Free Republic

Scandals in politics have been motivated by personal gain, greed, love of power, lust, or simply a conviction that one's political agenda is so good it justifies bending the law. This ungodly behavior was observed by Machiavelli in The Prince (1513), who recorded the evil tactics of Cesare Borgia: "the ends justifies the means." In 1798, Yale President Timothy Dwight described how the Jacobins acted this way during the French Revolution: "Adultery, assassination, poisoning, and other crimes of the like infernal nature, were taught as lawful ... provided the end was good." Saul Alinsky advocated this in his nefarious Rules...

Great video

"History is repeating itself, and with a vengeance," John Dean told the judiciary committee, drawing a parallel between Watergate, which brought down Richard Nixon, and "Russiagate" which has bedeviled Donald Trump. But what strikes this veteran of Nixon's White House is not the similarities but the stark differences. Watergate began with an actual crime, a midnight break-in at the offices of the DNC in June 1972 to wiretap phones and filch files, followed by a cover-up that spread into the inner circles of the White House. Three years after FBI Director James Comey began the investigation of Trump, however, the...

RUSH: By the way, I think probably today they are grateful — don’t misunderstand me here — they are grateful for the helicopter crash yesterday that took attention away, ’cause John Dean bombed. The Jerry Nadler mock impeachment hearing bombed. We have the audio sound bites of that coming up. I mean stop and think about it. Going back 45 years, John Dean, who’s got nothing to do with anything happening today except attempting to stay relevant by sucking up to the media every day in any which way he knows how. That is what saved John Dean. In fact,...

With the return of John Dean to the witness’s chair in a congressional hearing room yesterday, false analogies between that incident and the current day Russia Hoax are everywhere in the mainstream media. But the one real lesson of that era is still valid today: Don’t trust the government’s Administrative State bureaucracy -- and in particular prosecutors, who are, too often, henchmen using their power and resources unethically, carelessly and ruthlessly. Too often they do not deliver justice; they hunt and destroy and cheat when necessary

Watergate witness John Dean, answering the House Judiciary Committee's call to testify on this Monday, told CNN what he plans to say at the 2 p.m. hearing. "What I'm going to try to do...I'm clearly not a fact witness, but I hope I can give them some context and show them how strikingly like Watergate what we're seeing now, and as reported in the Mueller report, is. "So I've taken several examples from the Mueller report relating to obstruction of justice, which is their focus today, and looked at those and made the comparisons," Dean said Monday morning.

On Monday, John Dean, the former Nixon White House counsel, testified at the Judiciary Committee Hearing called "Lessons From The Mueller Report.” Dean has no connection to the Mueller investigation but is a CNN contributor who has written a number of anti-Republican books in recent years and testified during the Watergate hearings. In other words, Dean’s purpose for testifying at the hearing had nothing to do with facts. He’s just the expert on the disgraced President Richard Nixon, who resigned from the presidency for his involvement in the Watergate cover-up. There was a memorable exchange between Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.)...

RUSH: Does anybody but me find it just outrageous that Nadler is calling John Dean up there and that the Drive-Bys are excited about it? (laughing) I’m sorry. Look! “John Dean to Testify on Presidential Obstruction!” What’s he gonna say? “Nixon did it!” How many times have I told you? The only thing these people have is what’s in their playbook from the past. These people on the left cannot innovate. So they’ve gotta replay Watergate here. So they’ve gotta go get John Dean, who’s 81 years old. As far as I know, he has never been in the Trump...

"The Colodny Collection", is the largest private collection of Watergate and Nixon related materials, including exclusive interviews with almost all the key players in the Watergate scandal. Watergate.com has for almost two decades been operating as an informational site for Watergate and Nixon related stories and materials. It now has an affiliated research site with Texas A&M University. Users of the sites can examine the evidence contained on the sites, and arrive at their own opinions as to exactly what took place in the demise of the Nixon Presidency.

President Trump on Sunday ripped Democrats ahead of testimony from John Dean, a former White House counsel for President Nixon who proved pivotal during the Watergate scandal. "The Dems were devastated - after all this time and money spent ($40,000,000), the Mueller Report was a disaster for them," Trump tweeted Sunday evening. "But they want a Redo, or Do Over. They are even bringing in @CNN sleazebag attorney John Dean. Sorry, no Do Overs - Go back to work!" **SNIP** Democrats in the House Judiciary Committee will grill Dean on Monday in an attempt to to shine a spotlight on...

**SNIP** Richard Ben-Veniste, a former Watergate prosecutor, told The Independent that any effort to keep Mr Mueller from testifying is likely to fail. And, the more it looks like Mr Trump and his team are resisting that effort – resisting the effort for Americans to hear “the truth”, as Ms Pelosi might put it – the more it will hurt the 45th president. “I think ultimately Robert Mueller will testify, and that the more the president and his attorney general seek to delay or derail Mueller’s public testimony the more of a political price it will pay in the court...

It’s beginning to look like Obama has been spying on all sorts of Americans way before he spied on Trump. The list of victims just keeps getting longer: Congressmen, reporters, probably judges as well when he was not having them smothered with pillows. This is way beyond Watergate, this is activity that endangered the very fabric of American freedom itself. If not for Hillary losing who knows how bad the state of the republic would be today? This was a crime against America, indeed civilization itself, because America is its best defender. It needs a label worthy of the crime....

**SNIP** She wrote a rare-for-her op-ed for the Washington Post about the Mueller report, saying it “documents a serious crime against the American people.” Hours later, it’s the most-read thing on the Post’s website. Clinton said the 2016 election was “corrupted” by Russia - an assault “bigger than politics” - and “what our country needs now is clear-eyed patriotism, not reflexive partisanship.” Citing Watergate as a precedent, she said “televised hearings added to the factual record and, crucially, helped the public understand the facts in a way that no dense legal report could. Similar hearings with Mueller, former White House...

Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., argued the special counsel's report "certainly" showed evidence of collusion and rejected the idea that President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign deserved an apology for the controversial surveillance conducted under former President Barack Obama's administration. When Fox News host Julie Banderas asked Swalwell about a potential apology, the California congressman said that special counsel Robert Mueller's report "laid out a multiplicity of contacts between the Trump campaign and Russians." He contended that although special counsel Robert Mueller's report didn't declare collusion beyond a reasonable doubt, it still showed enough evidence of troubling contacts between Russia and Trump's...

Which Conway? Come on, man. The Kellyanne-George public war over Donald Trump reached its zenith — so far, anyway — with the latter’s call to remove his wife’s boss from office. Writing in the Washington Post today, George Conway urges Congress to impeach Trump even though Robert Mueller found no collusion with Russia and declined to reach a conclusion on obstruction: Still, the special counsel’s report is damning. Mueller couldn’t say, with any “confidence,” that the president of the United States is not a criminal. He said, stunningly, that “if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts...

John Dean, the former White House counsel for President Nixon, said Thursday that special counsel Robert Mueller's report was "more damning" than the Watergate report. "I looked on my shelf for the Senate Watergate Committee report, I looked at the Iran Contra report. I also looked at the Ken Starr report," Dean said on CNN's "The Lead." "In 400 words, this report from the special counsel is more damning than all those reports about a president, this is really a devastating report." The Department of Justice on Thursday released a redacted copy of Mueller's report on his investigation into possible...

The great difficulty of interpreting political scandals was summarized by a newspaper editor in the western film, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Deciding not to publish the truth of an explosive political story, the editor justifies it by saying, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” We have certainly had many legends regarding political scandals foisted on us, especially since Watergate. Nearly every political administration has potential scandal lying just below the surface. There are always those in government who seek to profit privately from public service, and there are always those who will abuse their power. All...

Those Deputy Attorney Generals in the Obama administration who signed the four FISC applications could well find themselves derailed by Barr's investigation. FISC abuse could top Watergate as USA's worst political scandalAttorney General William Barr’s announcement that he would be investigating alleged spying on the Trump 2016 election campaign has shocked the conflicted anti-Trump mainstream media and an increasingly beleaguered Democratic Party. The mainstream media has known of the spying allegation for years—but did nothing to investigate it—Fox News excepted—and continues to be in a state of total denial of what could prove to be America’s worst political scandal.

He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. Isaiah 53:3-4 KJV This was not a coup against President Trump; this was a coup against you. The last thing the District of corruption wants is a true populist President in charge who can upset the money machine. Everyone on the side of the coup is...

Since Watergate, the Washington wisdom has always held that it’s not the crime, it’s the coverup that sinks a politician. But that’s only the case when the coverup fails. But what if the coverup succeeds? It’s horribly simple. The crimes are never uncovered and the perpetrators are never brought to justice no matter how serious their crimes may be. That is precisely what has happened because of the FBI and Justice Department’s coverup of their abuses of power and illegal actions during the 2016 election. In this case, the FBI and the Justice Department have succeeded in the most significant...