John Dean was the White House Counsel for Richard Nixon. In the early days of the Watergate crisis, Nixon ordered Dean to investigate what happened. After Dean concluded his study, he came back to Nixon and told him, “Mr. President, there is a cancer on your Presidency.” Dean told Nixon that his closest advisors were involved in covering up the felonies committed in the Watergate break-ins and other actions.
Planning the Crime
Dean knew exactly who was involved in the cover-up, because he was part of the planning . But he also realized that he was being set up as the “scapegoat” by Nixon’s other advisors. Nearly a year after the break-in itself, Dean testified to the Senate Watergate Committee. He laid out the entire depth of the White House involvement. It took the Watergate Committee, and later the House Judiciary Committee another year to gather enough evidence to conclude that the President himself was leading the cover-up.
The essence of the Watergate Affair was that Nixon agreed to organize a group to commit illegal activities within his White House, called the “Plumbers.” When the 1972 campaign began, many of the “Plumbers” moved into his Re-Election Committee. Nixon knew what they were doing, and personally orchestrated the cover-up of their crimes.
Bugging the White House
Richard Nixon was deeply concerned about how his Administration would be seen by history. He wanted to control “who wrote his story” (thanks again, Hamilton.) Nixon wanted to write it himself, and he wanted the best “notes” about what happened. What better way, he thought, than to record the conversations in the Oval Office. He had a taping system set up. Nixon “bugged” himself.
Once the taping system became known, the Congressional Committees knew they could get the answers to all of their questions from the tapes. “What did Nixon know and when did he know it,” was knowable, it was recorded. The legal battle than moved to the Courts. Congress demanded the tapes, and Nixon claimed Executive privilege.
Executive Privilege
The President of the United States has wide latitude to keep the internal workings of the White House secret. It’s reasonable, the President should be able to talk freely to his staff, world leaders, and others, and receive their advice without it becoming public information. Those conversations are generally privileged, exempted from Congressional and Court subpoenas and testimonies.
There are exceptions. In the Watergate case, the “crime/fraud” exception was used. It’s simple: if the conversation involves the participants committing a crime, then it isn’t privileged. In 1974 the United States Supreme Court ruled that the White House tapes weren’t privileged because they demonstrated guilt of crime (United States v Nixon). It was a few weeks later that Nixon’s own voice planning the cover-up, served as proof of his guilt. Nixon soon resigned to avoid impeachment and conviction.
The Trump Administration has expanded the theory of Executive Privilege to include almost anyone who communicates with the President. Even those not employed by the White House are restrained by White House orders.
Opening the Door
Democrats have been stymied. They knew that the President and his campaign committed illegal acts, but were unable to prove it. Even a full Justice Department investigation led by the venerable Robert Mueller failed. It showed criminal actions, but couldn’t prove criminality. In his Report, Mueller admitted that he was blocked by the silence of Trump’s compatriots.
It took the “Whistleblower Complaint” to open the door to Trump’s White House. The complaint is not a first hand account of illegal actions by the Administration. It’s much like John Dean’s testimony: an internal investigation of the President’s actions to extort information about a political opponent from a foreign nation, in exchange for US aid. It shows that, like Nixon, the cancer on the Presidency is the President himself.
Dean’s testimony in Watergate laid out the investigative path for the Committees. The “Complaint” does the same for the House Committees today. With the power of an impeachment investigation, and the crime/fraud exception, they should be able to get the evidence and testimony they need to prove Donald Trump’s actions.
Battling for Evidence
There are likely to be the same fights, Court battles over privilege. One obvious point of contention: the actual transcript of Trump’s conversation with President Zelensky of Ukraine. Right now Congress only has the White House summary, though that’s bad enough for Trump. The transcript is stored on the “super secret, super secure” computer used for our most secret military operations. It isn’t supposed to be there, but White House lawyers (like John Dean) determined that Trump’s words were so bad they needed to “hide it.” That itself is evidence that they knew the conversation showed criminal acts.
It took a year after Dean’s testimony to reach the final stages of Nixon’s Presidency. Now, forty-six years later, information moves much faster, and President Trump’s transgressions are perhaps simpler. The question: did Donald Trump jeopardize national security, try to extort campaign aid from a foreign nation, and use the funds of the United States to do it? The answers to that, will determine the fate of Donald Trump.
