if he continued in that, the president would discharge cox. so it s the same thing over again. michael, i want you to respond to reports this week, including from nbc news, that don mcgahn, the president s counsel, asked for some pressure to be applied or applied some pressure himself, rather, on attorney general jeff sessions, trying to convince him not to recuse himself from the russia investigation. help us understand the gravity of that. it s tremendously important and very serious, because the justice department is supposed to be independent of the presidency. as a matter of fact, the idea of having a compliant justice department has its roots in watergate as well. before the special counsel was appointed, special prosecutor cox, in april of 1973, the attorney general himself, and henry peter soernsion the head of the criminal division, gave private briefings to president nixon, telling him what the prosecutors were thinking, telling him what grand jury testimony had been, a
decision? he flipped in april of 1973 and began cooperating with the feds. his testimony was at the end of june. the senate watergate committee hearings and began by saying, it s so memorable. he said before i start, i want to say i hope that the president is forgiven. and there had been some advance notices what he would say would be important but what dean said was, you know, this is not distant scandal distant from an olympian president. this is something that s been run out of the oval office and once more, i ll tell you what nixon said to me and others. john dean testifying and it appears that mike flynn s testimony is going to be to the muller investigation to the special counsel office. i wonder if there is anyway to i don t know if there is anyway to look to history or analogy to figure out the import of the testimony if we never hear it. yeah, i think that s right
to testify to? how big did it feel? was the reaction to his decision? he flipped in april of 1973 and began cooperating with the feds. his testimony was at the end of june. the senate watergate committee hearings and began by saying, it s so memorable. he said before i start, i want to say i hope that the president is forgiven. and there had been some advance notices what he would say would be important but what dean said was, you know, this is ns nois distant scandal distant from an olympian president. this is something that s been run out of the oval office and once more, i ll tell you what nixon said to me and others. ondean testijohn dean testif appears that mike flynn s testimony is going to be to the muller investigation to the
you know, this is during the first year and this reminds me very much as it has others of john dean at the time of watergate because in the spring of 1973, richard nixon was doing a pretty good job of covering up watergate. it was only because his white house counsel john dean was worried he would be the scapegoat and he decided to cooperate with the investigation and he was the one that was able to go to the senate, go to the prosecutors and say, this is what the president said in private. he is the architect of the coverup. when john dean flipped, at that time in the watergate investigation, did everybody know what a big deal that was? first of all, did people know that he had started to cooperate? did people know in advance the kinds of things he would be able to testify to? how big did it feel? was the reaction to his decision? he flipped in april of 1973
and secondly an apology. i don t respect the type of journalism, the shabby journalism that is being practised by the washington post. informed sources say it was the watergate prosecution that set off the recent series of explosions and there are further time bombs in president nixon s hands. we re in late april of 1973, and i m really getting beat up in the press. we re going to make it. yeah, let me get up here to the door and i ll okay. excuse me. there we are. i m going to be following the unvarying practise of having no comment on this matter until its final disposition. i have delegations of fbi agents in and out of my office all the time, and all of a sudden it s dawned on me that i have a very serious problem, that richard nixon has a problem