All eyes have been fixed on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s potential collusion with Russia, with clusters of the resistance hanging onto the hope it will end with the president’s impeachment. But despite the parallels between Watergate and the ongoing Russia investigation, whether President Donald Trump colluded with the Russians to help defeat Hillary Clinton does not necessarily rise to the level of a criminal conspiracy, said John Dean, former White House counsel to President Richard Nixon.

Aside from the possibility of collusion, Dean added, another important aspect of the investigation is that the president “might have obstructed justice to prevent the investigation by overreacting.”

In the case of Watergate, Dean said, “there is not a scintilla of evidence that Nixon ordered the Watergate break-in or actually knew it was going to happen. But he certainly did involve himself from the outset in the cover-up. He was knee-deep in that.”

Still, the investigation “is really just getting underway,” the former Nixon lawyer said to The Intercept’s Jeremy Scahill, comparing it to the Watergate investigation, which lasted “928 days from start to finish, and obviously you have events that precede and follow both.”

Dean also commented on a separate, quieter instance of collusion with a foreign government that received relatively little attention: The Trump transition team worked with Israel essentially to undermine U.S. foreign policy, according to Trump’s former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty this month to lying to the FBI.

“It certainly appears that the Logan Act, which has never been prosecuted by any prior administration against any incoming presidency, is kind of central,” Dean said.

The Obama administration made clear that the United States was planning to abstain from a vote on a resolution the U.N. Security Council was debating in December 2016 that condemned the expansion of Israeli settlements. Then, “on or about December 22, 2016, a very senior member of the Presidential Transition Team directed Flynn to contact officials from foreign governments, including Russia, to learn where each government stood on the resolution and to influence those governments to delay the vote or defeat the resolution,” according to Flynn’s guilty plea.

Several news outlets later reported the “very senior member” of the transition team who directed Flynn’s action was Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and adviser.