Former White House counsel to President Richard Nixon John Dean, pictured in 2006, said Donald Trump's recent statement was a "new low." | Getty Former Nixon lawyer predicts Trump presidency 'will end in calamity'

The former White House counsel to Richard Nixon — the only U.S. president to resign from office — is warning that Donald Trump’s tenure “will end in calamity.”

John Dean, the lawyer the FBI described as “the master manipulator of the cover-up” in the Watergate scandal, took to Twitter on Monday night to describe Trump’s statement on Sally Yates, a Barack Obama appointee serving as acting attorney general, as “nasty” and a “new low.”


Trump fired Yates on Monday after she said she would not defend his controversial immigration and refugee executive order in court. A Muslim advocacy group filed a lawsuit earlier that day arguing that the order, which temporarily bars people from seven Muslim-majority countries from traveling to the U.S. and Trump says is needed to prevent terrorism, is unconstitutional. Over the weekend, it prompted waves of protests and confusion at airports across the country.

Noting the turbulence that characterized Trump’s first week in office, Dean predicted that his presidency will end in disaster.

“The way the Trump presidency is beginning it is safe to say it will end in calamity,” Dean wrote. “It is almost a certainty. Even Republicans know this!”