high crimes

The first presidential cabinet member convicted of a felony while serving was Warren G. Harding's secretary of the interior Albert Fall, who did two years after his 1922 conviction for accepting bribes in connection with the Teapot Dome, Wyoming oil lease scandal.

Fifty-five years went by before John Mitchell, Nixon's Attorney-General, was convicted of conspiracy, perjury, and obstruction of justice in connection with the famous burglary of Democratic headquarters at the Watergate Hotel. Mitchell, to be fair, had recently resigned his office at the time.

Earl  Butz, President Ford's secretary of agriculture, was not convicted of a felony while in office, but was forced to resign after telling a joke on a public flight which was overheard and reported by the TV correspondent Geraldo Rivera, to wit: "The only things a nigger cares about are having loose shoes, a tight pussy, and a warm place to shit." In 1978, 4 years after his resignation, Butz pled guilty to income tax evasion in excess of $100,000, served 25 days in jail and paid the money back.

Two members of Reagan's Cabinet, Attorney-General Edwin Meese and interior secretary James Watt, barely avoided felony convictions. Watt pled guilty to a single, lesser, misdemeanor charge as he stood accused of 25 counts of perjury and obstruction of justice in connection with influence peddling at the department of housing and urban development Meese resigned in a timely fashion when he was being investigated by a special prosecutor for selling his influence over his long-time friend, the president.


The foregoing is an example of opinion writing with no opinion ever expressed.

Every sentence is an easily-verifiable fact.

To point to abuse is to condemn it.

Also, I find it interesting that all 4 presidents mentioned are of the same political party,