John Dean; Watergate Revisited

Oh you [Music] you [Music] welcome to the Columbus Metropolitan Club I'm Carol looper I'm a member of CMC's Board of Trustees and I used to be a reporter and I sometimes still think I'm a reporter good to see you all today today's forum John Dean the legacy of Watergate is a Chief Justice Thomas J Moyer legacy forum with additional support from event marketing strategies please help me thank them and now please welcome Steve Stover of the Moyer legacy committee to introduce our forum Steve [Applause] Thank You Carol and thanks to the Columbus Metropolitan Club for inviting the Chief Justice Thomas J Moyer legacy committee of the Ohio State Bar Association to sponsor this event as a member of the Metropolitan Club and as the chair of the chief justice warrior legacy committee I'm honored that this is the site of the first and third Chief Justice Moyer lecture series events and here we are within view of the building that bears his name you can see out the back actually it's a white building in the back the more your committee was we're delighted Oh before I say that we're delighted to have eight members of the Chief Justice more legacy committee here today at the front table along with our very special guest Mary Moyer many of you knew Tom Moyer a great chief justice a leader a facilitator and a mentor the chief justice lawyer legacy committee was formed in 2010 to provide a lasting memorial to Chief Justice lawyers dedication to the administration of justice and the public understanding of the law including legal and civic education dispute resolution ethics civility judicial independence and the rule of law which are more important today than ever the more your committee has accomplished much in nine years including establishing this chief justice Moyer professorship for the administration of justice at do hyoe State University moretz College of Law creating the more your fellowship program to provide research opportunities for students at Ohio's nine law schools hosting a 2013 event with a featuring retired US Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor a great friend of the chief who delivered address on civic education and civility founding the Ohio civility consortium a statewide collaboration of groups supporting civility and public discourse and establishing this chief justice Moyer lecture series to present high quality lectures featuring noteworthy speakers of the day including our first event last year with congressional congressional civility caucus founded by Columbus members of Congress Steve Stivers and Joyce Beattie with whom we are collaborating for more programs across the state now John Dean an Ohio native became a household name in the 1970s as the White House Council for President Nixon during the Watergate era John has been in the news a lot this year as a commentator on CNN apparently sometimes with John John Kasich and a witness before the US House Judiciary Committee on the implications of the Muller report which we might hear about today Jim Robin alt is a noted historian in his own right with three books to his credit and as a partner at the Thompson high and law firm in Cleveland he collaborates with John Dean to present educational programs that cost the country today's program will combine living history and an important perspective on current events please welcome John Dean and Jim Robin all thanks Steve well it's very nice to be here I'm Jim Robin alt I grew up in Lima Ohio so not all that far from Columbus and I went to the Ohio State University College of Law and graduated in 1981 so I get to moderate this with John and my first question to you is what's it like to be John Dean well I think the most fundamental answer is I get to be married to Maureen Dean 50 years you know it's been great it's been interesting it's sometimes surprising I get recognized particularly now that I'm back on CNN I have a high profile again and people come up and they say interesting things maybe the most interesting of late is a guy was sizing me up at LAX and finally got the courage to come up and speak and what he said and the way he said it is very memorable to me he said didn't you used to be Dick Cheney [Laughter] [Music] you know I just wish the movie Vice was out at that time I would have said no I'm Christian Beck hills all right so John and I got together in 2004 when Dick Cheney and John Edwards debated up at Case Western Reserve I was asked to put on a seminar about Ohio and it's presidents John had recently written the book on Warren Harding and great nephew George Harding and his wife Joan are here today so if you could give them a round of applause so I asked John to come as I say he had written this book for Arthur Schlessinger another Buckeye about Warren Harding it has a new look at Warren Harding and it's a revision of the history it's not actually the actual story it's the actual story and so I was trying to come up and he came up to Cleveland and we met and I said to him I said John you're not gonna believe this but the Western Reserve Historical Society has the love letters that President Harding wrote to a mistress named Carrie Phillips during the rise of Harding to Senator and then to the presidency and you've got to come and take a look at these and so we scrolled through them 900 pages of letters turns out I did investigation she was being followed as a potential German spy during the First World War so the story ends up being a broad story but like John I came to the conclusion that Warren Harding was a very good president and did great things for this country and we don't have enough time to talk about that today but both of us agreed on that that started our collaboration I wrote a book called the hardening affair love and espionage during the Great War and then in 2000 I was in the middle of my last book called the Nixon defense and I thought it was a book I could do very quickly by reaching in and getting a couple of Nicks unruhe transcribed secretly recorded conversations his defense had been that he didn't know anything about Watergate until I told him on March 21st there was a cancer on his presidency I'd well I hadn't had a lot of dealings with him I knew enough to know the way the place work that that was not correct so I started this process of going through all the tapes found they were no one had ever catalogued them that took six months just alone found there about a thousand Watergate conversations and so I hired a team of transcribers and while they were found it was easier to correct a transcript than do one from scratch and so I had this wonderful team I was led by a legal secretary who was getting her PhD in archival science and she she drove the other students I don't know what I would have done without her and it turned out I ended up with four million words of transcript which I had to bring down then to a reasonable size book of 150 roughly hundred fifty thousand words it's while working on that that I'm talking to Jim and I saying you know I teach all right I'm invited to speak at lawyers continuing legal education programs all the time I said they don't have a clue what to do with Watergate I've got all these tapes now why don't we take some of those conversations go out and talk to lawyers tell them about the mistakes that I made as a young lawyer and many other lawyers made in fact the entire redesign of the American Bar Association's code of professional ethics came right out of my testimony and I said I think we could put together a really interesting program that was in the 2010 into 2011 our first program was in June in Chicago of 2011 and I casually said sure I'll be happy to do a program with you not knowing that he would then send me all these books and I'd have to listen all these tapes and get really immersed in all of this and guess what our very first program was about obstruction of justice by a President of the United States this was before Donald Trump was on the scene so we did our very first program about the so called smoking gun tape where Nixon tells the CIA to turn off the FBI investigation and so we jumped really deeply into obstruction of justice and then we had no idea the reaction was the best thing I've ever been to loved it and we all of a sudden got invitation after we leave never we've never had a sales or marketing operation to make a long summary yes I don't like to sell in him Jim can handle it when necessary but I we've done somewhere over a hundred and fifty programs we've talked to be between maybe 45 and 50 thousand lawyers over the last few years we that's what we were doing this morning we you know we could do a lot more of them but both of us have real jobs yeah so it's kept us busy it's been fun and we've developed a great friendship out of it it's been great fun I'm for example on the 40th anniversary of Watergate the Washington Post held a special commemoration of the Watergate break-in at the Watergate and so John invited me to come and he told me and I believed him that he had never been in that building before but in any event we went and there was Ben Bradley Woodward Bernstein all of them I see some young faces who have no clue yeah who Ben Bradley was he was the editor of The Washington Post during Watergate right Woodward and Bernstein were the cub reporters who ran with the story when nobody else in the country was in that that night we went to a very special private dinner at Ben Bradley's house in Georgetown and if you know his story he lived there for a long time and was good friends with John Kennedy and you know their Georgetown friends and so forth so we were in that wonderful home and the last thing that I witnessed was you know he also noticed your wife yeah he knows my wife who happens to be it was for years a journalist at the Cleveland Plain Dealer best recently retired yep she's a great writer and the last thing I saw though that night was and by the way bill weld was there that night you know who he is running for president now he's somehow married into that family I forget what it was but so he's there last thing I see is Woodward and Bernstein going over and kissing Bradley on the head as they left I mean it was really it was really touching him is really quite a moment you you just think wow all this history and in this little thing so one of the things we do can you play this this is what we do for our audiences play this little segment of tapes so you can hear I want to say this to the television audience I made my mistakes but in all of my years of public life I have never profited never profited from public service I've earned every cent and in all of my years the public life I have never obstructed justice and I think too that I could say that in my years the public life that I welcome this kind of examination because people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook well I'm not a crook I earned everything I've got all right so if you heard in the middle that this is Nixon and all places at Disney World seriously making this name that I'm not a crook you all know that saying he's down there defending what's happened John had testified in June of that year and this is November of that year so he's down there defending himself but the obstruction of I've never obstructed justice well he John had been in to see him on March 21 1973 and outlined all the ways they have to had obstructed justice it's on tape he knows he has an obstructed justice so we use things like that to get our audience into it with real live you know video audio and including these tapes where John goes in so let's let's start with that because I then want to talk about dime again and Donald Trump dime again is the white hat was the White House Counsel same position that John held if you don't have the March 21st know so let's take you to that moment March 21st 1973 John is now think about this 34 years old and he walks in to tell the leader of the Western world that there is a cancer growing on his presidency and if he doesn't stop it it's going to kill him so maybe you could describe that moment the night before Nixon had called me in a fairly routine call and I had broken protocol one of the rules of the game in the Nixon White House where you had a very strong chief of staff who's today the model of all excuse me Chiefs of Staff you didn't go into the president without going through his office but Nixon was talking to me and I I had reached a point where I realized this presidency couldn't last going the way it was there truly was a cancer growing on his presidency and I thought the president ought to be told that without my superiors around me Haldeman and Ehrlichman who filtered everything that I had to say about anything so he had by then started to develop a personal relationship with me he'd said some very nice things about me and his diary he was delighted will be working with me and so I said this is the time so when he called on the on the night of the 20th I said mr. president I need to meet with you maybe say can you do at 10 o'clock tomorrow morning I said yes I had hoped to give some thought to preparing what I was going to say but never had time for it and that next morn he went in and to get his attention told him just those words that there was a cancer on his presidency and I would that had his full attention because sometimes I would go in his feet it'd be on the desk and he'd look around his shoes at me to pursue the conversation whatever was going on but anyway I took him through every single instance of where what was going on at the White House was trouble I said you know bud Krogh who worked in one of the units of the White House that had hired the guys who later broke in the Watergate I said you know when bud went before the Senate to get confirmed as Undersecretary of Transportation he's confessed he he's committed perjury and Nixon's reaction kind of caught me off guard he said well John perjury is a tough rap to prove what's the problem there and i anyway started marching down this road and at one point told him the men had been arrested wanted a hundred and twenty thousand dollars the lead guy he wanted fifty thousand for living expenses of seventy thousand for attorneys fees and I said you know mr. president this can just go on indefinitely and forever and no telling how much it will cost so I at that point he stopped me he said well John how much could it cost and I pulled a figure out of thin air that I thought would offend him and I said well mr. president might cost a million dollars and I was somewhat dumbfounded by his response when he said John that's no problem I know where we can get a million dollars I now know today after transcribing all the tapes of the vents I wasn't present that he after I leave he calls his secretary rosemary woods into the office she's another Buckeye and rosemary in essence how much do we have in our slush fund and she says about six hundred thousand and I know then following the tapes later two weeks later he's selling ambassadorships so this is the morning I went into Truckee convinced the president to end the cover-up is an hour and fifty minute meeting and I realized by the end of the conversation that I have not carried the day I have not persuaded him that there's any real serious problem that he wants to carry on pretty much as we were and I didn't know who Richard Nixon was but I this morning met him and realized he wasn't who I thought he was because any rational person having your lawyer tell him for example I ended the conversation by saying mr. president people are gonna go to jail and he said like who I said like me and he said his cancer was oh no John the lawyers never go to jail I said I said well mr. president he so on what I said well it's the obstruction of justice we are all involved in that and he'd really didn't want to hear too much more detail because I'd put him in an impossible situation when the White House Counsel tells you he's concerned he's going to jail the president really has a problem by the way he doesn't know he's being taped and this whole conversation is taped and it becomes a centerpiece for all this but after that meeting John decides eventually he can't write the report that Nixon's asked him to write which would be a bogus report he gets his own lawyer he breaks with the White House and then you see him testify in June of that year before the Senate committee you could not help but see him testify because he was on every network every channel that you turn to the beginning of PBS macneil-lehrer all of that comes out of John's testimony John Lennon and Yoko Ono came to Washington to sit and watch him testify their pictures of him Jim always mentions that because when he found the picture of them he he said John your testimony really was important that's true that's true so so we then in June of this year chairman Nadler of the House Judiciary Committee invited John to come John was not volunteering for this they really wanted him to come and talk about the parallels between what was found in the mower report part to the obstruction not the conspiracy the Russian conspiracy but the obstruction acts and could you come and talk to us about that and the parallels with Watergate so John went to Washington I went in sat behind him as he gave his statement you can go look at it online you can look at the pieces of it but what we ended up finding as we were really digging into Muller is there are remarkable parallels between what happened in Watergate in what the Muller report says so for example dangling pardons to keep people from fully cooperating that happened in Watergate in Muller reports that he believes that happen with Manta Ford in his report and and others Flynn and potentially Roger stone things like telling the White House Council to make a bogus report dai McGann was told to fire Muller and then a few months later when that became news Trump asked him to make up a false report that he never did that and began refused to do that so very similar to John being asked by Nixon to make up a bogus Dean report and then trying to control federal investigations let Flynn go that the the so called smoking gun tape and Watergate is Nixon trying to get the CIA to let this all go and to control that investigation bottom lining being we don't learn from history we just repeat it with a little different twist yeah so we're beginning now to talk to lawyers about those parallels so they can know about it and understand it if you all how many people have read the Mullen report a number if you notice in those in those of you who do be it's really the second part obstruction is a legal brief it's hard to understand even for lawyers who are very versed and obstruction of justice ultimately about he's describing the conduct but does it really fall under all of these you know definitions of what is obstruction of justice but we also take it a step further because Nadler is now not looking just it was there a crime but is are there impeachable offenses and so we take that a little bit further and look back and say well there's only one precedent to look at it's Watergate and what did Congress back then think was an impeachable offense and so we teach that and we you know tell our audience to and draw their own conclusions that's pretty clear from history Jerry Ford was the one who really said it and that was actually before Watergate and the Democrats were addressing the question it's ironic that Hillary Clinton was on the staff of the committee to determine what was an impeachable offense along with William weld who's now running the only person right now running against Trump but anyway Ford said at the time that the he was interested in impeaching William O Douglas and he went to the floor of the house and he'd really gone through a lot of digging and had his staff do it and he said that impeachment is whatever the House of Representatives says it is and that's pretty much what it's always been if a majority of the house says something's impeachable it's impeachable the Senate may or may not agree it takes two-thirds of the Senate to convict and remove so they they have their own judgment on whether that's true or not so another thing that we look at in including our materials you can go online and find this there's a there's a website called Mary Farrell where you can go get the house report that was done on Watergate and you'll see what the majority said was an impeachable offense and what the minority said was an impeachable offense but if you go back and look at the underpinnings of all of it when the impeachment Clause was put into the Constitution what had happened is as you all know from your history class we had the Articles of Confederation that was very weak just Congress we really didn't have an negative you had a president united states of the congress but not as separate executive so that was a problem the government was way too weak and they get together in philadelphia and they create the constitution and the great debate about the executive and what article ii will mean one of them is do we include an impeachment clause or not because they they already know they're gonna limit the president to four-year terms so they figured that's the way we can cure presidential problems is that four-year term and they all argued further and said no we really need an impeachment outlet but it's got to be carefully defined and limited so we're not impeaching people for purely political crimes but really other types of crime so they said what kind of crimes well take a look at it it starts off as treason and bribery what were they worried about they were worried about chief executive who is under the undue influence of a foreign power that was their concern back at the time and so that's why it says treason bribery and then they add high crimes and misdemeanors but they say or other high crimes and misdemeanors me as within that same grouping of types of crimes that is you know treachery against the state undermining the state obstructing justice doing things like that these are the things that the the founders put in to the the impeachment clause when they when they put it in so we we teach all that and we let everybody decide what they're gonna do we give them bill bars opinion and i think the last thing we ought to talk about is just your views on attorney general bar and his view of the presidency and and what he's expressed i i love giving talks with you because i don't have to say much yeah he's just a smart aleck and and that's the way it goes in our cles - we we know each other too well right too many years anyway what the bar memo which was written in June of 2018 and really was a an application for a job as Attorney General people who have any interest in current history ought to dig that document out it's a it's a remark it's a little turgid but just even scan it this man was looking for the job of Attorney General he brings with him a lot of preconceived notions about what that job means and what the presidency how it should operates he is a full-throated enthusiast of something called the unitary executive theory how many here have seen the movie Vice on television you remember that they they actually blocked though words out because Dick Cheney is a fan of the unitary executive theory and he has what Scalia as was Antonin Scalia and in in Vice I noticed they had David Addington was a character on it who is one of these legal scholars who's steeped in this theory and it is the imperial presidency on steroids and stilts let me just give you a quick couple quick examples a part of the executive branch is made up of bodies that the Congress not quite sure what to do has put in the executive branch like the Securities Exchange Commission or the FCC to regulate communications and they're considered an executive agencies the president's about only conspicuous power is the ability to appoint the heads on these under the unitary executive theory the prep these are part and parcel of the executive branch the president can reach in and tell the SEC what to do or not to do FCC what to do or not to do and absolutely redefine how our government works bill bar is of this school he for example thinks that a president can't be charged with a crime and as he specifically mentioned in the statute now how many statutes do you think have been written where they specifically named the president is a part of the federal criminal code how about zero so in other words the president can't be charged with crimes you can't even ask the president when it's a part of his constitutional duty say to grant a pardon whether or not he has corrupt intent corrupt intent what is his subjective judgement can't ask that under bars theory he could well have been bribed to do it he would say bribery is a crime but you can't get that information from the president so we are to living in very interesting times I thought I thought that the Nixon presidency was fairly aggressive I came up through the legislative process I was a committee counsel of the House Judiciary Committee I think the house and and the Congress it is a remarkable institution of the American people while it's pretty divisive right now still when you boil it all down it does speak for us much more so often than a presidency today the presidency speaks for a very small base of people that Trump thinks can get him reelected Lord knows what happens if that happens yeah I'm sorry yeah being partisan but it's it's a I've never had I never had a knot in my stomach during the Nixon years about what Nixon would or wouldn't do I've not been able to get rid of the knot in my stomach since this man has been elected yeah I mean you all remember David Frost's in the the frost/nixon film it leads to this moment where Nixon says well when the President does it then it is not illegal and that is kind of the world we're living in right now with the interpretation so draw your own conclusions reach your own judgment you're all citizens you can read what bar road and you can read what motor wrote because they're really two conflicting things motor thinks the president can obstruct justice by dangling pardons and he says so and he thinks he can obstruct justice by improperly controlling investigations so Rita take a look at it that's the great debate that's going on right now pay attention to dime again who's been now subpoenaed to appear before the House Judiciary Committee let me tell you what to watch for there the the the House Judiciary Committee initially filed an action to get the redaction redactions removed from the Muller report there's only one judge who can remove those redactions and that's the chief judge of the federal district court of the District of Columbia she what happens to be an Obama appointment judge Howell role he'll and and she had earlier and and within I'd say the last year removed the seal no she'd removed the restrictions on releasing the so-called roadmap to my words my wife doesn't even do that anyway she had she'd removed the restrictions on the release of the roadmap that was used during Watergate where the special prosecutor sent the House Judiciary Committee all their findings in front of the grand jury that were key and possibly of P chable offenses well the same judge now is looking at the redactions and she is the only person that can do that because the chief judge has jurisdiction over the grand jury now what the house has done is they have recently filed a related action and that is the Don Magan subpoena very interesting it goes rather normally when you file an act in federal district court it goes through a processing can end up with any of the judges on that court but they by going first with the redactions now have a related case and this judge is a realist she's not a partisan but unlike some judges who are partisans that's not going to happen here we'll get a fair ruling on both redactions and on whether McGann is going to testify it is inconceivable to me that the judge will not enforce the subpoena against McGann it's inconceivable to me that the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia won't uphold that they already have said that as existing law Harriet Maier who was White House Counsel for George Bush she was asked to appear before the same committee the House Judiciary Committee made the same claims I'm immune I have you know I just can't bring me up here dismissed and forced to appear the Court of Appeals has ruled on that so these are these steps are being taken now there is a very active impeachment inquiry going on the reason the press is not quite sure what's going on is there's been no vote to have an impeachment inquiry well during Watergate the the committee operated for months before there was a vote when they needed to up the budget and then they had a impeachment inquiry vote so hang on these things take time and they will be fairly adjudicated all right it is CMC's tradition to take audience questions so when you come up buddy what do you there's a mic the mic back there when you come up please state your name and ask your question please avoid editorial comments and remember questions and with a question mark I didn't write this so let's get started so state your name and give us a question these always take a minute for people to loosen up to get to the my community Christian happy to break the ice Andy Campbell thanks for being here today both of you I'm very curious you know the media played a large role in the Watergate scandal I wonder if you could reflect on how you think the media has changed and how that might be playing a role today and with the Trump administration well in fact the media played very little role in the Watergate scandal initially only one newspaper was covering it The Washington Post roughly June 17 of 1972 when the break-in occurred until April a little bit somewhat in January of 73 when the burglars were tried but there wasn't really a full commitment by the media until April of 1973 when the when Nixon fired his chief of staff is a former White House Counsel his top domestic adviser yours truly as well as its Attorney General that got the media's attention and after that by then the the Senate is gearing up and pretty much covered it throughout the remainder until Nixon departs and thereafter the big impact on the media however has been this is one of the lasting few last year impacts of Watergate it's changed the relationship between the media and the presidency pre Watergate presidents were given the benefit of the doubt when when Dwight when Dwight Eisenhower said that's just a weather plane flying over Russia when a u2 was spotted the press didn't question it when Gary Powers would try to fought it out as the is the pilot really there was no negative reaction to Eisenhower having dissembled on that today it's very different presidents post-watergate are pretty much assumed to be guilty until they establish their innocence so it's a shifting burden other than their other than the the other profession that's been affected or the legal profession it's been deeply affected by Watergate and it's been a sustained impact question oh yeah I'm glad you're here welcome to Columbus mr. Dean I had the great pleasure of being at one of your Seeley's and I'm very glad that you're here as well your voice is very important right now I would like to tell you I'm Tracy rich and I'm chief ethics officer for the City of Columbus and I'm very proud to be overseeing a very strict culture of ethics for the city I'm very proud to work with the City of Columbus my question to you is at the base of all of this is really truth and ethical conduct and I think that it's clear to a lot of people you're talking about media and culture and so forth in our in our society now but what do you think makes good common sense people who are decent good people have a willingness to believe untruths and be willing to make allowances for unethical behavior when it's so clear I can tell you from my experience that this is something that troubles me greatly and I'm glad that you're a voice to speak to this issue thank you well I I am pretty blunt and don't hold back particularly on CNN or in my Twitter account either and I just think it's speaking truth to power is important that if we ever lose that ability and facility we're in a lot of trouble as a democracy and while not everybody wants to hear all that they can go listen to their own truth I suppose I don't believe there are all Tent alternative facts and alternative truths I think that if anything we've learned and become more sophisticated in isn't finding what is the truth there is let me let me at one point why do people sit on the sidelines when it's obvious is part of that question and John has been studying authoritarian personalities and leaders since he wrote a book called conservatives without conscience that came out in 2006 he's now revisiting all of that research of authoritarian personalities and why they act the way they act and writing it with Trump with the professor who's been studying this his whole life and at bottom it's fear people who are authoritarians are motivated by fear and that overrides a lot of other things so you know fear of immigration fear of change all of that plays into why they then follow authoritarian leaders and don't question them if they think that that person is taking care of the fear that they happen to have is that accurate good summary okay next my name is me excuse me my name is David Axelrod on the former Assistant United States Attorney I'm one of the thousand or so prosecutors who the former prosecutors who signed the letter saying that we believe that the president has committed obstruction you and 999 additional exactly I think I was about 230 in any event I have a very simple question for you it has two parts the first part is you step back just a little bit from the mic yeah we're you've got this better yeah okay the first part is whether you believe that a sitting president can be indicted and the second part is whether you believe that a sitting president of the United States should be indicted the answer is yes to both [Applause] and let me let me let me explain what this this policy as an assistant US attorney you understand this there is a big an office within the Department of Justice called the Office of Legal Counsel that's considered and it has long been considered the institutional memory and law firm of the president when I was White House Counsel I was asked who do I want to who do I want to be assistant attorney general heading that office been headed by some very eminent lawyers Antonin Scalia bill Rehnquist lots of people they're good lawyers bill bar bill Barr exactly the reason we have the ruling on this issue occurred in night the fall of 1973 Elliot Richardson is the Attorney General and they have discovered through a Baltimore grand jury that the vice president Spiro Agnew is getting bags with money in the executive office building from his days as governor of Maryland he'd never never cut off the arrangements he'd had as governor and he's about to be indicted Agnew goes on a national tour to say you can't indict me I can only be impeached and so this put Richardson the Attorney General in a real tough spot because Watergate is also tumbling forward at full speed at the same time so they got an opinion issued by olc and you've got to understand this is the president's law firm and like most law firms when you go to them you don't get a bad ruling you get the ruling you want or they issue something or tell you that we shouldn't issue this for whatever reason so this wasn't just an objective sitting back and trying to sort out what's right and wrong this is an opinion that they had a real problem so they they had to tell Agnew he was indictable it's the president wasn't indictable and that was a secondary consideration at that time in 2000 when Bill Clinton is president he asked for a reissue as to whether that was good law or good policy still OLC not surprisingly issued an opinion very favorable to the president now there are there are plenty of opinions out and available Ron Rotunda a very able conservative Republican lawyer actually very helpful to us when we launched our for our cles Ron working for Ken Starr issued an opinion lengthy opinion as to why the oil sea opinion was wrong came bottom line no man is above the law is where he came out there are other good opinions that Archibald Cox's counsel was asked that question very early and determined President can be indicted so there there there is no case holding on this it is purely the policy of the Department of Justice right now and by the way that's why Muller followed it because he was within the Department of Justice and he writes about how he felt he couldn't do anything but follow that policy it's brothers to make that decision whether that was right or not that's the reason yeah this is the Southern District of New York for example might have might have come down differently on that but it's been known as the sovereign district of New York the Southern District okay next my name is Eric Brown and I very much appreciate your being here and appreciate that for the last 45 years or so you've been out talking about these important issues and educating the public so that we can be better prepared for what we're seeing today just before you can answer you can ask any question you want after that introduction but I you know I I hadn't planned it this way and what I am actually working on a memoir that I I just call it Watergate at 50 because what believe it or not coming up on the 50th anniversary of Watergate it's a rolling anniversary but on June 17th 20 22 is 50 years from the break-in and it's a rolling anniversary it will go until August 9 of 2024 so I decided I would write a book that deals with a memoir of a scandal and why in the hell would somebody stay talking about this thing as long as I have I've had no choice I've had no choice because what really forced me out was Peter about a group of revisionist concocted a whole new story of Watergate took 9 years of litigation because a major publisher got behind it we prevailed in the long run I used the lawsuit to surface documents and material that otherwise never would have been made public but when they accused my wife of being part of Watergate that crossed the line and that's when I said they're not going to get away with this not as long as I'm an able-bodied person so that's why that's why I have continued otherwise I probably would have just remained silent but then I said I have a real thing about people distorting history so it's something I have no tolerance for well thank you and appreciate your continuing on this effort I'm a retired judge former Chief Justice here as well as now serving on the Columbus school board I'm also my wife and I were neighbors and friends with Jeb Stuart Magruder and he shared lots of stories from those days with us along with some political advice but what really struck me during some of those talks was how young he was at the time even younger than you were by about three oh no he's about he's about three four years older three four years older yeah well in talking with him it was his relative youth in those days that we spoke about that made him very unsure about what to do and I wouldn't like your perspective on the same thing you were fairly young in those days well about three years younger than okay didn't have a lot of experience to be involved with some of the things you were involved with at that level how did that impact your decision-making and what does that tell us for the future we've got we've got one minute left when we got to stop so you've got to have a brief in I will have a brief answer you can bring the hook out if I'm over what I never was was able to get out of my mind when I saw certain things going on at the White House was maybe I was just too young and too green to understand how it's played in the big leagues and I constantly asked myself that question there was really nobody I could turn to to ask so I had to figure it out myself historically I've gone back to look and see if indeed that Nixon was an exception to the rule and not the rule Nixon who relied on prior presidents was always relying on their exceptions from Lincoln through FDR he had in his mind he was a good historian what presidents could get away with and he was pushing the limits it you know I'd never had anything that came across my desk that I didn't think I could handle in the area of the law I had and I was backed up as I say by Office of Legal Counsel but some of the some of the politics I didn't like it wasn't comfortable with and just went with my own end and when I realized I was on the wrong side of the law didn't understand it initially but didn't spend much time there before I decided to convince my colleagues that we were in trouble and we had to reverse course it was a it wasn't something that sold easily and didn't sell it all in some instances Andy Campbell says we can have one more question and thank you my name is Jeff Milgram with event marketing strategies and I'm not an attorney so I'll be quick you're not handicapped Andy told me to say that but no I just want to know mr. Dean your personal opinion you guys have both mentioned Don began a number of times what do you think about the fact that as white House Counsel year old job he has refused to testify at least till now voluntarily in front of the House committees were obviously you did so I just want your personal opinion about his refusal to testify when they've asked him to do so okay we're on CNN you got 30 seconds I think eventually he will testify I think he wants it in a circumstance where he has been forced to come forward he's under a court order to honor the subpoena I think he'll be an honest witness I don't think he will volunteer a lot but I'm not sure I don't know how much more he knows he's well cooperated because he had asti a chief of staff who either was with him or shortly after he kept notes of his activity Andy Donaldson so it I think he's in you know a very reliable witness in that regard I when I testified in front of the House Judiciary Committee if their kickoff of their hearings on this I I sort of sent a message to McCann I said listen come forward you have an obligation and your client is not Donald Trump it's the office of the President and in that role you need to come forward and testify I said you won't make new friends excuse me I said you will make enemies but your new friends will be good friends alright so point of privilege for me we're very happy to have been here I knew Tom Moyer and I told Mary that he is one of the most revered figures in the state of Ohio in law for the of all time so we are really happy to a family we have we have signed books but john has to speak with the harding's and then we've got to get to the airport but so there are books that are all very pretty signed for you to buy his books my books and with that I'll turn it over to you I hope you all found today's forum enlightening and I truly enjoy seeing John Dean on CNN so if you haven't been tuning in he's very honest very upfront and much like he was today he tells it like it is only one version of truth for the young people who are not familiar with Watergate the movie all the President's Men is a very interesting look at how the two young cub reporters at the Washington Post Woodward and Bernstein broke the story and then how Watergate came crashing down it's got everything but the president's men that's very true but the journalistic approach is is fascinating we've got to thank our sponsors the Moyer legacy committee event marketing strategies strategies and our speakers John Dean and Jim Roberto and our special thanks to all of you for coming hope to see you here next week [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Columbus Metropolitan Club

Views: 4,139

Keywords: John Dean, Watergate, Nixon White House, White House Council, William Barr, Jim Robenalt, Blind Ambition, Columbus Metropolitan Club

Id: N0LQYPIOpHY

Length: 55min 9sec (3309 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 15 2019