Dean: Russia probe’s fallout may take time
Expect the fallout from the Russia probe to intensify into the 2020 election year and, in the coming months, former White House counsel Don Mcgahn to take center stage, one of Mcgahn’s predecessors said Wednesday. John Dean, an Ohio native who was at the center of the Watergate scandal as White House counsel in the Nixon administration, was in Columbus to talk to a group of lawyers and then the Metropolitan Club about the parallels between the scandals. One is that momentum for Congress to act in Watergate gathered slowly, a pattern being repeated in the Russia investigation involving President Donald Trump, Dean said.
“This just doesn’t happen fast,” he said, explaining why consensus among even Democrats for Trump’s impeachment has been slow to build. “It takes a long, long time. Same for Republicans. They went over very slowly (in Watergate). Just a few moderates initially, and the hard right doesn’t come over until the smoking-gun tape comes out.”
For the uninitiated, the Watergate scandal started with the June 17, 1972, arrest of five men connected to the White House who had broken into and wiretapped Democratic National Headquarters in Washington. President Richard Nixon helped direct a coverup starting almost immediately after the burglars had been caught, Dean said.
The president then engaged in several types of obstructive conduct for which the House of Representatives impeached him. That conduct has echoes in the way Trump has conducted himself with regard to the Russia investigation, said Dean Dean, who eventually broke with Nixon and pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice.
One is by dangling pardons or commutations of criminal penalties to others in exchange for not testifying against the administration. Nixon repeatedly discussed paying the Watergate conspirators and offering parole or clemency for their silence.
The report by former special counsel Robert Mueller details instances in which Trump and his allies appeared to do something similar, including when Trump personal lawyer Rudolph Giuliani told a newspaper, “[w]hen the whole thing is over, things might get cleaned up with some presidential pardons.”
Another similarity between the scandals, Dean said, lies in Nixon and Trump trying to control or kill investigations into their administrations.
In 2017, Trump asked thenfbi Director James Comey to back off an investigation into national security adviser Michael Flynn, who had just resigned because he had lied about the nature of phone conversations he had had with the Russian ambassador, according to a memo Comey wrote just after the meeting. Trump then fired Comey and publicly said his reason for doing so was to put an end to the Russia investigation.
Comey’s firing prompted the appointment of Mueller as special counsel. The investigation covered in the report says Trump asked Mcgahn to fire Mueller, but Mcgahn refused.
The House Judiciary Committee has subpoenaed Mcgahn to testify. If that happens — and Dean predicts it will — the U.S. could see an impeachment inquiry heating up right into election season.
“Very potentially, we could see that,” he said. “If it’s not resolved by the election, if he is re-elected, it will resume in earnest. If he is defeated, it’ll go away.”