John Dean was the White House Counsel for Richard Nixon.\u00a0\u00a0In the early days of the Watergate crisis, Nixon ordered Dean to investigate what happened.\u00a0\u00a0After Dean concluded his study, he came back to Nixon and told him, \u201cMr. President, there is a cancer on your Presidency.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Dean told Nixon that his closest advisors were involved in covering up the felonies committed in the Watergate break-ins and other actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dean knew exactly who was involved in the cover-up, because he was part of the planning .\u00a0\u00a0But he also realized that he was being set up as the \u201cscapegoat\u201d by Nixon\u2019s other advisors.\u00a0\u00a0Nearly a year after the break-in itself, Dean testified to the Senate Watergate Committee.\u00a0\u00a0He laid out the entire depth of the White House involvement.\u00a0\u00a0It 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The essence of the Watergate Affair was that Nixon agreed to organize a group to commit illegal activities within his White House, called the \u201cPlumbers.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0When the 1972 campaign began, many of the \u201cPlumbers\u201d moved into his Re-Election Committee.\u00a0\u00a0Nixon knew what they were doing, and personally orchestrated the cover-up of their crimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Richard Nixon was deeply concerned about how his Administration would be seen by history. He wanted to control \u201cwho wrote his story\u201d (thanks again, Hamilton.) <\/em>Nixon wanted to write it himself, and he wanted the best \u201cnotes\u201d 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 \u201cbugged\u201d himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once the taping system became known, the Congressional Committees knew they could get the answers to all of their questions from the tapes.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cWhat did Nixon know and when did he know it,\u201d was knowable, it was recorded.\u00a0\u00a0The legal battle than moved to the Courts. Congress demanded the tapes, and Nixon claimed Executive privilege.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The President of the United States has wide latitude to keep the internal workings of the White House secret.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s 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.\u00a0\u00a0Those conversations are generally privileged, exempted from Congressional and Court subpoenas and testimonies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are exceptions.\u00a0\u00a0In the Watergate case, the \u201ccrime\/fraud\u201d exception was used.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s simple:\u00a0\u00a0if the conversation involves the participants committing a crime, then it isn\u2019t privileged.\u00a0\u00a0In 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).\u00a0\u00a0It was a few weeks later that Nixon\u2019s own voice planning the cover-up, served as proof of his guilt.\u00a0\u00a0Nixon soon resigned to avoid impeachment and conviction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Trump Administration has expanded the theory of Executive Privilege to include almost anyone who communicates with the President.\u00a0\u00a0Even those not employed by the White House are restrained by White House orders.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Democrats have been stymied.\u00a0\u00a0They knew that the President and his campaign committed illegal acts, but were unable to prove it.\u00a0\u00a0Even a full Justice Department investigation led by the venerable Robert Mueller failed. It showed criminal actions, but couldn\u2019t prove criminality.\u00a0\u00a0In his Report, Mueller admitted that he was blocked by the silence of Trump\u2019s compatriots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It took the \u201cWhistleblower Complaint\u201d to open the door to Trump\u2019s White House. The complaint is not a first hand account of illegal actions by the Administration. It\u2019s much like John Dean\u2019s testimony: an internal investigation of the President\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dean\u2019s testimony in Watergate laid out the investigative path for the Committees. The \u201cComplaint\u201d does the same for the House Committees today.\u00a0\u00a0With 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\u2019s actions.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are likely to be the same fights, Court battles over privilege.\u00a0\u00a0One obvious point of contention:\u00a0\u00a0the actual transcript of Trump\u2019s conversation with President Zelensky of Ukraine.\u00a0\u00a0Right now Congress only has the White House summary, though that\u2019s bad enough for Trump.\u00a0\u00a0The transcript is stored on the \u201csuper secret, super secure\u201d computer used for our most secret military operations.\u00a0\u00a0It isn\u2019t supposed to be there, but White House lawyers (like John Dean) determined that Trump\u2019s words were so bad they needed to \u201chide it.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0That itself is evidence that they knew the conversation showed criminal acts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It took a year after Dean\u2019s testimony to reach the final stages of Nixon\u2019s Presidency.\u00a0\u00a0Now, forty-six years later, information moves much faster, and President Trump\u2019s transgressions are perhaps simpler.\u00a0\u00a0The question:\u00a0\u00a0did 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?\u00a0\u00a0The answers to that, will determine the fate of Donald Trump.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Executive Privilege<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Opening the Door<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Battling for Evidence<\/h3>\n\n\n\n