Endgame by Eric Swalwell

Author:Eric Swalwell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2020-08-04T00:00:00+00:00

THE LESSONS OF WATERGATE

“Um, Olivia, some guy named John Dean has a question for you,” our twenty-year-old intern shouted across our office bullpen to my scheduler Olivia Elkins.

It was the last week of September 2019 and I was in my Washington Congressional office. For anyone born twenty-five years after President Richard Nixon resigned in shame on August 8, 1974, it’s no real surprise not to have heard the name John Dean. But any lawyer with an interest in great examples of courage in our profession knows all about Dean, a key figure in the Watergate scandal. Dean served as White House counsel for Nixon for nearly three years, starting in July 1970, and was part of the cover-up. Dean ultimately did the right thing, pleading guilty to obstruction of justice and serving as a valuable witness to the Watergate special prosecutor.

In June 2019, Dean appeared before the House Judiciary Committee to use his expertise to put the Mueller Report in context. “In many ways the Mueller Report is to President Trump what the so-called Watergate ‘Road Map’ . . . was to President Richard Nixon,” he said. “Stated a bit differently, Special Counsel Mueller has provided this committee a road map.”

Dean was not appearing before us as a “fact witness,” but he did have insider information—not on Trump’s crimes, but on some of the most infamous presidential wrongdoing in our nation’s history. Dean has moral authority when he talks about lessons learned and how to apply them to the present, and he understands what it takes to find the personal courage to take on power even at great cost to oneself.

“I would like to address a few of the remarkable parallels I find in the Mueller Report that echo Watergate, particularly those related to obstruction of justice,” he told us that day. “And I hasten to add that I learned about obstruction of justice the hard way, by finding myself on the wrong side of the law.” I’d had a good idea what ground he would cover, but it still raised the hairs on the back of my neck to hear him make the connections.

It just so happened that a student from my district was in Washington the day Dean testified, and her father texted to ask if our office could give her a tour. We could do better than that! I met the student myself and walked with her through the staff area to the hearing room. I opened the door that took you to the member dais area. I told her that was as far as I could take her, but she could stand in the doorway and have the member perspective of John Dean testifying to the committee. I wasn’t sure if she knew who Dean was, but she assured me she did. “This is history,” she said, and in the hustle and bustle of the moment, I came to appreciate how important Dean’s testimony was.

“The underlying crimes were a Russian ‘active measures’ social media campaign and

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