John W. Dean

John Dean served as Counsel to the President of the United States from July 1970 to April 1973. Before becoming White House counsel at age thirty-one, he was the chief minority counsel to the Judiciary Committee of the US House of Representatives, and an associate deputy attorney general at the US Department of Justice. His undergraduate studies were at Colgate University and the College of Wooster, with majors in English Literature and Political Science; then a graduate fellowship at American University to study government and the presidency before entering Georgetown University Law Center, where he received his JD with honors in 1965.

John recounted his days at the Nixon White House and Watergate in three books: Blind Ambition (Open Road 2016), Lost Honor (1982) and The Nixon Defense (2014). After retiring from a business career as a private investment banker doing middle-market mergers and acquisitions, he returned to full-time writing and lecturing, including as a columnist for FindLaw's Writ (from 2000 to 2010) and Justia’s Verdict (since 2010). Donald Trump’s election and presidency resulted in John’s 12th book by return to American authoritarianism, which he examined earlier New York Times best-sellers Conservatives Without Conscience (2006), because authoritarianism is on the ballot in 2020. Thus his study with Bob Altemeyer, Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers.

John held the Barry Goldwater Chair of American Institutions at Arizona State University (academic years 2015-16), and for the past decade and a half he has been a visiting scholar and lecturer at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School of Communications. John is a CNN News contributor and analyst, and teaches continuing legal education (CLE) programs examining the impact of the American Bar Association's Model Rules of Professional Conduct on select historic events from Watergate and the Trump presidency with surprising results – see www.WatergateCLE.com