>> as the country watched, white house counsel john dean turn on his president. >> i began by telling the president that there was a cancer growing on the presidency. >> dean testified the watergate burglars were blackmailing white house aides. >> the white house was now directly subject to blackmail and i didn't know how to handle it. >> i told him i could only make an senate it might be as high as a million or more. he told me, that was no problem. >> it was john dean's word against the president of the united states. >> nothing less than richard nixon's presidency may ride on whether the world believes john dean or not. >> most republicans continued to stand by their president. but then, from a little known white house aide, a dramatic twist. >> my name is alexander butterfield. >> mr. butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any

john dean testified, john dean had one of the most remarkable memories in the watergate testimony. the thing that really validated john dean's testimony was the existence of the nixon tapes. now, i don't think we're going to have such tapes in this case, so we're going to have to depend upon the john deans of the trump administration to testify. >> right. >> to that point, john dean, you know, we know that the white house is apparently most concerned about this witness, about this career public servant, bill taylor. can understand why? >> i can. he can be a very, very bad witness for the president. while he may not have had direct dealings with the president on these issues, that won't matter in the long run. he can, as was said, paint a circumstantial case that could be devastating for the president, that could only happen because of the president. one of the difficulties they're having right now is getting witnesses to continue to come up to testify. and one of the things they're going to have to do is build the case that it's the president that's blocking these. this taylor know

the president's white house legal counsel john dean has been fired. reportedly, dean is implicated in efforts to cover up the watergate scandal, and he may implicate ehrlichman and haldeman. >> good evening. i want to talk to you tonight from my heart on a subject of deep concern to every american. today, in one of the most difficult decisions of my presidency, i accepted the resignations of two of my closest associates in the white house, bob haldeman, john ehrlichman. >> he thought, by throwing out his inner circle, he would be left alone. he was throwing these people under the bus so the bus wouldn't hit him. >> justice will be pursued fairly, fully, and impartially no matter who's involved. >> richard nixon wants to control everything. but he's extraordinarily delusional. i mean, he really doesn't seem to understand that he's digging himself deeper and deeper into the crime when he's trying to dig himself out. >> we must maintain the integrity of the white house, and that integrity must be real, not transparent. there can be no whitewash at the wh

that's not his nature. >> john dean is back, we got your signal back. do you want anything to add to that, john, before i take a break? >> i'll certainly agree he didn't think about it. he shoots from the lip or from the fingertip. >> all right. well, john dean, bill mccollum, thank you so much. of course you're always welcome. appreciate it. >>> still ahead, another trump associate convicted of numerous crimes. a jury finding roger stone guilty of lying to protect the president. i have moderate to severe pnow, there's skyrizi. ♪ things are getting clearer, yeah i feel free ♪ ♪ to bare my skin ♪ yeah that's all me. ♪ nothing and me go hand in hand ♪ ♪ nothing on my skin ♪ that's my new plan. ♪ nothing is everything. keep your skin clearer with skyrizi. 3 out of 4 people achieved 90% clearer skin at 4 months. of those, nearly 9 out of 10 sustained it through 1 year. and skyrizi is 4 doses a year, after 2 starter doses. ♪ i see nothing in a different way ♪ ♪ and it's my moment so i just gotta say ♪ ♪ nothing is everything skyri

he was not as great a witness as dean because he wasn't privy to as much as john dean was. but this takes us into new territory, and tomorrow we have fiona hill, who i suspect we're going to learn an awful lot from about all kinds of things and views that happened at the national security council, including some of john bolton's views and actions. i've said all along none of us knows where this is going to go. we don't know the outcome, and i think that's even more true after today. and it's a grave situation. >> jim, give us the final word because carl took us forward to tomorrow. i said earlier at this point, if you look at the evidence and you don't think that the president has done something wrong, perhaps there's something wrong with you. again, that doesn't mean yhe should be removed from office or impeachment. but just from the facts, from the transcript, from the phone call, from the overheard phone call, the evidence is damning. >> it is. but you know what i worry here is that obstruction works in the end, right? you know, the president, the white house has banned

would you agree this was a john dean moment? you would know firsthand. >> no, i think john dean was a perfect witness who was privy to a lot more than mr. sondland was. nonetheless, sondland was a devastating witness, and i think that what was revealed today is that the level of corruption of this president has now been revealed in a way that's very, very hard for the republicans to deny. secondly, we have seen now the wheels coming off the coverup, the coverup led by the president of the united states and once those wheels come off we now see in stunning detail just what the real conspiracy to undermine our electoral process by the intervention of a foreign power solicited by the president of the united states has been. it is a really ugly tale. >> a really ugly tale. you also pointed out that john dean was a much better witness. tim, as we look at this, that is something the republicans quickly jumped on. yes, he may have said quid pro quo in the opening statement, but there was a lot that did not seem as damnin in their eyes.

listen, john dean just brought that up. this is really stunning, and it really shows how all eyes will be on sondland when he testifies publicly. do you think sondland will tell the whole truth about the conversations with this president? >> i think he'll have the choice between telling the whole truth or risking the kind of repercussions that roger stone suffered last week, and that was a very fortuitous verdict against roger stone because that's a demonstration of what happens when you lie under oath. and just coming back to this phone call that david holmes witnessed, don, i mean this is really kind of an example of scandal fatigue because there's so many scandals here, we lose sight of the smaller ones. this is one of the smaller and more significant ones. remember, in 2016, president trump, then-candidate trump, spent the whole year saying "lock her up." why did he want to lock up hillary clinton? because she allegedly transmitted confidential or secret material on a non-confidential or secure medium via email. but wha

dean moment of the watergate hearings john dean was president nixon's counsel he testified about the secret tape recordings in the oval office which changed everything he also said that there was a cancer on the presidency on ascii was today's testimony the john dean moment of this impeachment process. i don't think so today's testimony was cumulative of others in the diplomatic corps who have already given testimony under oath to corroborate the fact that the president of the united states had used congressionally authorized funds for the defense of the ukraine for his personal political objectives that is in order to release funds which he had ordered hello and not distributed to the ukraine the president required that the ukrainian president announce the investigation of joseph biden and joseph biden son in connection with mr biden's son's involvement with a reason a ukrainian. energy company b. what this is innate in my experience in that whatever you may say about richard nixon and that was a lot his. offenses involved u.s. citizens and actions against u.s. citizens using his po

you believe he is john dean before john dean became the i don't know dean thjohn dean tha know. how confident are you that eisenberg will cross over and say what is happening is wrong? will he break from the administration? >> that is so hard to predict. john dean was incredible in coming forward and also in his memory. he had the most phenomenal memory and had a detailed narrative before he knew there were tapes. and then he was corroborated by those tapes. so far in this administration, only the people who are career civil servants and career people what donald trump derides as the deep state are the people of moral courage, the people who are patriots coming forward and saying there is a threat to our national security and i'm afraid for this country. and that is what i hope gets communicated to all americans when they testify in public and hopefully they will listen. >> jill wine-banks, author of the new book the watergate girl, thank you very much for being here. >>> more a.m. joy oafter the break. y oafter the break. erty mutual customizes your car insurance, so you only p

john dean's testimony turned out to be entirely accurate. >> how much money? i would say these people are going to cost us a million dolla dollars. >> it was clear nixon's defenses were beginning to crumble. >> do you consider the crimes to be impeachable if they do apply to you? >> well, i've also quit beating my wife. >> the meeting will come to order. >> in july of 1974, in a packed hearing room, the house judiciary committee began to debate removing the president. >> make no mistake about it, this is a turning point whatever we decide. >> committee chairman peter rodino was a democratic machine liberal from new jersey. he was new to the job. some doubted whether he could handle it. >> a highly partisan prosecution if ever there was one. >> many nixon loyalists were angry and still immovable. for republicans, impeaching their president was tantamount to political suicide so they kept holding out for more evidence. >> the weight of evidence must be clear. it must be convincing. and let's keep to those two words. you can't substitute anything else. clear and

let's bring in john dean. john, good evening. i just want to get your take on the post reporting that barr, you know, he's helped the president a lot by misleading the public on the mueller report. then the doj wouldn't pursue the inspector general's referring on the whistle-blower, so why stop now? >> you know, i read that story, and the only thing that surprised me about it was that barr didn't do it. you know, it looks like he went a little of the distance with the criminal division turning down any campaign act violation problem, gave a soft press response out of the department. apparently issued a memo, but that isn't -- you know, that isn't what trump wanted, and trump's now grumbling amongst his kitchen cabinet that he would like barr to have done more, but he still doesn't want to mess with barr i don't think. >> we have the transcript, john, of bill taylor's explosive testimony, reading it on paper, you know, is really one thing, but now the world will hear exactly how this shakedown played out live on tv. what are you e

problem. >> it was john dean's word against the president of the united states. >> i have no comment. >> nothing less than richard nixon's presidency may ride on whether the public believes john dean or not. >> most republicans continued to stand by their president. but then from a little known white house aide, a dramatic twist. >> my name is alexander porter butterfield. >> mr. butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the oval office of the president? >> i was aware of listening devices, yes, sir. >> it was a bomb sell. >> the pressure is on the president to produce those tapes. >> had it not been for the tapes i'm convinced richard nixon would have completed a second term. >> instead, nixon would spend the rest of his presidency trying to keep anyone from hearing them. he fought subpoena after subpoena. >> i have never heard or seen such outrageous, vicious, distorted reporting. >> even as he tried to convince the american people that watergate was a press creation. >> what is it about the television coverage of you in these past weeks and months t

he told me that was no problem. >> it was john dean's word against the president of the united states. >> i have no comment. >> nothing less than richard nixon's presidency may ride on whether the public believes john dean or not. >> most republicans continued to stand by their president. but then from a little-known white house aide, a dramatic twist. >> my name is alexander porter butterfield. >> mr. butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the oval office of the president? >> i was aware of listening devices, yes, sir. >> it was a bombshell. >> the pressure is on the president to produce those tapes. >> had it not been for the tapes, i'm convinced richard nixon would have completed his second term. >> instead, richard nixon would spend the rest of his presidency trying to keep anyone from hearing them. he fought subpoena after subpoena. >> i have never heard or seen such outrageous, vicious, distorted reporting. >> even as he tried to convince the american people that watergate was a press creation. >> what is it about the television coverage of yo

john dean, let me go to you. it occurs to me as we hear about the white house talking about how everything is going even though witness after witness is painting a picture as what gordon sondland called a continuum of insidiousness of what they were pushing the ukraine team to do. what happened during watergate? did the white house continually say that everything was great and the witnesses were not hitting their mark at all? >> not really. they constantly had talking points they put out. nixon locked in on a defense very early. that he knew nothing about the cover-up until i had told him in march of 1973 and said before that i knew nothing. it was an outrageous lie and when tape came out showing he was in on week one, that blew all of his defense. so they stuck with that defense. more importantly, during the clinton impeachment, the republicans were incredibly well-organized. i happened to be sitting on a panel like this with barbara olson on one side, the late barbara olson and she would constantly pick up her

haldeman, john ehrlichman, and john dean. no one can remember the fbi being used that way before. >> the pulitzer prize committee today awarded its distinguished public service prize to the "washington post" for its coverage of the watergate scandal. "post" reporters carl bernstein and robert woodward were also singled out in the citation for their dominant role in the inquiry. than other robot vacuum. and the filter captures 99% of dog and cat allergens. if it's not from irobot, it's not a roomba™. with an incredible camera featuring night sight. (paul) the google pixel 4 has arrived at sprint it's now so powerful it lets you capture the stars. so switch and lease a pixel 4 and get the second one for $0/mo. wow! for people with hearing loss, visit sprintrelay.com. son, i need to tell you something. what is it, dad? if you ever have any questions, you call 1-877-522-5001. dad, i've, i've always wanted to hear you say that. i wish my dad would have said that to me. make father son time truly special with dos equis. keep it i

joining us now, someone whoform white house counsel john dean. also the man whose reporting alongside bob woodward helped make what was called at the time a third-rate burglary onto front. page news. jeff bernstein. cnn legal analyst jeffrey toobin, he's done a lot, too. >> not like that. >> gloria borger. cnn political analyst and "usa today" columnist kirsten powers. former republican presidential candidate and u.s. senator rick santorum. former obama administration communications director jen psaki. jeff, what was the standout to you? was it taylor's revelation about phone call that he was apparently informed of more recently? >> absolutely. because the one point that the republicans made over and over again, and i think an effective point, was that the two witnesses, as learned, as honorable, as honest, as they were, did not have direct contact with donald trump, and this is, after all, an impeachment of the president of the united states. if it is established that the president on the day after his notorious phone call with the president of

john dean. john, good to see you. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> good to see you. >> vindman says he was told not to discuss the call by eisenberg, and we know he testified that eisenberg recommended the transcript of that call be moved to that highly classified server. is that a cover-up? >> it certainly looks like one, don. in fact, i'm down here in new orleans just on this issue of what lawyers do in situations like eisenberg was faced. and his obligation is really to report to a higher authority what he sees going on when there is a crime involved. and he clearly heard a crime on that conversation, if he was on the conversation, or he certainly was reported one by several people, and he showed his concern about it by putting it on a secure server. he has really not fulfilled his obligation as a lawyer in the executive branch because he -- the united states is a single entity. and while there are different branches, it's all one government, don. and he had an obligation and still does to repo

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this was called the john dean moment. i want to get your reaction. >> i heard him firsthand in the senate. i watched it from the prosecutor's office at the time. this was not completely a john dean moment. sondland certainly put the screws to this whole issue and certainly provided major prove there was a bribery extortion scheme. if you take what david holmes said which was we overheard the conversation with sondland in the restaurant which you could hear because he had to hold the phone away. it was obvious that sondland was trying to back himself away from direct conversations from donald trump. as john dean testified, when you have a conversation with the president of the united states, that's not something you forget. john dean who went to prison was counsel to the president of the united states. he didn't have that much conversations with richard nixon. he was able to detail conversations he had down to the most minute detail. at the time, he had no idea there was this taping system. everybody was saying is he telli

absolutely. >> and the judge goes on, john dean, to say it's not just a lawyer. it's not just a domestic policy adviser, not just a foreign policy adviser. any white house employee is covered by this ruling. so if you are john bolton watching this tonight, what do you think he thinks about this, john? >> well, he's got to be doing some serious thinking about it because he is directly involved, and he could easily volunteer to come forward. he could easily say, based on this ruling, i'm now going to go testify. i'm no longer a white house employee. i think i have things to say that are unrelated to executive privilege. he could claim -- he's an attorney. he knows there is a crime/fraud exception to any of his conversations where if he has knowledge of criminal activity, he can go in and testify about it. so if he wants to, he can come forward and do so without this later case that he is connected with and another judge in the same court, and he could proceed. it's an excellent opinion incidentally, john. it's a strong opinion. she says, we've been here, done this

so one witness after another -- everybody alive today can remember when john dean said, "what did you tell the president ? i told the president there was a cancer on the presidency." you could hear a kind of unanimous gasp in the hearings and around the country. you knew from that we were on to something different from -- president johnson in 1866 was impeached. amy: 1868. >> because he had fired the secretary of war. that was the charge against him. this was not a cancer on the presidency.. suddenly, you realize that something was metastasizing politically that we had better pay attention to. and john dean realized this telling the truth was only way out of the whole end of which the white house had dug itself. one coat s some of your statemes recently, you've been talking about the importancnce of that o many lies that we have been exposed to come actually undermining our democracy. could you expand on that? >> all presidents alive. they do so tactically and strategically. franklin roosevelt lied to convince the couple to go along. all presidents lie. but not all presidents lie syst

joining us now are john dean, david gergen, nia-malika henderson, jeffrey toobin, and scott jennings. jeff, i mean, there was clearly a reason that the democrats saved fiona hill for the last witness. >> if you have a helen mirren bad ass, you put her at the end. it was -- and just an extraordinary performance. and also, just as a citizen, i think you had to feel good about the public servants who work for the united states in anonymity throughout this, you know, the foreign service officers, the people who -- i mean, these were incredibly impressive. >> an impressive bunch. by the way, that foreign service exam is hard. >> very hard. >> we don't want to talk about your cia history. >> oh, sorry, i didn't mean to say that. >> i interned. i was a waiter, too. no one talks about that. >> but you know, the facts are not in dispute here. i mean, what the democrats did over these two weeks was to show overwhelmingly, completely, thoroughly, that what happened here was the president of the united states said to his staff, i have one priority with ukraine and it has nothing to do with the na

and john dean came up with a funny number, he said a million dollars. which, you know, if you've seen austin powers, and instead of the president saying, oh, my god, this is outrageous. he says, well, you know, we can find that. you wouldn't have had that on tape. you would have just had john dean's word against richard nixon's and when it's the word of a staff who is facing imprisonment versus the president, the american people choose the president. so i think nixon would have ended his term. >> let's talk about what happens when an extrovert in an extrovert's job fine finds himself facing impeachment. the point has been made that it was 80 years before the first impeachment. another century before the second. what are we to make of the fact it was 25 years between nixon's impeachment and bill clinton's? >> it's interesting because you had people that had been involved in the previous impeachment now engaged in that same issue. that didn't happen in nixon. no one in the nixon case had been involved in the johnson case in. this case, first lady herself

back with me max boot and john dean. okay, so, max, here we go. this -- john bolton is saying -- he's claiming that the white house froze him out of his twitter account. reporters caught up with him tonight. watch this and then we'll talk. >> they attached software to it. and twitter unattached the software to it. >> are you concerned they're trying to stop you from testifying? >> i don't know what -- you'll have to ask the white house. but i can say definitively we have regained control of the twitter account. twitter detached the white house software. >> can we call it twitterigate, bolten gate, but he said he was told by twitter some sort of software had been installed on his account. the function of that software not clear. give me your reaction because the president today denied the white house had frozen bolton's account. what do you think? >> i don't know, don, because this is so minor. and there's concern when an official leaves the white house that their twitter account is public property and they have to create a new one. the larger issu

back with me max boot and john dean. so, here we go. this john bolton is saying he's claiming lt white house froze him out of his twitter account. reporters caught up with him. >> they attached software to it. and twitter unattached the software. >> are you concerned they are trying to stop you from testifies? >> ask the white house. i can say we have regained control of the twitter account. twitter detached the white house software. >> so i guess we can call it twitter gate. bolton was told by twitter that some sort of software had been installed on his account. the function is not clear. so give me your reaction to because president trump earlier today denied the white house had frozen his account. what do you think? >> i don't know. this is so minor and i think there's an issue with one officials leave the white house that their twitter account is public property and create a new one. frankly this is not a huge issue to me the larger issue is bolton going to testify. >> the twitter account is not stopping him from testifying. >> noth

about john dean. right? john dean pup see him on cnn now opining on our current state of fairs. a star witness in watergate. he believes if richard nixon were going through an impeachment inquiry today he probably would not have been forced out of the white house. do you agree with that? >> it's entirely reasonable when you consider what really forced nixon out what we like to refer to as the smoking gun tape. to say the tape essentially unpossible to dispute that we heard the president's voice on the tape essentially admitting to the things he denied for over a year. if the country in 1974 as waibel -- able to look at one piece of evidence and agreed it said the same thing, what piece of evidence can we find in our scattered discussion today, 2019, everyone in country not only could agree what it meant but agree it actually was true? in a time now we're dealing with a different facts nthan 1974. nixon argued, what he had done, didn't exist or swha it said it did or wasn't his voice, a way to get away with it today. >> thank you for your insight. jeffrey engle. good to have you

dean, former republican congressman charlie dent. it has been a busy news day going through the transcripts from two top white house officials. carrie, start with you, witness after witness testifying they have these concerns about giuliani. what do you make of this, of all of the officials testifying that they knew what giuliani was up to, they had concerns. >> they did. well, because there was an individual, rudy giuliani, who was not in government, who was doing things from their perspective as far as state department officials or white house officials working on national security related to ukraine, that he was stepping into interfering with what they were trying to carry out at legitimate foreign policy. on one hand you have a person not in government at all that's interfering in national security interests, but then the second thing that it tells me is that there were a lot of people in the white house who knew what was going on, and it took the whistle-blower to actually report it through an official channel and start the fact

and when the senate watergate investigation started, nobody knew, including john dean that john dean would be testifying. no one knew where it was going to go. whereas what we're seeing now in a sense is quite different. it's been played out in television, but there is a sense, i think, that chairman schiff, there have been surprises for him but he has a sense of where this is going to go. in 1973, people didn't. one of the things they didn't want to do and i mean the leadership of the democratic party didn't want impeachment. the democratic leaders thought impeachment was something you never used. it had been over-100 years. there was nobody in office who remembered andrew johnson, and andrew johnson's impeachment was a failure. it was a misuse of the constitutional tool. and so nobody in 1973 was even thinking of impeaching nixon. it's nixon who pushed the country over the line. when congress started to talk about impeachment, it was a bipartisan effort to investigate. that's not to say republicans were ready to vote against their president, but they call agreed that impeachment sh

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last hour i spoke with former white house counsel to richard nixon john dean and i asked him, is this reporting the smoking gun? here's his answer. >> i'm not sure it's a smoking gun, because i think we already have seen the smoking gun in the memorandum of conversation that trump had with zelensky asking him to do him a favor and clearly mentioning biden and 2016. so that's, to me, always been we started with the smoking gun. >> carl, do you agree with john dean's assessment that we're already beyond a smoking gun? >> i think i first said, in fact, a couple weeks ago that the smoking gun was there at the beginning when the president of the united states released his own conversation, the july 25th conversation is the smoking gun. what we have surrounding it is a massive coverup of which this latest report is more evidence. what is the coverup for? it is to cover up a conspiracy led by the president of the united states and his private lawyer rudy giuliani to undermine the president of the united states attempting to undermine the free electoral process of the united states by engagin

dean. he was president nixon's former white house counsel. kaitlan, i want to start as we begin this week, we saw that list of witnesses, jennifer williams, the president attacking her over the weekend, setting the stage to draw questions about her and then gordon sondland testifying on wednesday. what are the stakes for the white house? >> it's interesting also because the president has been wanting to try this approach of undermining these witnesses, dismissing them and what their complaints or concerns have been. he's been advised not to do that. people thought that wasn't the right method to take, the right route, and instead try to talk about the distance between these officials what their results were and now you're seeing the president kind of take matters into his own hands going after not only marie yovanovitch but also jennifer williams. i think the stakes, though, back to your question are high this week because, of course, now gordon sondland finds himself squarely at the middle

. >> i want to bring in cnn contributor john dean. he was the former white house counsel to richard nixon who testified before congress about what nixon knew and when he knew it. as an important figure as there is in watergate. we just learned of a possible smoking gun here according to "the washington post" reporting at least. instead of tapes you've got emails. how big of a deal is this new reporting? is it a smoking gun? >> i'm not sure it's a smoking gun because i think we've already seen the smoking gun in the memoranda of conversation that trump had with zelensky, asking him to do him a favor and clearly mentioning biden and 2016. that's to me, always been -- we started with a smoking gun and this is just further corroboration. ana, one of the problems with what he was doing with military aid and the uncertainty about it is that it's illegal post watergate to withhold spending. this was an issue that came up during nixon's impeachment. he impounded funds. he reached back to thomas jefferson, warren harding and fdr to justify his

john dean thank you as always for your time today. appreciate it. >>> president trump today with lots to say on the impeachment inquiry including not wanting one thing. members of his own party have been asking for this, for weeks. >>> plus, former new york city mayor michael bloomberg possibly ignoring something very important and he considers joining the 2020 presidential race. what is it? stay with us. people, our salesw apply to only 10 frames. a new low! at visionworks, our sales are good on over five hundred frames. why are you so weird? for a limited time, get two complete pairs for $49. really. visionworks. see the difference. of millions of americans during the recession. so, my wife kat and i took action. we started a non-profit community bank with a simple theory - give people a fair deal and real economic power. invest in the community, in businesses owned by women and people of color, in affordable housing. the difference between words and actions matters. that's a lesson politicians in washington could use right now. i'm

john dean is the former nixon white house counsel. julian epstein was chief counsel for the house judiciary democrats during the bill clinton impeachment process. thanks to both of you for joining us. why do you think the democrats picked these two diplomats, career diplomats, ambassador bill taylor, deputy assistant secretary of state george kent, to lead off these historic hearings? >> because their credentials are impeccable. and i think that they will start to make the case that what you had here was, in john's case, a third rate bribery in the watergate hearing. this was a third rate burglary. this is a third rate bribery case. and i think these two very well credentialed diplomats will be able to make the case that what this was, was essentially a solicitation of a bribe by the president of the united states. >> what do you think? >> good points. they were willing to come forward. the foreign services is playing a very unique role here. they have the knowledge. the background. they certainly have the credentials. and they are ma

. >> that was john dean, former white house council to president nixon defending his former boss to the senate, while also admitting that president of the united states was a criminal. some 80% of americans watched at least part of nixon's impeachment proceedings. by august 1974 when nixon resigned to avoid being impeached 67% of americans say they thought he should be mef removed from office. two decades the country went through it again. 1998 bill clinton was under trial for an affair. they say the democratic president was abusing his office and there for a threat to american democracy. >> today, republicans, with a small handful of democrats, will vote to impeach president clinton. why? because we believe he committed crimes resulting in cheating our legal system. we believe he lied under oath numerous times, that he tampered with evidence, that he conspired to present false testimony to a court of law. we believe he assaulted our legal system in every way. >> but unlike the nixon impeachment hearings the mantle of americans were never convinced. by the end of the senate trial, which

joining me now is david gergen, carrie cordero, and john dean. david, i'm wondering what you make of the transcripts that have been released today. >> i'm very -- we should be very glad they've been released. it gives the granular view is much more sobering and dispressing than what we had heard before today. i think the details show you this became a cesspool. our own state department became a cesspool. it's one thing for an american ambassador to be called home because there's a physical threat to the ambassador coming from some thugs or, you know, rebels outside the gates. it's another thing to be threatened by your own government with your physical security being threatened when they asked her to come home. then the president in that phone call with zelensky, the president of ukraine, they started talking about her and the president of the united states says, she's going to go through some tough things. she felt, i think quite rightly, that was threatening to her, and she remains threatened to this day. anderson, it may take as much as a gene

but there is the office of legal opinion from the doj -- >> if only john dean were here. we could talk about. >> but putting that aside, would you like to hear from them? as a citizen, would you like the hear what they have to say? >> i will give you -- i'm torn, because yes, of course. i want to know the truth. on the other hand, as a former executive branch guy, i am protected by the separation of powers. >> i just want to make one point about this. you're right about it sometimes is accepted, sometimes it's not accepted. but presidents with integrity act to tell the truth and get it out there. when ronald reagan had iran/contra, he told everybody on his staff, all the white house you must comply with the request to testify and you must turn over the documents. and to sit there and say oh, no, no, we can't do that, we got to find a precedent here, a precedent there. when you've got an impeachment proceeding going forward and the country is in a grave moment and the president of the united states normally steps up to it. >> well, i would just say that what the republican

john dean, juliet kai yam, and tim on and off all they. thank you for joining us. >> what do you make of that, that the ukrainians are talking about launching investigations that could help the president? >> that bribery works and they do not want the relationship with the united states to be ruined or undermined because of a bad relationship with trump. so it means sort of two thing. one is -- i just want to make it clear that the ukrainian offer to start an investigation is an offer to make up an investigation. in other words there is no investigation to be had. so basically they are sort of offering or could be offering just made up stuff. so we shouldn't report on it as if there is a real investigation. this is to curry favor with trump. i think the other thing that's important is i think as reporters and analysts we are -- we should not minimize or should not focus solely on this being about trump and corruption. it is actually about the american voter and all of us. it is about the sanctity of our democratic process from foreign infl

let's get to the bottom line with john dean and cnn contributor. these will be different than what we've been used to seeing in terms any of sort of inquiry these days in washington. obviously, the first public hearings, and they'll be done differently. what your watare you watching f tomorrow? >> i'm curious how the republicans will deal with it. they have tried to make a show out of it when it's had sort of a semi public aura to it. they have no defense. have they collected a defense where they can go to the substance? i don't think so. and i'm also curious to see how trump is going to try to divert attention which he tipcally does in situations like this. those are the key things that have got my attention. >> one of the things that is interesting as compared to recent hearings is that lawyers will do the bulk of the questioning. why does that matter? >> well, they had to change the house rules to arrange that. had to give them 45 minutes. the chairman can then refer to a counsel and let him do that. they've got to do it because they can't get a

out front now, former nixon white house counsel john dean and nia malika henderson, joe lockhart who was press secretary for president clinton during his impeachment investigation, of course, and former presidential candidate rick santorum. you have sondland pointing this finger at rudy giuliani, and i do want to ask about the big headline tonight which is that sondland is now saying that he alerted ukraine that the aid was unlikely to unfreeze unless they announced investigations. is it at all mrauzic that sondland just remembered this point? >> i suppose it's possible. it's certainly an argument he could make now if he is ever charged with perjury. not likely would a prosecutor come back after somebody has corrected on that point, but he has so many other flaws in his testimony that i just think this sort of flags the problems with his testimony. >> nia, you have to say one thing about him. this is not someone that the president is going to be able to call a never trumper as he has dismissed other witnesses, that's for sure. is this a game changer in terms of the course of the inve