When commenting on the state of ethics in politics, Richard Nixon famously said: “Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too.” And who would know better than Richard Nixon?
While he might be the most infamous example of a scandalous president, Nixon is not alone. The sad truth is that very few presidential administrations escape without some sort of controversy tarnishing their legacies.
With that in mind, InsideGov looked back at some of the biggest scandals to rock the American presidency. This is not meant to be a comprehensive list of every major political controversy, but it should give a broad sense of which presidents dealt with major scandals.
Without further ado, here are the scandalous presidents:
#25. Jimmy Carter
Major Scandal: The Lance Affair
President Carter appointed his friend and advisor, Bert Lance, as Director of the Office of Management and Budget. However, when Lance was charged with counts of bank fraud, he resigned from office.
#24. Zachary Taylor
Major Scandal: Galphin Affair
Several members of President Taylor’s cabinet found themselves under investigation over corrupt dealings with the Galphin Affair land scandal. At the center of the controversy was Secretary of War George Crawford, who resigned from office.
#23. Dwight D. Eisenhower
Major Scandal: Personal Gifts Controversy
While Eisenhower himself avoided charges of corruption, the same cannot be said for members of his administration, who found themselves under investigation for receiving expensive gifts. Chief among these cabinet members was Eisenhower’s V.P. Richard Nixon, who was accused of taking $18,000 from his supporters.
#22. Woodrow Wilson
Major Scandal: Newport Sex Scandal
Under President Wilson, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt initiated an investigation into allegations of homosexual activities at the Naval base in Newport, R.I. The investigation found nothing but sparked controversy for its more-than-questionable methods. Congress reviewed the matter and officially rebuked the young FDR and the Secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels.
#21. William Howard Taft
Major Scandal: Pinchot-Ballinger Controversy
Despite being chief forester in the Taft administration, Gifford Pinchot openly criticized President Taft and Secretary of the Interior Richard Ballinger for selling out Alaska’s coal lands. Taft responded by firing Pinchot, eliciting further outrage from the press.
#20. Gerald Ford
Major Scandal: Nixon Pardon
President Ford angered the American public when he granted Nixon a full pardon, effectively preventing the former president from facing any criminal prosecution. The decision raised suspicions of a political deal and would haunt Ford throughout his presidency.
#19. William McKinley
Major Scandal: Oregon Land Fraud Scandal
President McKinley appointed Oregon U.S. Federal District Attorney John Hall to investigate land fraud. However, instead of prosecuting the fraudulent land companies, Hall used his knowledge to blackmail them and was later found guilty of the charges.
#18. Harry Truman
Major Scandals: IRS Corruption, Freezer Scandal
Truman’s administration experienced several controversies, including gifts of deep freezers and fur coats to White House officials, and corruption charges against the Internal Revenue Service (then the Bureau of Internal Revenue).
#17. Lyndon B. Johnson
Major Scandal: Bobby Baker Investigation
Lyndon Johnson’s political career was almost thrown into jeopardy when the Senate began an investigation into close advisor Bobby Baker, who was serving as the Senate’s secretary to the majority leader.
The allegations against Baker included bribery and arranging sexual favors, but Johnson’s own financial dealings with Baker were being questioned. Eventually, Baker resigned from his position, and the investigation of Johnson was dropped.
#16. George H. W. Bush
Major Scandal: Iran-Contra Pardons
The biggest scandal of George H. W. Bush’s presidency was directly linked to his predecessor, Ronald Reagan. Bush Sr. granted clemency to six of the government officials implicated in the Iran-Contra affair, including Reagan’s secretary of defense. President Bush also denied knowledge of the affair, although entries in his own diaries indicate otherwise.
#15. John F. Kennedy
Major Scandal: Extramarital Affairs
Even after he married, Kennedy pursued other love interests as president. Marilyn Monroe is among the prominent figures rumored to have become intimate with Kennedy.
#14. Thomas Jefferson
Major Scandal: Sally Hemings Affair
During his first term as president, Jefferson was accused of fathering children with Sally Hemings, a slave at Monticello. The Thomas Jefferson Foundation conducted a report on the affair and concluded that Jefferson was most likely the father of all six of Sally Hemings’ children.
#13. John Adams
Major Scandal: Arrest of Matthew Lyon
Adams signed the controversial Alien and Sedition Acts into law in 1798. Critics were especially outraged with the Sedition Act, which restricted speech that was critical of the federal government. Controversy peaked when Congressman Matthew Lyon was arrested for violating the Sedition Act.
#12. Grover Cleveland
Major Scandal: Maria Halpin Affair
Cleveland’s run for president was almost derailed when he was accused of fathering a child out of wedlock during his affair with Maria Halpin. Cleveland confronted the charges head-on, admitting that he did in fact have an affair and that the child might be his.
#11. Abraham Lincoln
Major Scandal: Suspension of Habeas Corpus
Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus, which guarantees detainees the right to seek relief from unlawful imprisonment, wasn’t necessarily a scandal, but it was certainly one of his most controversial decisions. Among the people arrested without charge were a sitting U.S. congressman and the mayor of Baltimore.
#10. John Quincy Adams
Major Scandal: Corrupt Bargain
John Quincy Adams lost both the popular election and the electoral vote to rival Andrew Jackson during the 1824 presidential election. However, since Jackson failed to win a majority in the electoral, the outcome was decided in the House of Representatives, where Speaker Henry Clay used his influence to secure Adams the win. Jackson accused Adams of striking a “corrupt bargain” with Clay.
#9. George W. Bush
Major Scandal: Lawyergate, E-mail Controversy
In an unprecedented act, the Bush administration’s Department of Justice fired nine U.S. attorneys without explanation, all of whom had been appointed by President Bush himself four years earlier.
During the Lawyergate controversy, it was also revealed that the Bush administration had used Republican National Committee Web servers for millions of emails, which were then destroyed or lost.
#8. Barack Obama
Major Scandals: IRS Investigation, NSA Surveillance Scandal
President Obama has presided over several scandals in his second term. Among the notable controversies that broke was the leak in June 2013 that the National Security Agency was collecting the telephone records of tens of millions of Americans.
#7. Andrew Johnson
Major Scandal: Impeachment Trial
Andrew Johnson was the first president in U.S. history to be impeached. After Johnson violated the Tenure of Office Act by dismissing his secretary of war, the House of Representatives voted 126 to 47 to impeach him. However, the Senate decided to clear him of the charges by a single vote.
#6. Ronald Reagan
Major Scandal: Iran-Contra Affair
The CIA and National Security Council conceived of a plan to sell missiles to Iran in return for U.S. hostages, and then used part of the money received to fund the Contra rebels in Nicaragua against the Cuba-backed government. Confused? Reagan initially denied the arms-for-hostages deal, but later retracted his statement. In the end, 14 administration officials were indicted.
#5. Andrew Jackson
Major Scandal: Petticoat Affair
Jackson’s career as an army general is full of its own controversies and scandals—not to mention the fact that he fatally shot rival Charles Dickinson in a duel. His presidency was no different.
When rumors surfaced that the secretary of war’s wife, Margaret O’Neill Eaton, had engaged in extramarital affairs, tensions arose between Eaton and the wives of the other cabinet members. Jackson, whose own wife was the victim of vicious rumors, fired most of his cabinet over the matter, including Vice President John C. Calhoun.
#4. Warren G. Harding
Major Scandal: Teapot Dome
Harding filled his administration with friends from Ohio, who would come to be known as the Ohio Gang. Scandals involving various members of the Ohio Gang occurred throughout Harding’s presidency. The Teapot Dome scandal, which involved Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall accepting bribes from oil companies, was the most publicized one.
#3. Ulysses S. Grant
Major Scandals: Whiskey Ring, Black Friday, Credit Mobilier
The former Civil War general had one of the most scandal-filled administrations of any U.S. president. Most prominent among these scandals was the Whiskey Ring controversy, which involved the diversion of whiskey tax revenues among politicians and whiskey distributors. Grant’s personal secretary, Orville Babcock, was among the 110 Republican politicians convicted.
#2. Bill Clinton
Major Scandal: Monica Lewinsky
Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives for perjury and obstruction of justice for lying under oath about his sexual relations with White House staff member Monica Lewinsky.
Although Clinton was acquitted by the Senate and allowed to serve out the remainder of his final term, he agreed to a five-year suspension of his Arkansas law license and was subsequently barred from practicing law before the Supreme Court in 2001.
#1. Richard Nixon
Major Scandal: Watergate
Watergate began with the arrest of five men who, acting on orders from Nixon, broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate hotel. The attempted cover-up by Nixon and his staff resulted in 69 government officials being charged.
Rather than face impeachment, Nixon resigned from office, the first and only president to step down in U.S. history. Nixon subsequently expressed regret over his actions, stating that Watergate had evolved from a “political scandal into a national tragedy.”
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