Watergate veterans have seen this movie before about a president firing his attorney general to stop an investigation.

It didn’t work back then, and the consensus among three Watergate insiders interviewed by The Daily Beast is that it won’t work now. Just as the Saturday Night Massacre in October 1973 marked the beginning of the end for President Nixon, who resigned in August 1974, President Trump would grease the skids for himself if he tries to replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions with someone who would fire special counsel Robert Mueller.

“Mueller is the kind of guy who would say, ‘Fire me without cause, and I’m going to Court.’ And that could end up strengthening the Special Counsel,” says John Dean, Nixon’s White House counsel during much of Watergate.