of watergate matters, specifically.hat there were money demands being made by the seven convicted defendants. he asked me how much it would cost. i told him that it might be as high as a million dollars or more. he told me that that was no problem. i concluded by saying this is going to take continued perjury and continued support of these individuals to perpetuate the cover-up and that i did not believe it was possible to so continue it. i told him that there was a cancer growing on the presidency and if the cancer was not removed the president himself would be killed by it. and he said that it would be handled properly. >> now it is on the public record, john dean's damning, if largely unsubstantiated, testimony that the president knowingly participated in the watergate cover-up. nothing less than richard nixon's presidency may ride on whether the public believes john dean or not. let's be honest, insurance can feel a little outdated. the paperwork... the calling for everything. the searching for id cards... it's like

amy: so explain what the watergate break-in was. they're break-in had been ordered and authorized by the former attorney general of the united states john mitchell, who had resigned as attorney general in order to manage nixon's reelection campaign. amy: called? >> very ironic name, the committee to reelect the president- creep. one could not make that up. chief.so he is creep's >> yes. he and several other high-level people at the committetee to reelect the president acting under constant pressure from nixon and his chief aids started a wide-ranging campaign to investigate and undermine the democrats. in fact, there were multiple operations, some managed through the white house, some managed by personal friends of nixon, some managed by the reelection campaign, to do many different things. ththere were infiltrtrators whoe secretly reporting on what democratic candidates were doing. nixon's strongest potential rival in the election was edward muskie. his driver was secretly on the payroll of the nixon campaign and copied and reporte

. >> the democratic national committee is housed in the fashionable watergate complex.ak-in apparently planned well in advance. files were ransacked and papers removed. also in this area, ceiling tiles had been removed for the suspected planting of bugging devices. >> it was saturday morning, june 17th. the phone rang, it was about 6:30. a colleague of mine, chuck work, was on the phone. he said hello, it's chuck. we have a hot one. we have a burglary at the democratic national committee headquarters. and most unusual of all, the burglars, five of them, are wearing suits. >> the arraignment of the five middle-aged men was slowed down by the fact that each had several aliases. four said they were from miami. the fifth said he lived in the metropolitan washington area. three were originally from cuba. the facts presented so far raise a number of intriguing questions, such as did someone put up a lot of money to have the democratic headquarters infiltrated and, if so, who and why? >> the president's press secretary said of this incident, i'm not going to comment from the w

i remember the watergate hearings. i don't remember any hearings in public about whether or not donald trump did something wrong in ukraine. and here's what -- this is why

today president donald trump became the 4th tonight the politics of impeachment i'll ask a former watergate prosecutor if he thinks impeachment can be fair and can the constitution survive the politicians who have promised to protect i'm brit golf in berlin this is the day. this isn't it that anything personal that a president isn't about politics to doubt patriotism the houses impeachment inquiry has exposed the truth the white house launched a shadow foreign policy president trump led an extortion shakedown scheme over the ukrainian president abused his power undermine our national security and undermine the integrity of our elections the democrats are trying to impeach the president because they are scared they cannot defeat him at the ballot to play an obvious crew to unseat a sitting president of the united states that shows hell for any of this process it is. also coming up next month and twitter will ban all political advertising to stop the spread of misinformation but facebook c.e.o. says it's the responsibility of the voters not social media to check the facts and to filter out th

that's what happened in watergate. but people understood if you have something to hide, you're going to cover up. there should be nothing to hide here. it has to do w the marie yovanovitch stuff, that he was trying to diminish her, suggest something was wrong with her. one thing every says about marie yovanovitch, career diplomat, she's beyond reproach. >> why was she bad news? trump said she was bad news. why was she bad news? she was there fighting corruption in ukraine. she was fighting corruption. she was in the way of these guys. these guys are now accused of crimes and giuliani who was there, won't say conspirator but cohort. this is what's really troubling. the president obviously can remove ambassadors but he can't abuse his power to remove an ambassador who is standing in the way of corruption, crookedness and other kinds of evil conduct. can't. >> bradley moss, you and i have been speaking since the day we heard about a whistle-blower, and the conversation evolved from that point so much. two weeks ago this w

one of them was the watergate break-in.n won re-election by a historic landslide. >> i, richard nixon, do solemnly swear -- >> but the watergate story was still growing. so just weeks after the election, inside the oval office, richard nixon declared war on the press. >> the press is the enemy. the mess is the enemy. the press is the enemy. write that on the blackboard 100 times and never forget it. >> sound familiar? >> you are the enemy of the people. go ahead. i call the fake news the enemy of the people. >> there are other reminders of the present day. donald trump directs particular anger at certain news organizations. >> it's like the failing "new york times," which is like so bad, or cnn, which is so bad and so pathetic. they are the fake, fake, disgusting news. >> nixon went after "the washington post," whose reporters bob woodward and carl bernstein led watergate coverage. nixon hated the press because it was digging into the very story he was desperate to hide, that the white house was deeply involved in the water

if it's worse than watergate. that's exhibit-a.nd everything. >> it makes it official. >> they layout a specific days. we do not republicans have co-equal subpoena power. we were denied due process. we can't cross-examine or look at evidence. the person running the investigation has been compromised. we don't trust him. they are threatening state department employees with docking their pay if they don't comply with the request. this can't be done in the dark. >> juan? >> i listen with interest to my colleagues. >> [laughing]. >> i still wait for substance. you hammer on the table because the facts stand against you. trump is telling diplomats you can't testify after midnight. even though the guy is already flying here. and he can demonize joe biden. if there was so perfect, then why can't anyone talk about it? >> we talked about it for a week. >> trump doesn't want anybody to talk. >> jesse watters, i let you go on and on. >> and he said we have been kind to the ukraine. i am asking you for a favor and the timeline suggests he bloc

you might remember from watergate, the way the watergate investigation evolved, right? there were special prosecutors for watergate, and then ultimately the judiciary committee in the house drew up articles of impeachment based on what the special prosecutors found. how did that work? how did the evidence get from one place to the other? in watergate, the justice department famously told the court that all the grand jury material that had been collected by watergate special prosecutors, right, all the evidence that they had gotten from witnesses talking to the grand jury about the president's behavior, about the whole watergate scandal, all of that grand jury material collected by archibald cox and the watergate special prosecutors, justice department agreed that material collected in that grand jury investigation needs to go to congress. because congress needs to decide if this is a basis for impeaching president nixon and in fact, that grand jury material was packaged up into what's now called the watergate road map and that watergate road map of grand jury material i

you know, watergate -- the book starts after watergate. so i don't spend a lot of time focusing on that because i didn't want that to be a part of the story. i wanted it to be the, okay, watergate's happened, we've had libraries of books written about it. what happened after that. how did he deal with it as a man and as a human. and i think he dealt with it like any of us would. i mean, there were successes and failures along the way. he certainly wanted to reestablish himself. he never used the word comeback or anything like that with his family or his friends, but he wanted to be, he wanted to be useful. he wanted to have a role to play with the rest of his life, and the one thing he still had after he'd lost all the trappings of power, all the levers of power, he still has the power of his mind and the power of his ideas. and it's a tribute to how effective that mind was and how effective those ideas were that he was able to persuade prime ministers, including -- presidents, including a president of a different party that he had somethi

one of them was the watergate break-in.by a historic landslide. >> i richard nick nixon do solemnly swear -- >> but the watergate story was still growing. so just weeks after the election inside the oval office, richard nixon declared war on the press. >> the press is the enemy. the press is the enemy. the press is the enemy. >> nixon hated the press. because it was digging into the very story he was desperate to hide. that the white house was deeply involved in the watergate coverup. his campaign seemed to work. only in his second term, nixon's approval ratings soared. but then came the first crack in the white house defense. in the summer of 1973 -- all of america was riveted by the senate watergate hearings. >> what did the president know? and when did he know it? >> as the country watched, white house counsel john dean turned on his president. >> i began by telling the president that there was a cancer growing on the presidency. >> dean testified that the watergate burglars were blackmailing white house aides. >> the wh

watergate was a very living memory. it has affected the entire congregation. >> i think a lot of americans thinks bill clinton was impeached for having an affair with an intern. >> right, which is not true. the beginning of what led to the impeachment. if he kept his pants on it would have been fine. he did not do that. that is a different kind of maladministration. the truth is he had warnings. us at some point when happened in 1992. he had warning in 1992 that the changed its view of a president's behavior. you are no longer considered to have a private life. he had fair warning. .his was subject to scrutiny he cannot help himself anyway. experience figure who could not control his own appetite. havingnot impeached for an affair. he was impeached for lying under oath and obstruction of justice. required by a federal judge to answer questions in a deposition in a lawsuit brought was an jones who employee who alleged he is sexually harassed her. he was required by the court to answer truthfully and not to try to obstruc

in the case of watergate, mr. nixon had two attorney generals who facilitated this. of whom went to jail and here we have mr. barr, the attorney general, at the center of all of this and what mr. barr has been doing, and the first day after the whistle-blower's complaint was revealed i said, on this hour, just about this hour, this is about william barr's attempt to produce evidence that a deep state conspiracy began, that's where we're going here. rather than focusing on what indeed the president of the united states has done, we are trying to invent a conspiracy they somehow was about joe biden and his actions. >> and, doug, rudy giuliani acting as the president's personal lawyer. there are people in the white house, in the administration, who think he's doing more harm than good. what do you think? >> no question he is. he seems to be just unspooled, rambling around, traveling around the ukraine, fumbling and bumbling through everything he does and says. you know, people are wondering about whether giuliani is cope is menas, does he have his wits about him? his eg

watergate scandal you know if it wasn't your show sean they would destroy him absolutely you know the difference between donald j. trump and richard nixon you know it is kind of an interesting thought exercise to think about what you know how things might have been different for nixon had he had the conservative media infrastructure that exists today therefore. i shall resign the presidency effective. because you know if you read about watergate a lot of the big revelations that occurred in the washington post or on you know during the watergate hearings there wasn't kind of this right wing infrastructure spinning it you know immediately into tens of millions of people every night but i do think that it's likely that nixon would have survived water he had he had something like fox news spinning the watergate hearings highlighting democrats looking bad during moments where they were questioning witnesses that sort of thing . it kind of provides a whole different way of interpreting news events. that is something fox has always offered americans a whole new way a right wing way of inter

and we'll briefly, , watergate s not just a burglary in the democratic headquarters. it was a series of operations designed to destroy the process by which people are selected to run for president, and in the process of selecting a president. one of the first phases of watergate was 17 wiretaps on reporters and white house officials, a burglary team operating in the white house basement that literally went to california, broke in to the psychiatrist's office of daniel ellsberg who would leaked the pentagon papers. now, you compare it come we don't know, and we may find out is to be the case, that trump administration has wiretapped ay reporter or white house official to track down the leak. we don't know whether they have a burglary team that has broken in two, say, -- broken into, say, chairman schiff's doctor's office. so the magnitude is not there yet. the watergate operation was part of a massive sabotage and espionage campaign, , and 50 people working for them. if you get in to the details, they destroyed the leading candidate for the democratic nomination, senat

a key watergate witness is going to give us his perspective, next.xa, tell me about neptune's sorrow by olivia watson. alexa: it's a masterstroke of heartache, brutality and redemption. the mist crept into the pivot hole beside her... you're late. david! what did you think of the book? it's a...masterstroke of... heartache...brutality... ...and redemption. you didn't read it, did you? i didn't...but i will. the lexus nx, modern utility for modern obstacles. lease the 2020 nx 300 for $349/month for 36 months. experience amazing at your lexus dealer. it's how we bring real hope to our cancer patients- like viola. when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, her team at ctca created a personalized care plan that treated her cancer and strengthened her spirit. so viola could focus on her future. their future. this is how we inspire hope. this is how we heal. cancer treatment centers of america. appointments available now. >>> house republicans stormed a closed door deposition in the impeachment inquiry yesterday. they barged into a secure room known as a s

the first watergate special prosecutor. the guy who was fired at the end of the saturday night massacre? well, turns out after nixon fired him, he landed at a good government organization called common cause. and at common cause, just ten years after nixon resigned in the year 1984, common cause, under the leadership of watergate special prosecutor, archibald cox, they did something they had never done before. they issued a public report and sent a letter to every single united states senator, urging, for the first time ever, that a nominee for a cabinet position be rejected by the senate. common cause had never done something like this before, but they decided that this particular nominee was so bad, so dangerous, had such a terrible record, particularly when it came to ethical issues and corruption issues, that they just decided they had to take a stand. archibald cox warned the senate that this nominee had a, quote, lack of ethical sensitivity, that he had shown a blindness to abuse of position. so that good government g

i remember the watergate hearings. inon't remember any hearings public about if donald trump did something in ukraine. if we took an opening statement of a witness and said doesn't that look bad, you would want to know, doesn't anyone question this? we believe a lot of people wanted to get trump. they did not give a dam about how they got him. what they are doing is dangerous to the country. my lunch with the president was good. we had a situation room briefing. there is a plan coming together. it may help us prevent isis from coming back. encouraged that a plan is coming about that will meet our core objectives. the time he from has become president, he has been hounded about things he didn't do. he feels like it never ends. when it comes to donna prompt, nobody really cares if he has a fair day in court. there is nothing worse than being accused of something you didn't do. it eats away at your soul. we made it through mueller. we didn't do any damage to the idea that nobody is above the law. here we are again with uk

during watergate -- during watergate and the impeachment of president clinton, the full house voted to direct the house judiciary committee to open impeachment proceedings. that -- but -- but during watergate, the full house didn't vote on the impeachment of richard nixon, is that correct? >> correct. the house voted to authorize the house judiciary committee to start an impeachment inquiry. but we had already started by the time they gave us that authorization. we had picked staff. we already been studying the high-crimes and misdemeanors, the constitutional standard for impeachment. so we'd done some work already well before the house voted authorization. and by the way, there's nothing in the constitution that requires it. it's just whether you follow precedent. but if the republicans are so concerned about precedent here, then why don't they keep their mouth shut about the hearings that are being held, the depositions that are being held behind closed door because the precedent is well established too. you can't have it one way and not the other way. >> in watergate, the pushback f

one of the first phases of watergate was 17 wiretaps on reporters and white house officials. a burglary team operating in the white house basement that literally went to california, broke into the psychiatrist's office of daniel ellsberg who had leaked the pentagon papers. you compare it we don't know and we may find out this to be the case that trump administration has wiretapped any reporter for white house official to track down leads but we don't know whether they have a burglary team that has broken into say a chairman shifts doctor's office sore the magnitude is not there yet. the watergate operation was part of a massive sabotage and espionage campaign that had 50 people working for them and if you get into the details they destroyed the leading candidate for the democratic nominationd, senator muskie and gotr someboy who was much easier to run tiagainst then when they were caught in this there was a massively funded war on justice and the cover-up and if you listen to the nixon tapes there's no ambiguity at all. when you do your work you live in a world of ambiguity.

thank you. >> thank you, erica. >>> 17 former watergate special prosecutors, speaking of watergate, speaking should be impeached. i'll speak with one of them next. [ slurping ] must be hot out there, huh? not especially. -[ slurping continues ] -what you drinking? gasoline. right, but i mean, what's in the cup? gasoline. [ slurping ] for those who were born to ride, there's progressive. >>> 17 former watergate special prosecutors offering a stark assessment of president trump today. their op-ed titled, "we investigated the watergate scandal. we believe trump should be impeached." one of those prosecutors joined me now. how did it come together, putting the op-ed out there today? >> i think it's because we've all been talking. we have our reunions and that was sort of the start of it. the counsel to our office was really the initiator of this whole idea. but i think it's something we'd all been discussing over a period of time and i think the one event that really, i think, has taken us over the line and probably much of the country over the line, is what has happened with ukraine, and what d

i remember the watergate hearings. any hearings in public about whether or not donald trump did something wrong in ukraine. and here's what -- this is why republicans are frustrated. we had done this to a democrat, you'd be eating us alive. statement an opening of a witness and say, there, doesn't that look bad? say, how did cross-examination go? so we believe that a lot of eople want to get trump and they don't give a damn about how they get him. i am not telling you what he did or didn't do. telling you what they're doing in the house is dangerous to the country. reporter: what can you tell us lunch today with the president? what happened? senator graham: it was good. we had beef. news.e's some we had a situation room briefing milley about developments in syria. there were eight or 10 senators. there's a plan coming together that i joint chiefs think may work, that may give us what we need to prevent isis coming back, iran taking the oil, isis from taking the oil. somewhat encouraged that a plan is coming about that

president nixon was because of the buildup of all of what watergate was and watergate was not just a burglary in the democratic headquarters. it was a series of operations designed to destroy the process by which people are selected to run the president and then the process of selecting of one of the first phases of watergate was 17 wiretaps and reporters and white house official in a burglary team operating in the white house basement that literally worked in california and broke in to the psychiatrists office of daniel ellsberg. now, you can pair it and you don't know and we may find out this to be the case. that trump and the administration and his wiretaps named a reporter or white house official to track down the leak. we don't know whether they had something retained that was something into chairman shifts doctor's office. the magnitude is not there yet. the operation was part of the massive sabotage and espionage in 50 people working for them. if you get into the details that are destroyed the, leaking candidate for the democratic nomination said with god somebody who was much

that information was handed over to congress in a document known as the watergate road map. congress used that evidence collected by the special prosecutors to, themselves, draw up damning articles of impeachment against richard nixon and then it all came to an end, right? nixon, knowing he was not going to survive an impeachment vote, ended up resigning the presidency. but whatever happened to old archibald cox, first watergate prosecutor, the guy fired at the end of the saturday night massacre? turns out after nixon fired him, he landed at a good government organization called common cause. and at common cause, just ten years after nixon resigned , thy did something they've never done before. they issued a public report and sent a letter to every single united states senator, urging for the first time ever that a nominee for a cabinet position be rejected by the senate. common cause had never done something like this before. but they decided this particular nominee was so bad, so dangerous, had such a terrible record when it came to ethical and corruption issues that they

let's get the bottom line with cnn political analyst and watergate journalist carl bernstein. good to be with you. >> what changes with these texts? >> i think we now see suggestion and maybe more of a suggestion of a real conspiracy, led by the president of the united states and his lawyer. to undermine our electoral process through involving and intimidating a foreign power into extorting a meeting with the president of this foreign power whose country is trying to hold off the russians, our enemy. so what he's done is he has mortgaged our foreign policy to his own political interest. this is a grave grave moment. we've never had a president of the united states who mortgaged our foreign policy interest to what is going on against an enemy in a foreign country. and then our other great adversary, china. the president of the united states yesterday openly got up and called on china to investigate his political enemy and likely opponent or possible opponent running for president of the united states. we are in a new place. where we've never been in which we see the conduct of

the watergate process is the model that should be used when the senate passed the resolution crating the watergate bipartisan committee in 1973 there was a three month interval when it took place, there was a lot of background work, shifting his people are claiming there during that now. >> it does not feel like it, i feel so hyper politicized and lacking in objectivity that it's hard to trust the process and the point that you bring up about autumn schiff is an important one. because for those of us who watch the national security apparatus unspool in the wake of edwards claim, we realize that we did not have this avenue, he cannot exactly go to the nsa inspector general with what he knew, what is different now? >> it's the politics, whistleblowers have been coming forward in a modern context since 1971, in january 1971 they were talking about army surveillance, you get the citizens commission to investigate the fbi in march of 1971 breaking into the fbi office in pennsylvania and so on and so forth. so the issue of the government using the secrecy system to come seal waves is a dec

this is an outrage, and it goes back to watergate, because what was the cover-up in watergate?s the misuse of the powers of government to influence an election and to cover up that influence, and we're seeing the exact same thing happen all over again, and they will pay a price. now -- >> joy, can i just say, too -- >> yeah? >> adam schiff should have bill thompson in there right away, because the people who are clearly willing to do the right thing and tell the truth in, and then judiciary, should go after barr. >> you mean taylor. >> taylor, sorry. >> before we go, let me find out, jill, what's your pin? >> my pin is trump morphing into nixon. >> oh, wow. >> wow. >> on the day that he left on marine one after resigning. >> wow. his hair looks a lot better in that pin, though. it looks like really -- it's got sort of a flow to it there. it's, yeah, it's quite fabulous. thank you very much. i want to also mention just for our viewers, we did list -- we reached out to a bunch of senators to try to get comment on donald trump urging china to investigate the besideens. we've put t

when that process began february 1973, it was after a number of convictions related to the watergate scandal itself. the idea was we were going to have an open, upfront process. it was passed unanimously. leadingsome of the senate appointed to that panel. the late howard baker, republican of tennessee. they wound up staring this process in such a way that it guaranteed that when they got done with it, there was not any doubt about what had actually gone on in the course of watergate, any of the individuals involved. i think the mistake the democrats are making now is not following that model. i get the idea that you want to do potentially depositions to get information and you need to .et documents, all of that need an overarching resolution passed in the house to make this thing rise above the partisan character it has now. we need a clear commitment from folks on both sides of the aisle that they will appoint responsible people to do an overall inquiry. the way the democrats are doing it now, it could come back to bite them. with do you have concerns adam schiff leading this invest

>> well, it's starting to feel more and more like watergate i think to the people who remember watergate except it's kind of an upside down watergate because these kind of characters were found first during the watergate break in and then they worked their way up to the president. here the president started or was discovered first because of the fateful phone call where he kind of clinched the shakedown deal against president zelensky. but what's coming out now is the whole team behind the shakedown operation and all of giuliani's people who were engaged in this very insidious shadowy campaign in ukraine to do a number of different political duties and execute a number of political schemes for the president. >> we found out today so these guys had ticket to vienna and had lunch with rudy giuliani. and rudy giuliani told the atlantic he was flying to vienna just coincidently. do you want to know more? are you going to get to talk to these people to your investigation into it and whether sdny does? >> i haven't spoken to anybody about this but i am personally fascinated about what they wer

dean of course shared his experience about watergate. raf eric's well though answered questions from constituents tonight about the impeachment process, this town hall comes days after whistleblower complaint from inside the administration about trump's interaction with ukraine the wraps says he's been 2 we did speak to reps well. john dean before the that town hall. public hands on board to support this impeachment inquiry. and dean also talks about what he thinks of president trump take a listen. >>i think it's the simplicity active here in that we have a confession. the president he's we did guilty and i think in many ways and the biggest question for the country will be what is the sentence i just told the congressman i think that and this president is making richard nixon. look like a choir boy. hundreds of hours of tape. i heard nixon and all kinds circumstances. saw the dark side of it. people in the office brought out that dark side. richard nixon. i can see in the rose garden. and the way he handled situation. >>president donald

. >> well, you were alive during watergate, so that remains to be seen. we will wait for the investigation before we make that investigation. >> this is far worse than watergate. >> what happens if rudy giuliani does not comply with the subpoena? >> well, again, it gets extremely complicated because we're not sure which role he was taking. in the final analysis, i suspect we'll probably need the courts to enforce the action. during watergate, we always wonder what the president decided not to respond to the courts and say, no, i'm not going to, despite an 8-0 decision. again in our lifetime, we're facing that possibility. and that would be a true constitutional crisis. i am hoping that the fact that many more of the american public are starting to realize the crimes committed by this president. courts don't live in a vacuum. they must understand and appreciate the national security implications here. and will force and compel this president and his associates to turn over relevant information and testify truthfully to congress. >> obstruction was an artic

two veterans of the watergate investigations joins us now, richard ben-veniste, cnn political analystournalist carl bernstein. carl, let's talk about the ambassador's testimony. how problematic do you think it could be for the white house and the potential testimony next week of ambassador sondland, who is a supporter of the president's? >> very consequential and i think we already know that. there's a whole series of witnesses who are really in a position to do the president great damage because they're telling the truth about what looks like a conspiracy involving the president of the united states to undermine our very basis of free elections in this country by engaging a foreign power to interfere with the opposition candidate facing the president of the united states. we've never had a situation where a foreign power has been called upon by the president of the united states, as it appears from his own words, trump's own words that we've seen he did this. now it's up to other witnesses to fill in more information and that's indeed what we saw the ambassador do today and we have m

but when this does become public, the watergate hearings changed public opinion. do you think this will? >> yeah, you know, in fact, watergate has a specific historical example that can really help us shed some light on this. at the same time they were doing private hearings, closed door hearings, closed door questioning of witnesses in the morning, they would oftentimes then do a live open public hearing in the afternoon. in fact, the time when we discovered that there was a white house taping system, which of course was crucial to how you weekend wat we understand watergate, that we're actually able to hear the president's words, was disclosed in a way they would get public response. it really helps shape theoesn't the information. and frankly, everybody in congress understands that no matter what side you're on, there are some moments that are done in private, questions, queries, investigations, and you could turn the same thing around in public and ask questions to elicit the public brouha hhabro you will. >> does it also help the republicans know what's comin

in watergate, the senate select committee held public hearings.president's top aides, holderman were there. the public had a chance to see that. we had nothing comparable to senate watergate committee hearing. so that's what these three committees are doing. they're kind of doing the investigation that the house judiciary committee did not do in watergate. the second source of information was the grand jury. that was completely secret. all those factors came before the house judiciary committee. all that process was secret. and then at the end, we drafted articles of impeachment and the public debate took place. but the public had been already educated by the senate select committee. that process is still being completed by the -- by the house intelligence committee and the other two committees that are working with it. so the process is slightly different but it's going to end up the same place. >> but republican defenders of donald trump in congress have called these soviet-style hearings. they -- you and i talked about this last week. they said

committee came before the house judiciary watergate committee. so a lot of those witnesses had been heard from before. i just think there is something -- >> you've got a point. so the thing that's interesting to me is that this argument about what a quid pro quo is. that's what it's come down to. does this really constitute a quid pro quo? i mean, the fact that the president of the united states was enlisting a foreign leader to dig up dirt is in and of itself a matter of grave concern. now taylor has added meat to it relative to the pressure that was being brought. but i honestly, whether it's done in public or private, the case is pretty tough for the president here. >> i think it's very tough. and it's weird that quid pro quo, in addition to being somewhat dofifficult to pronoun has become the focus of this when, in fact, the very act of asking a foreign leader to get dirt on a political opponent, even though -- even without holding the aid and -- >> collusion is so yesterday. >> but the quid pro quo was a bar that the republicans set not thin

i mean, certainly carl knows it from covering watergate.what republicans are going to do. we know the democratic point of view on this. it's what republicans are going to do. are people going to speak out? >> right, and you saw certainly in the '90s a lot more democrats were on the president's side spoke out. not many ultimately went along for impeachment and they certainly decried the conduct in a way we haven't seen here and the republican ranks are very tight and it seems they're very episodic anomalies where you saw senior democratic senators speak out against the conduct and we haven't seen anything like that -- >> this is where watergate is very relevant because the heroes of watergate were republicans who broke ranks and that is why richard nixon had to leave office and barry goldwater, the nominee, marched to the white house and told richard nixon that he did not have the votes in the senate to survive a trial including goldwater's own vote and was that the end of nixon and nixon decided that day -- >> a far cry from that now. >> wh

but in the case of watergate, there were two things.ne, there was a general feeling that there was concrete evidence that richard nixon had obstructed justice in its pursuit of the watergate burglars. that's something that a lot of republicans weho were on nixon' side, went to the other side and were willing to impeach and convict. the other thing is, in the summer of 1974, a lot of republicans consistent bawent b home districts and states and a lot of people were angry about richard nixon and watergate. it moved them to the tonight that in july, when the so-called smoking gun tape came out in july and early august of 1974, a lot of republicans were prone to impeach. and that's when republican leaders went to the white house and told richard nixon that there might not even be ten votes to keep him in office in the senate if it came to a senate trial. that's when he resigned. >> i'm interested to get your thoughts, michael, because overall senate republicans have been hesitant to take a stance on whether they think it's appropriate for t

his new book is "the fall of richard nixon: a reporter remembers watergate."his book, it's a combination of your reflections, you and your wife meredith and your children were coming from l.a., the news star, correspondent, dealing with the veteran white house reporters, and at the same time this momentous, tectonic change in american history was taking place. >> i didn't get a welcome reception from some of the white house correspondents because i didn't know a lot of them. but in fact in california, immodestly, i had a pretty good reputation as a political reporter. i used to brief robert novak and johnny apple. >> you knew bob haldeman before he was attached to richard nixon. you had some good sources built in. >> i didn't know nixon that well. you always have to stop and think, in that first term he had extraordinary achievements, women's rights, for example, war on cancer, epa, although my republican friends say that was a terrible idea. he changed the draft after vietnam. but he could never get traction with the next generation because of how he was exec