President Donald Trump condemned a House Judiciary Committee hearing at which John Dean—former White House counsel to Richard Nixon and a political contributor to CNN—testified about the “remarkable parallels” he saw between Watergate and special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.
Trump expressed disbelief that the Democratic-led committee brought in Dean—a vocal critic of the president—to testify as House Democrats appeared to step up their efforts to investigate and impeach.
Dean—whose testimony during the Watergate scandal helped topple Nixon—told the committee that Mueller’s report resembled a 1974 document that laid out the case against the former president. Dean pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice for his role in the scandal and was sent to prison for four months.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) said Dean’s testimony, as well as those from three other former prosecutors, will help his committee “draw our own conclusions about the findings of the special counsel and other evidence before us today.”
At the beginning of his testimony, Dean acknowledged he was “not here as a fact witness,” and said he only wanted to give “historical context.” He made multiple comparisons between Watergate and Mueller’s report, at one point stating that “in both situations, the White House counsel was implicated in the cover-up activity.” He also called for Don McGahn, Trump’s former White House counsel, to testify.
Democrats have sustained the narrative that the president was guilty of colluding with Russia and obstructing justice. In a final press conference, Mueller said his team decided not to make a determination about bringing an obstruction of justice charge against the president. Mueller also concluded that there wasn’t enough evidence to establish that Trump colluded with Russia.
John Malcolm, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told the committee that the president provided more than 1 million pages of documents, allowed key members of his staff to be interviewed, and submitted written answers to questions.
“These are not the actions of someone attempting to obstruct an ongoing investigation,” Malcolm said.
He said that in obstruction of justice cases, the most difficult thing to establish is that the accused acted with a corrupt intent. He said the president repeatedly expressed concerns that the investigation hampered his ability to govern and to engage in foreign relations.
“The president had a perfectly legitimate reason to be exasperated by the cloud hanging over his presidency from his investigation and for wishing it to come to a speedy conclusion,” Malcolm testified.
Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, in his opening remarks accused the chairman of trying to affect Trump’s re-election.
