John Dean got a front-row seat to the paranoid treachery of President Richard Nixon. As the White House counsel, he watched the president lie constantly, engage in relentless subterfuge, and conduct his continual search for someone new to throw under the bus as the walls closed in around him. But most of all, he watched Nixon trample the rule of law in a desperate survival instinct, most prominently by engineering the firing of the special prosecutor leading the Watergate investigation in what became known as the Saturday Night Massacre.

So who better to turn to than Dean, as the noise grows louder that President Trump may also try to fire the man leading an investigation into him and his associates? Dean joined Anderson Cooper on CNN Monday night to offer a stunning assessment: Trump has already gone farther than Nixon ever did to obstruct justice.

This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

What I think we're witnessing is a very public obstruction of justice. He, as I see it, has already exceeded everything that Nixon did. He's really much more intimately involved than Nixon ever was in the cover-up...Trump is Nixon on steroids and stilts.

Dean's main reasoning is that Trump is doing at least as much as Nixon did, but earlier in the investigation and in plain sight. Before this very special era in American history, it was considered verboten for a president to comment publicly on any Justice Department investigation. That was to prevent the perception they were trying to influence that probe through public pressure—or that it would be a reflection of more covert behavior behind the scenes. Now, Trump comments on an investigation into himself and his associates on a near-daily basis.

Trump continually calls on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to launch an investigation into his former political opponent to muddy the waters. Trump apparently whines in private that Sessions is not doing enough to shield him from the probe. As a reminder, the AG is the nation's top law-enforcement official—not the president's lawyer.

And then there are the firings. Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre involved the departure of three people after Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox subpoenaed him, demanding tapes of his conversations in the Oval Office. Nixon responded, after attempting some political maneuvering, by ordering Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Cox. Richardson refused and resigned in protest. When Nixon ordered Richardson's deputy, William Rickelshaus, to do the same, he also resigned. Finally, Nixon got the solicitor general, Robert Bork, to do the deed—which only ultimately accelerated the Watergate probe and led to Nixon's downfall.

Getty Images

So far, Donald Trump has fired the FBI director, James Comey, as the FBI pursued the Russia probe. That led to the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, whom Trump regularly attacked publicly, in a decision we're supposed to believe did not involve the president's input. The president may now be setting his sights on a number of other Justice Department officials. He still regularly attacks the FBI, and his congressional allies have sought to undermine the agency with selective leaks, like the infamous Memo. Trump has publicly attacked Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, drawing suspicion that he is laying the groundwork for him to be fired, too. Since Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Russia probe, Rosenstein is effectively Mueller's supervisor. He could be replaced with someone willing to fire Mueller.

Further, Trump has publicly attacked Sessions in what many believed was an attempt to get Sessions to resign. The attorney general recused himself from the Justice Department's probe examining the Trump campaign's ties to Russia because Sessions was a member of the campaign—a reasonable attempt to observe norms around conflicts of interest. Trump has no interest in norms or preventing conflicts, and rumors continue to swirl that Trump will attempt to replace Sessions with someone who can better protect him from the probe. And now, of course, Trump has begun attacking Mueller himself, by name and in public.

This content is imported from Twitter. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

The Mueller probe should never have been started in that there was no collusion and there was no crime. It was based on fraudulent activities and a Fake Dossier paid for by Crooked Hillary and the DNC, and improperly used in FISA COURT for surveillance of my campaign. WITCH HUNT! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 18, 2018

This content is imported from Twitter. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

Why does the Mueller team have 13 hardened Democrats, some big Crooked Hillary supporters, and Zero Republicans? Another Dem recently added...does anyone think this is fair? And yet, there is NO COLLUSION! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 18, 2018

All of this, in fact, has more or less been done in public. Trump is continually interfering in an investigation, and firing some of the people leading it. Moreover, new reports, like this one from The Washington Post, indicate he has taken the gloves off when it comes to combatting the probe:

Trump is not consulting with top advisers, including Chief of Staff John F. Kelly and chief White House lawyer Donald McGahn, on his Russia legal choices or his comments about the probe, according to one person with knowledge of his actions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive conversations. He is instead watching television and calling friends, this person said.

Since Trump is not known for his impulse control, it seems increasingly likely that he is preparing the ground to try to blow up the investigation. That was essentially the assessment of Carl Bernstein in the CNN segment he shared with Dean last night:

The people I've talked to who know him best believe he is determined to shut down this investigation, to ultimately see that Mueller is fired. But more than that, that there is no report that really goes to the heart of his conduct—Trump's conduct, the conduct of his family, the conduct of his business organization. He wants this to go away on his terms, he sees this as part of a great battle in this cold civil war going on in this country today. And this is a great battle about the survival of his presidency, from his point of view, and he knows it.

Mueller's subpoena seeking documents on the Trump Organization seems to have been the galvanizing factor—along with the departure of some key, close aides—for Trump's pivot to all-out war. Whatever it is that his organization was doing, it is not something Trump is interested in the public seeing. That might also explain why he has broken with a tradition observed by every major-party candidate since Nixon and refused to release his tax returns. Or maybe Mueller's move just represents another moment in the probe's continual escalation—the straw that broke the generalissimo's back.

Getty Images

Regardless, it seems increasingly likely that Trump is looking to vaguely mimic the strategy of O.J. Simpson's attorneys, to file a sort of countersuit in the court of public opinion alleging a conspiracy by shadowy figures trying to frame him. All the while, other issues, like Hillary Clinton's emails or Uranium One or whatever else, will be thrown in the mix. The Post story focuses on the hiring of Joe diGenova, "a TV pundit and former U.S. attorney who was a longtime antagonist of Bill and Hillary Clinton." DiGenova has spent the last few months alleging on television that Trump is the target of an elaborate FBI conspiracy—one, we can assume, that involves The Deep State and its preference for Hillary Clinton in 2016. It's a strategy tailor-made for our age of hyper-polarization and the 24-hour news cycle.

Bernstein got to the bottom of it all, however:

[Trump] is waging a scorched-earth battle to make sure that he prevails here, with his base, and that the Republicans, in Congress particularly—inspired and held hostage to some extent by the base—hold the Republicans in Congress to the fire.

Ultimately, it will come down to Republicans in Congress. They are the ones able to provide a check on the president's power and behavior. They are the ones able to protect the rule of law in this country. Most of the dissenting voices come from Republicans set to leave office, because all the rest are terrified of crossing the president, and the accompanying prospect of having their base turned against them. Rarely do they consider there might be a few more important things than getting reelected.

It was members of Nixon's own party that ultimately put a stop to his madness, and history looked kindly upon them—as it did John Dean, who refused to roll over when Nixon's people put the screws on him. How will history remember the Republicans of this seismic American moment?

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io