this room and the next contain my archives. it s magazines, newspaper articles, depositions, documents. everything relating to watergate. i was 31 when i went to the nixon white house to work. i have no intention of ever walking away from the job that the people elected me to do. the job forever changed the trajectory of my life. we re not on the road to fascism. but we re dangerously close to it. these are the events that are going to follow me to my grave. i told the president that there was a cancer growing on the presidency. we will never give up, we will never concede. we will stop the steal. here we are, 50 years later, and the events of watergate are as relevant as they have ever been. there will not be a cover-up, there will not be an abuse of power. weapons of mass destruction. open up, you traitor! my name is john dean. i was richard nixon s white house counsel. the morning of june 17th, 1972, i got a call saying they ve got this strange,
is the witness who vice chair liz cheney name checked at the end of one of those recent investigative hearings, which was itself a powerful move because there s rangling that goes on over time, so tub lick publicly calling out a witness is a last resort, but that s what congresswoman liz cheney did to name and shame a trump white house lawyer who she said was not fully cooperating at the time. you probably heard his name, pat cipollone. he had talked to the committee once, so he was not total by defying them like steve bannon or peter navarro. he didn t get to the point of recommending a contempt citation but at the same time he had not agreed to testify under oath. so cheney led that public charge, which we then learned was the prelude to a subpoena, and this all worked, and fast. now cipollone will be testifying tomorrow under oath on camera in the main format the committees use because you ve probably seen clips of the video depositions as they explore issues and build u
could easily win a national election. he had left the 1960 election which he lost narrowly to john f. kennedy with bitterness. and a sense the election had been stolen from him. this allowed the demon that is he always had within him to play during elections. it is about lust for power and absence of morality. it was all about holding on to power. no one can find out about this. whatever it takes. when the president does it it means that it is not illegal. i told the american people i did not trade hostages for arms. there will not be an abuse of power in this office. he develops weapons of mass destruction. we are in trouble. i just want to find 11,780 votes. and that s really when you reach a tipping point in a democracy. that s how dictators come to power. within hours of the arrests at the watergate, the nixon white house started covering up. i was the desk officer of the cover-up. i get the information and gather it and i share it and they were maki
we re learning that person is matthew pottinger. and he is set to testify, apparently this coming thursday. he served on then-president trump s national security council. but he decided to resign in the middle of the riot. one of my staff brought me a printout of a tweet by the president. and the tweet said something to the effect that mike pence, the vice president, didn t have the courage to do what should have been done. i i read that tweet and made a decision at that moment to resign. that s where i knew i was leaving that day once i read that tweet. a reminder of what that tweet said, quote, mike pence didn t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our constitution, unquote. when trump was out of sight from the public during the riot, of course, he had time to slam his on vp on twitter and did nothing to lower the temperature anywhere across this country, let alone at the capitol. and for all the hours and hours and hours of vid
and it s all on the record. but what exactly did the panel learn? does donald trump have a lot more to be worried about tonight? mr. cipollone did appear voluntarily and answer a whole variety of questions. he did not contradict the testimony of other witnesses, and i think we did learn a few things which we will be rolling out in the hearings to come. so, i think it was a, you know, a grueling day for all involved. mr. cipollone and the staff and the members. but it was well worth it. well worth it, says committee zoe lofgren on cnn earlier tonight. she did not get into specifics, but she thought cipollone was candid with the panel today and believes that his answers were, quote, honest. congresswoman lofgren did note, quote, some complications when it came to attorney/client privilege belonging to trump. but she said executive privilege was not an issue because the holder of that privilege is in fact president biden. in another interview, she said the former white house