TAMPA, Fla. — When a New York jury convicted former President Donald Trump of 34 crimes on Thursday, it put the United States into uncharted territory with a former president now a convicted criminal.
While that is a first, it's not the first time a President or Vice President has been under criminal investigation. Those previous instances could foreshadow some of what may be to come for the United States.
The example many will point to when it comes to criminal activity and the presidency is former President Richard Nixon.
As the Watergate scandal was in its early days, Nixon was running for a second term. Nixon would win the 1972 election in November as the Watergate scandal continued to percolate in Washington, D.C.
By 1974, the scandal had already taken down members of the Nixon Administration and was engulfing the White House. Nixon eventually had a key element to the scandal, tapes of his meetings in the White House, go before the U.S. Supreme Court.
In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court ruled against Nixon and forced the tapes to be released. Once the tapes were out, Nixon's time in the White House was also over. He would resign the presidency on August 8, 1974, but he wasn't out of legal peril yet.
When Nixon resigned, Congress was in the middle of impeachment proceedings, and he was also under federal investigation. However, that was all quashed when President Gerald Ford granted Nixon a presidential pardon for any crimes he might have committed as president.
Ford's pardon was ahead of any potential criminal charges, which was unusual at the time. Since then, Presidents Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Donald Trump have all issued pardons to individuals or groups of individuals ahead of any possible charges.
Nixon's reputation never recovered, and he was forever linked to Watergate, which became the biggest scandal in Presidential history.
In addition to Nixon, his first Vice President, Spiro Agnew, entered into a plea deal and resigned his office on charges of felony tax evasion in federal court related to his time as a Maryland politician. Agnew's conviction and resignation came approximately one year before Watergate ended Nixon's presidency.
Former President Bill Clinton was the subject of a criminal investigation related to a land deal called Whitewater in Arkansas. While President Clinton was never formally charged with crimes related to Whitewater, the investigation did lead to only the second impeachment of a president in U.S. history.
Clinton testified before a grand jury during the investigation and said he did not have a sexual relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Some would argue over the semantics of the question, but Clinton's denial was later upended when he admitted on television he did have a sexual relationship with Lewinsky.
The House of Representatives impeached Clinton, and a trial was held in the U.S. Senate. Forty-five senators voted to convict on the first charge and 50 on the second charge, both far short of the needed 67 votes to remove a president from office.
Clinton remained in office and his popularity went up after the impeachment in December 1998.
Going back further in U.S. history, President Warren G. Harding's Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall, was convicted of bribery in 1929 in connection with what came to be known as the Teapot Dome oil bribery scandal.
When he was convicted, Time Magazine said he was the "first felon in a President's cabinet in U.S. history."
With Fall's conviction, Harding came under increasing scrutiny, and it was revealed he had a mistress and also an out-of-wedlock daughter with a separate mistress.
Harding was never directly implicated in Teapot Dome, but his reputation never recovered, and he died in 1923.
Finally, President Ulysses S. Grant was reportedly taken into police custody for speeding with his horse-drawn wagon in Washington, D.C. However, according to the National Park Service, it is unclear if it happened.
Trump's conviction was a historical first. The remaining question will be how the American voters respond.
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