Perhaps no one is in a better position to comment on the latest Trump Justice Department scandal than former Nixon White House counsel John W. Dean.
In an interview Friday night, CNN’s Erin Burnett asked Dean whether the latest Trump Department of Justice scandal — secretly seizing the smartphone data of Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee — went beyond what Nixon did.
Dean replied: “It is beyond Nixon, yes. It’s Nixon on stilts and steroids.”
Asked to compare Nixon’s DOJ with Trump’s, Dean said: “Nixon didn’t have that kind of Department of Justice.”
Dean recalled how the DOJ responded in 1971 to the leak of the Pentagon Papers, classified documents detailing U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.
“I got a call from the Oval Office the day after he (Nixon)learned that, and could the Department of Justice bring a criminal action for this? Called over, found out the short answer was they could, but they won’t,” Dean said. “So Nixon couldn’t use the department as he wanted to.”
What Nixon did do was make an end run around the Justice Department. After the Pentagon Papers leak by Daniel Ellsberg, Nixon staffers set up the so-called “White House Plumbers” group to plug security leaks. It’s first action was an illegal break-in at the Los Angeles office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist in an effort to find files that could be used to discredit Ellsberg.
Several of the White House Plumbers — notably G. Gordon LIddy and E. Howard Hunt — went on to become involved in other illegal activities. They were key figures in mounting an intelligence-gathering operation in the 1972 presidential campaign that resulted in the failed break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Complex.
As White House counsel, Dean was involved in the cover-up of the ensuing Watergate scandal. He later flipped on Nixon and began cooperating with Senate Watergate investigators. His televised testimony before the Senate Watergate Committee implicated Nixon, former Attorney General John Mitchell and top White House officials in the cover-up setting in motion the chain of events that led to Nixon’s resignation in August 1974.
In 1975, Mitchell was convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and perjury for his role in the Watergate scandal. He ended up serving 19 months in federal prison before his release on parole for medical reasons. So there’s precedent for indicting and convicting former Attorney General William Barr for similar offenses.
The New York Times broke the story that former Attorneys General Jeff Sessions and Barr subpoenaed Apple in order to access data from more than a dozen people, including Chairman Adam Schiff and other Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, after hearing about leaks within the Trump administration.
In his CNN interview, Dean said it was apparent from the start that Barr was “very willing” to do Trump’s bidding.
"The memo he wrote to get the job says I’m ready to execute your presidency like a unitary executive presidency should be, which means no bars hold, go anywhere you want to go. I think you’re the king. ...," Dean said. “We now know there are countless examples of norms he was willing to break."
Dean said he thinks Barr has to testify and called on the DOJ to be more transparent about the smartphone data seizure scandal.
“I hope they’re getting their act together because this is going to be very troublesome. My Twitter feed is just blazing with people disappointed with Justice and their response to this so far,” he said.