Posted on 01/02/2018 10:11:04 PM PST by Olog-hai
Although he does not foresee a quick end to the special counsel probe into Russian election meddling and aides to President Donald Trump, former White House counsel John Dean noted that the modern media landscape may prevent it from lasting as long as the Watergate investigation, which he said stretched on for 928 days.
“There’s social media, there’s the internet, the news cycles are faster. I think Watergate would have occurred at a much more accelerated speed than the 928 days it took to go from the arrest at the Watergate to the conviction of (H.R.) Haldeman and (John) Ehrlichman and (John) Mitchell, et al.,” he said during a podcast interview with Politico. Dean, who is a CNN contributor, ultimately cooperated with Senate investigators against President Richard Nixon, but he spent four months in jail in 1974 for his role in the scandal, which started with the attempted bugging of Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate and snowballed to bring down the Nixon presidency.
“I think there’s more likelihood (Nixon) might have survived if there’d been a Fox News,” he added, suggesting that more conservative voices critical of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation will be beneficial to Trump. […]
Dean also said Trump could be impeached for incompetence even though that is not spelled out in the Constitution. He argued that it depends on one’s perception of what constitutes such an offense, described in the Constitution as “treason, bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors.” …
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Obama survived fast and furious because of pmsnbcabccbscnn..
Democrats wanted Nixon impeached in his first term, long before Watergate.
Hate to think what Dean looks like now. Saw him ten years ago and he looked like Death eating a Ritz cracker.
The poor judgement expressed in the article may just be an indicator of why Dean ended up in so much trouble back then.
I don't see how being supported by Fox News would have kept the grand jury from identifying Nixon as an unindicted co-conspirator, which, as I recall, was the case. Nixon mused that raising hush money to conceal the conspiracy could be done. Nixon was an arrogant jerk and deserved what happened to him and then some.
To this day we don't know what was on the 18-minutes of erased tape. It must have been pretty damning to obstruct justice so blatantly. And yes, I believe it is possible for a President to obstruct justice. The executive branch is not the sole arbiter of what constitutes "justice".
Barack Obama wouldn’t have been charged if he had done what Nixon did. Both he and his slimy predecessor Clinton routinely did far worse with regularity. While I’m at it, I’d point out that Nixon’s AG John Mitchell went to prison, but he was a bloody angel compared to Janet Reno, Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch. The double standard is maddening. The Rats are never held accountable for anything, yet they can hound and persecute Republicans with impunity.
928 days??....hes crazy...the whole water gate thing unraveled in less than a year. Woodward and Bernstein never “took down Nixon” as the left loves to claim. James McCord blew the whole thing wide open...within a month Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Dean were fired....the next year was really the battle over Nixons tapes. Alot of the things on those tapes was just Nixon spouting off...there was never any proof that he ordered any break ins...he mostly lost his political support and he was doomed. He should have just said no tapes ever existed...
G. Gordon wanted to take Dean out.
very true..they hated him after he nailed Alger Hiss....Hiss was the lefts “golden boy” back then...then the Republicans returned the favor when they hung impeachment around Clinton...dems will try to get even for Clinton if they get the chance with Trump...
John Dean — weasel then, weasel now.
928 is the number of days between the date of the arrest of the CREEP Plumbers (June 17, 1972), and the date on which Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Mitchell were convicted in federal court (January 1, 1975).
Clinton survived because of abcnnbcbs all giving him and hillary cover.
Nixon would have survived Watergate if he had done the same thing Clinton did when he was faced with a constitutional crises.... Flipping the Congress and the Senate the bird. Instead, he saved his party and paved the way for Ronald Reagan and Bush 1 to run the White House for 12 consecutive years.
The fact is this... The president is elected by the people and while the concept of removing him from office is a viable one with impeachment, no sitting President has ever been removed from office via that remedy.
At the end of the day it isn’t practical because a President duly elected by the people through the electoral college system can always say NO.
That is the reason Clinton’s conviction vote in the Senate failed. That and the lack of two thirds majority, but even if there were a two thirds majority the President is the Commander in Chief of one thee largest military’s in
world history. He tells them to jump, and they typical say ‘how high’. When Clinton bombed Iraq on the very same day that the articles of impeachment were voted for in Congress, Clinton was sending the Senate and any political opponents within his own party a very subtle and very important message... Do not screw with me. I am the President.
At the end they didn’t and that is why Clinton was not convicted in the Senate and why there has never ever been a sitting President removed by office via impeachment.
Nixon could easily have done the same as Clinton and said... Screw you. Instead he resigned from office before the Congress could vote for articles of impeachment, because despite the seething hatred and malice Democrats held toward Nixon, he was an intelligent and principled man who understood that a nation embroiled in the travails that the Unites States had gone through over the previous 10 years with the Vietnam war, the assassination of a President, the assassinations of King and Bobby Kennedy, the alarming rise of militancy, etc. That a country that had gone through all that, didn’t need a constitutional crises to top it all off.
Nixon saved the Republican party and he also likely saved the American political system from itself at the same time with his resignation.
So what? LBJ and JFK survived a ton of scandals because the media looked the other way.
You're right, and you could add, mucho liberal resentment for his senatorial campaign against actress/politician Helen Gahagan Douglas in CA.
Dean lied and pinned it on Nixon.
The gap in the tapes is right before Nixon says something like “And this might reveal the whole Cuban thing...” (Some of the “plumbers” were Cubans involved in the Bay of Pigs Fiasco under Kennedy.)
Dean's right - Fox and the internet may have gotten Dean's dirty deeds out there and exonerated Nixon.
Which means, what? A major voice that dares to say something different from the normal Lügenpresse liberal echo chamber?
Dean, who Gordon Liddy said actually ordered the break in to retrieve info on Dean’s wife, is a little weasel.
The media just doesn’t get it. Every time they trot out Dean and other shrill idots of his ilk it only helps our side.
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