Dean briefed National Press Foundation fellows in October 2024: ‘Trump is Nixon on Stilts and Steroids,’ Says John Dean. 

John Wesley Dean III was born on Oct. 14, 1938 in Akron, Ohio. After graduating from the Staunton Military Academy in Virginia, he went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree at The College of Wooster in Ohio in 1961. He then attended Georgetown University Law Center and received his Juris Doctor in 1965. During his time in law school, Dean worked as a law clerk in the firm of Hollabaugh & Jacobs in Washington, D.C. He obtained a junior associate position at the Washington law firm of Welch & Morgan upon his graduation from Georgetown.

During the period 1966-67, Dean served as chief minority council for the Judiciary Committee in the United States House of Representatives. He then spent the next two years as Associate Director of the National Commission on Reform of Federal Criminal Laws before working as an Associate Deputy Attorney, General Office of Criminal Justice, Department of Justice, between 1969 and 1970.

On July 9, 1970, Dean became Counsel to President Richard Nixon. The position became available after Dean’s predecessor, John Ehrlichman, left to become Nixon’s chief domestic adviser. Dean was eventually implicated in the Watergate scandal and began cooperating with federal investigators in March of 1973 while continuing to work as counsel to the President until he was fired by Nixon on April 30, 1973.