John Dean, the White House counsel for former President Richard Nixon, will testify Monday before the House Judiciary Committee about special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
The hearing is the first in a "series of hearings," according to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-New York, that will explore the claims in Mueller's report that President Donald Trump may have obstructed justice during Mueller's investigation.
Titled "Lessons from the Mueller Report: Presidential Obstruction and Other Crimes," the hearing was announced after Mueller said he would not testify to anything other than what is in the written report if he were to be called to appear before Congress.
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The hearing will focus on Trump's "most overt acts of obstruction," Nadler said in a press release.
Dean will not be the only one testifying. The panel will also include former U.S. attorneys and legal experts who are expected to talk about the issues of potential obstruction of justice.
The committee has had difficulty getting those close to Trump to testify before the panel. Despite being subpoenaed to appear, both U.S. Attorney General William Barr and former White House counsel Don McGahn have refused to testify before the committee. The committee is expected to vote Tuesday to hold the two in contempt of Congress.
Dean served as White House counsel during Nixon’s second term and was part of the Watergate scandal that led to Nixon’s resignation in August of 1974.
Dean pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice in 1973 and agreed to cooperate with the special prosecutor and testify against others who took part in the break-in – and the subsequent cover-up – of the Democratic National Committee office in the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C.
Dean was initially sentenced to four years on obstruction charges but had his sentence reduced to four months after he agreed to testify against former White House colleagues.
Obstruction of justice was one of the charges alleged in the articles of impeachment drawn up against Nixon. Former President Bill Clinton faced obstruction charges, as well, when he was impeached by the U.S. House in 1998.
The hearing is scheduled to begin at 2 p.m. ET and will air on C-Span 3. Go to the C-SPAN homepage and look at the bottom on the right side of the page to see a channel finder function that will help you find C-SPAN on your TV provider.
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