Verily I Say Unto Thee...

More Winning! (By ‘Winning’, I Mean ‘Prison’)

By Wil C. Fry
2017.10.30
2019.01.26
Corruption, GOP, Government

Members of the temporary president’s administration continue to accrue federal indictments and prison sentences at an alarming and unprecedented rate. Well, technically, it’s only “unprecedented” for Democrat administrations. For GOP administrations, this is entirely par for the course.

Last week, longtime Dump cheerleader (and, not coincidentally, part of the Nixon administration) Roger Stone was indicted on seven counts and arrested by federal agents. Stone, who has a tattoo of Tricky Dick’s face on his back, was only the latest person with ties to the current administration to be hit by criminal indictments; others have already pleaded guilty or been found guilty. Following is a list of everyone I know of — as of January 2019. (Sources include NPR and The Guardian.)

Presidential Scandals

This chart, from Daily Kos, compares the number of indictments, convictions, and prison sentences among presidential administrations back through Nixon.

I can comfortably say it’s “par for the course” for Republican administrations because when I first published this entry in 2017, my goal was to fact-check a series of memes I’d seen floating around, memes that alleged GOP administrations were far more corrupt and criminal than administrations of Democrats. And I found the memes to be entirely accurate.

I began seeing the memes and copy/paste comments on social media as the Robert Mueller investigation (into the 2016 TAINTUS campaign) heated up in 2017. They all alleged that over the past 50 years of presidential administrations, there’s only been one prison sentence handed down for Democratic administrations, while there have been something like 90 for Republican administrations. And, very uncharacteristically, no TAINTUS supporters were countering this or denying it. I wasn’t seeing any sources cited either, which is why I went to look into it myself.

Even without looking, memory told me that the Richard Nixon (R) and Ronald Reagan (R) administrations were rife with criminal charges, convictions, and prison sentences, but I couldn’t think of a single Democratic administration official who was convicted of anything. I know memory is a funny thing, so I didn’t fully trust it.

Setting The Stage

“Fifty years” goes back to 1967 (from 2017), which is just prior to Nixon’s first win in 1968, so it includes the Democratic administration of Lyndon B. Johnson. But Johnson took office in 1963, so I started there. That’s now more than 55 years ago, and includes the following administrations:

I initially stopped with Obama, because the current grifter hadn’t yet accumulated much time in office, but now I’m including him — because if the social media claim is true, then Chump’s administration has already seen more criminal activity than all the Democratic administrations combined.

So, in 55+ years, there have been four Democratic presidents and six Republican presidents. Rounding off to years, Democrats have been president for 26 of those years (47%) and Republicans have been president for 29 of those years (53%). If “both parties are the same”, we would expect the criminal convictions and prison sentences among the administrations to split fairly evenly, with Republicans seeing slightly more because they held office slightly more during the period under discussion. Instead, what I found is that Republican administrations overwhelmingly produce criminals, criminal convictions, ethical and legal scandals, and — often — a slew of presidential pardons, while Democratic administrations mostly avoid all this.

Since it could be relevant which party controlled Congress during those years, I checked that too. According to this chart, Reagan, Clinton, Bush II, and Obama each saw Congress shift from one party to another (and Congress has just shifted from R to D during Doofus’ term). Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Bush I each saw Congress entirely under Democratic control during their terms. (In fact, Democrats dominated Congress from the Great Depression until the 1990s.)

Finding Sources

It wasn’t difficult to locate sources on this topic, though it probably should have been easier, given the importance of the topic. This Daily Kos piece lists scandals (that led to criminal indictments) from Obama’s administration back through Nixon, and includes the helpful chart shown above. More information is at Wikipedia’s List Of Federal Political Scandals In The United States, every line of which contains citations to credible sources, including major newspapers and news magazines as well as historical books and other archives.

My total counts (see below) differed somewhat from Kos’s, but not by much.

Ones And Zeroes

Only Democratic administrations resulted in zero criminal convictions or prison sentences, those of Obama and Carter. Note that during Obama’s terms, he only had a completely friendly Congress for two years; the remaining six years saw the GOP make every effort to come up with something: multiple probes into Benghazi and a yearlong investigation into email use, costing close to $30 million, found nothing worthy of even an indictment, much less a trial. During Carter’s term, there was one indictment, that of Bert Lance, the director of the Office of Management and Budget. Lance resigned immediately and later stood trial for 11 charges — all relating to banking activity before he was in government. Lance was not convicted of any of them.

Next on the “nearly scandal-free” ranking are two Republicans, Gerald Ford and Bush I, each with a row of ones. Ford, with the shortest administration on this list (never elected president, he only served the remainder of Nixon’s second term), saw only one resignation from his administration, that of outspoken racist Earl Butz. In all fairness to Ford, Butz was a holdover from the Nixon administration, and should really be counted for Nixon. In fairness to both Ford and Nixon, Butz resigned over repeated obscene and racist remarks, not because of criminal wrongdoing. His conviction came later, when he pleaded guilty to tax evasion from a 1978 income tax return (well after his 1976 resignation). So I won’t count Butz on this list. Only one conviction came from Bush I’s administration, that of Catalina Vasquez Villalpando, who was sentenced to four months in prison and three years of probation after pleading guilty to tax evasion.

Both Ford and Bush I were taking over from the two most corrupt and criminal administrations of all time (Nixon and Reagan, respectively). Bush I, for his part, issued presidential pardons for five convicted members of the Reagan administration. It should be remembered also that Bush I was also part of the Reagan administration — as Vice President. Despite his denials at the time that he knew anything about the Iran-Contra affair, and despite managing to escape blame-free from the whole thing, it is now known that he was closely involved and knew quite a bit about it. In his own diary, he wrote: “I’m one of the few people that know fully the details...”

So, by my count, we’ve got one conviction/prison term from Bush I, and none for Carter, Obama, or Ford.

Going back one president further than Daily Kos did, I found no charges or convictions from LBJ’s administration. (Some sources list advisor Bobby Baker’s resignation and conviction as a black mark on LBJ; however, Baker resigned from the Kennedy administration, a month before LBJ took office — he never worked in government while Johnson was president.)

So, five of the presidents produced only one prison sentence (of them, only Obama served a full eight years).

The eight-year presidency of Bill Clinton produced a staggering two criminal indictments: Clinton himself (for perjury and obstruction of justice) and Ronald Blackley — chief of staff to the Secretary of Agriculture (for perjury). Clinton was acquitted in his 1999 trial before the Senate, while Blackley was convicted by a federal jury in 1997 and sentenced in 1998 to 27 months in prison.

Now we’ve covered all four Democrat presidents of the time period in question, but only two of the six Republicans. And both sides are tied, each with one conviction and one prison sentence.

The Only Medium Fish

Only the two-year presidency of Troland Dump fits this category. As seen at top, five members of his administration and/or campaign have (so far) been convicted of criminal charges and two sent to prison. This brings the tally to Republicans 6, Democrats 1 for convictions and Republicans 3, Democrats 1 for prison sentences — with Dump alone accounting for more than all four of the Democrat administrations combined.

The Big Fish

According to the Kos chart, Bush II and Reagan are about equal in the convictions/sentences columns, though Reagan had more indictments. I won’t devote time to extra details, but here’s a taste:

Reagan administration:

I found 19 convictions there, while Kos somehow found 16. Quite a few of them avoided prison one way or another. I only found five that I could confirm went to prison, so I’m not sure how Daily Kos came up with eight. Either way, Reagan’s administration had more than all the Democrats combined. (There were dozens of other convictions and imprisonments during this time, but they can’t be tied directly to Reagan’s administration. Quite a few other Reagan administration officials were mired in scandal, but escaped charges by resigning quickly or turning over on their friends.)

The Bush II administration wasn’t much different:

As with Reagan’s, there were many other scandals listed, but the others I found were either not directly tied to Bush II, or never charged/convicted. I count eight that were sentenced to prison (Kos had nine) on 15 convictions (Kos had 16). And like Reagan, Bush II’s administration — by anyone’s count — had more convictions and prison sentences than all the Democrats combined.

Both Reagan and Bush II pale in comparison to the sheer criminality of Nixon’s administration. The Watergate scandal alone resulted in the indictment of 69 people, with trials or pleas resulting in 48 being found guilty — many in Nixon’s administration. Nixon himself faced no charges, though he did resign as president (the only president to do so), and was pardoned by Gerald Ford (which many see as an admission of guilt, since innocent people don’t need pardons).

I admit I got lost in the list of names and trying to sort out which ones could be considered part of Nixon’s administration, and which ones were merely implicated but not charged or convicted. I’ll go with Daily Kos’ count of 76 indictments, 55 convictions, and 15 prison sentences — about as many prison inmates as Bush II and Reagan combined.

Conclusion

I easily concluded that the copy/paste comment was true, even if the numbers might be slightly off. Regardless, this exercise was eye-opening and stupefying.

If you use my counts, the criminal conviction score is Republicans: 95, Democrats: 1, and the “sentenced to prison” score is Republicans: 31, Democrats: 1. Either way, this is overwhelming if you haven’t considered it before.

If you use Daily Kos’ counts, the scores are 89-1 and 34-1 — but keep in mind that they weren’t including LBJ or DJT.

So, more than 90 administration officials have been convicted of crimes in Republican presidencies, while only one came from a Democrat presidency (and you’ve already forgotten his name). Even if you subtract the handful that Bush I pardoned, these numbers are still staggering. And four GOP presidencies (each) produced more criminals than all four combined Democrat administrations.

Note: This is a 2019.01.30 update to a blog entry originally published 2017.10.30. Originally, it was merely a factcheck of a popular meme about GOP administrations being more corrupt than Democrat administrations — which turned out to be very, very true. Since then, I have added information about Donny Turnip’s administration’s multiple indictments and convictions.

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