On Tuesday's edition of CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360," former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean said that President Donald Trump's Ukraine scandal has all the makings of a criminal conspiracy — and that the Justice Department needs to immediately investigate the actors in the Ukraine conspiracy.
"John, I want to read you part of what [EU] Ambassador [Gordon] Sondland said during his testimony last week," said Cooper. "He said, 'Inviting a foreign government to undertake investigations for the purpose of influencing an upcoming U.S. election would be wrong. Withholding foreign aid in order to pressure a foreign government to take such steps would be wrong. I did not and would not ever participate in such undertakings.' Now, according to Taylor’s testimony today, I mean that’s exactly what he did at the behest of President Trump."
"Certainly sounds that way, Anderson," said Dean, who accepted a plea bargain in the Watergate scandal. "But what we have here to me is most striking about Taylor’s testimony, he's describing a conspiracy that's in operation. And they — he gets a little bit of information about what is actually going on, but he certainly doesn’t become a co-conspirator and doesn’t like what he learns about that conspiracy. So I think that it’s also striking that the Justice Department is ignoring this whole conspiracy, which is in a sense is still ongoing. If it’s not ended soon we’ll know. But I suspect that it’s winding up at this point. Anyway, it’s devastating testimony. Sondland has problems. He has to come in and either recant or he may be prosecuted."
"Do you think the Justice Department should investigate, I mean in what way?" asked Cooper.
"Well, they — when they — when this case was referred initially they took a pass, saying they don’t see anything amiss here. That’s just — that’s absurd," said Dean. "Their not investigating is almost aiding and abetting the conspiracy. The fact that Barr knows they are not investigating it and turned it down. It got turned down apparently at the assistant attorney general level in the criminal division, and did it obviously because they knew the center of the conspiracy is the president of the United States, just like the Watergate cover-up."
Watch below:
