President Donald Trump’s behavior in the White House is more extreme than that of disgraced former President Richard Nixon, former White House counsel John Dean told CNN.
“If I had to channel a little of Richard Nixon, I think he’d tell this president he’s going too far,” said Dean, one of the central figures in the Watergate scandal. “This is the sort of stuff of a banana republic. This is what an autocrat does.”
Dean, who was fired by Nixon during Watergate, pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and then become a key witness for the prosecution, made his remarks after reports that Trump had pressured the Department of Justice to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Newsweek reported.
“This is a level that Richard Nixon never went to where you went after somebody’s personal well-being by a criminal prosecution,” Dean told CNN, adding that Trump “won’t back off” in his pursuit of authoritarian politics “until he’s forced to.”
Referring to the Nixon White House tapes that were instrumental to the Watergate probe that forced Nixon out of office, Dean said, “I’ve listened to all the tapes that are relevant. While I heard him break the law on some of those tapes, I never heard him do it by turning on his enemies and trying to put them in jail. This is really very, very heavy sledding.”
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