is a key witness. in the future for proceedings. >> one of the messages if the white house if president trump and rudy giuliani are going after don mcgahn now, doesn't that send a message to everybody in the white house if yo

i'm sure it will invoke memories of john dean in the nixon white house, there are different circumstancesetween dean and mr. mcgahn. clearly, having someone who was in donald trump's orbit, having them talk to him, having lawmakers ask questions. you never know what kind of things could come out in the offhand responses that go back and forth. having don mcgann lay out bit by bit, the different efforts trump tug to shut down the investigation. i think those will all be very memorable moments and will be coming at an interesting time as well, between bill barr's testimony next week, and potentially a robert mueller hearing later on down the line. >> do you get the sense that taken together, these hearings might result in the same sort of impact that a set of impeachment style hearings would also have? is that the democrat's strategy? >> i think the strategy is to try to get as much information out into the public domain as many ways they can. doing an interview after a robert mueller hearing. it's airing donald interrupt's dirty laundry, it's going to be putting things out there for all th

the democrats want a 1973 john dean televised senate hearing to embarrass the president. the american people, the polls show, by politico and cnn, they are saying to move on. this is done. that president trump is protesting his innocence and it's far different from the bill clinton impeachment hearings, when there was an attempted cover up. trying to get monica lewinsky to swear to a false affidavit during a federal court proceeding and a grand jury probe. it's far different. bill clinton's impeachment proceedings, 11 impeachable offenses here. the american people are saying, "move on, he was protesting his innocence." it seems like the american people were saying, "wow, there is no collusion. we are relieved by that." and there are only 12 laws enacted, signed by the president, so far over this congress. they are in deep trouble, the house democrats. i know mitch mcconnell is -- forger 40 laws passed. >> katie: if you look at the mueller report and you look at what the russians actually did, their number one goal was to spread misinformation to put americans at war with

april white house correspondent for american urban radio network our politic willing analyst and john dean former nixon white house counsel and cnn contributor. john, let's just get to the basic conundrum, the chairman of the judiciary saying bill barr's time said guess what 11:00 a.m. orr 12:00 tomorrow that's when you get the report. obviously the press conference is a couple of hours before that, right, 9:30 a.m. what's going on here? well, it's obviousry a conspicuous effort again to try to frame the report to try to shape the news and influence it. and erin, it's really reminiscent of watergate days when nixon decided to put out some tapes in anticipation that he was going to be asked for more of them. and what they did is they went out and briefed the press beforehand as to what they were going to read which is not what they would read and tried to shape that there was nothing there. and in the long run the -- the american public saw it for what it was and were outraged. >> so, april, what do you think is going on here? i mean, they all know when they do this and the president announ

. >> john dean, he looks like a guy who talked the truth to the president. i'm taking notes here, mr. president. if he goes on television during two days of testimony before the house judiciary committee, the networks will cover it. do you think that will sway opinion? >> i think there's not a lot of opinion that's swayble. i think there's a very small margin of people now who aren't baked into their position. >> what is he waiting for? >> doing the right thing and figuring out how to address the people who might be swayble, takes a little time. i disagree with jeff a little bit. sorry, jeff. i think the last day was a reset in a way. i think the president had gotten a bit ahead of his critics on this issue. no collusion became a mantra. he had bill barr as his wing man. as this report seeps into the consciousness of those who pay attention, they see the portrait of a president who lied tremendously about the attack on this country, they're reminded the attack did happen, he lied about hi contacts, his business dealings and then they see him acting in some w

lawyer told me, they were looking for a particular -- the president said he made after meeting with john dean. they couldn't find it. the president turned to his lawyers and said, you know what? i'll create one. don't worry about it. i'll just create one. we'll say we found it. the mueller team found at least four instances where the president created a false or attempted to create a false record. there was a conniving sense that the president understood he was creating something false. that to me is a sign of corruption. it's in the report. i think what's going to happen is that people are going to ask themselves, with the american people knowing this about president trump, we don't know what's going to happen in 2020 -- >> right. >> -- do the american people care? >> that's what i was going to ask you. will that be what's remembered if he wins in 2020? >> well, if he wins in 2020, that's sending a signal, i fear, to future presidents that this kind of conduct is countenanced by the american people. >> i mean, we have this polling that i keep referencing tonight because it just came out yest

was happening, could see the faces, judge the demeanor, judge whether the witnesses were lying, john deanholderman, ehrlichman, nixon's aids. that's what made the difference. we have to have a process that is fair, that educates the american people and i think mr. maloney, with all due respect, was wrong. conversation was given the responsibility to protect the republic through the impeachment power from a president who was rogue. you can't walk away from it. >> right. and hand it off to the american people. let's go to the clinton impeachment. i think that is a very good place to start with the nixon impeachment -- potential impeachment -- he knew he was going do be convicted. >> no, no, there was no probable. >> he was going to be convicted and resign. with bill clinton it was a very different matter. bill clinton was a very popular president. he was in the 60s. >> right. >> the republicans had been making it pretty clear they were looking for a reason to impeach him. they went hunting and hunting and hunting dill he wound up in the affair with monica lewinsky. having his secretary lie