Politically, it might have been easier if Jackson had followed his cabinet and distanced himself from Eaton. Instead, he sided with the Eatons – perhaps because he himself had been bruised by accusations that he had lived in sin for a time with his late wife, Rachel (the couple had married bigamously after mistakenly believing that Rachel’s divorce from her first husband had been granted).

The result was that Jackson, a man who had risen to power through his role as a forceful general in the War of 1812 against the British, found himself mired in a political battlefield. The Petticoat affair lasted 30 months until, finally, Jackson found occasion to demand the resignation of most of his ineffective and divisive cabinet.

The Whiskey Ring (1875-1876)

Ulysses S Grant

In 1875, Ulysses S. Grant, the commanding general who had led the Union Army to victory in the American Civil Warhad been president for six years. While personally working diligently to advance reforms, he led an administration that became synonymous with sleaze, backroom dealings and corruption.

The Whiskey Ring was one of the worst scandals to beset Grant. The story first made headlines in May 1875 after Treasury Secretary Benjamin H. Bristow realized that the millions of dollars in tax revenue owed to whiskey distillers would never reach the government coffers.

Instead, as part of a St. Louis-centered conspiracy involving prominent Republican politicians, government agents and people working in the liquor industry, the money was stolen. At the center of the crime was General John McDonald, a man whom Grant had appointed, in 1869, revenue collector for the District of Missouri.

Bristow and Grant’s Attorney General, Edwards Pierrepont, set about bringing those involved in the plot to justice. Not only did they secure 110 convictions, but they also recovered $3 million in stolen tax revenue.

Unfortunately for Grant, he received no political dividends from the work of his officials; his own private secretary, Orville E Babcock, was among those charged. And even though Babcock was found not guilty, Grant’s testimony on his friend’s behalf was widely considered embarrassing.

For many years, historians considered Grant a bad president, but in recent years his contribution has been reevaluated. For all his faults, Grant was a fundamentally honest man who governed in a post-conflict era marked by enormous unrest.

The Teapot Dome scandal (1921-1923)

Warren G. Harding

In the age of mechanization, the army needs fuel. Therefore, when William Taft, during his presidency (1909-1913), designated a number of oil-producing areas as naval reserves, it must have seemed like a sensible idea. But as subsequent events proved, this decision gave way to corruption.

The Teapot Dome scandal began in 1921, when President Warren G. Harding issued an executive order transferring control of three oil fields, including Teapot Dome in Wyoming, from the Department of the Navy to the Department of the Interior. The order was implemented in 1922, at the request of Secretary of the Interior Albert B Fall.

At that time it was legal to lease drilling rights without bidding, and in late 1922 Fall leased the oil production rights at Teapot Dome to industrialist Harry F Sinclair of Mammoth Oil. Fall leased the Elk Hills and Buena Vista reservations to another magnate, Edward L Doheny, in a similar manner.

Not only were the leases very favorable to the oilmen, but Fall personally benefited from the transactions, sums equivalent to millions of dollars today. But Fall was not subtle enough in his bribes, and his improved financial situation quickly attracted suspicion.

What followed was a slowly growing scandal that, in 1929, resulted in Fall being convicted of accepting bribes and sentenced to a year in prison. Congress has given itself the power to consult the tax records of any American citizen, regardless of their position. Although Fall was responsible for what happened, the Teapot Dome scandal continued to tarnish the reputation of Harding, who died in office in 1923.

Watergate (1972-1974)

Richard Nixon

The scandal that brought down Richard Nixon (and gave its suffix to each subsequent scandal) began on June 17, 1972 with a burglary at the Water gate Office building in Washington DC. At a time when the presidential election campaign was in full swing, the offices housed the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee.

From this small beginning, things gradually went downhill. Five men were arrested at Watergate. The money found on them was linked to the Committee to Re-elect the President – ​​CRP, an acronym that morphed into CREEP as information spread about slush funds and illegal wiretapping targeting Democrats – a fundraising organization for Nixon.

Immediately after the break-in, White House officials sought to cover up what had happened. This was due, at least in part, to the fact that they were alarmed by the links between the five arrested and the “White House Plumbers”, a secret special investigations unit charged with investigating and preventing leaks. of secret information, but who became known as Nixon. “repairers”.

Precisely how much Nixon knew in advance about the break-in remains unclear, particularly because of reports from Washington Post journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, he ultimately came under almost intolerable pressure. Nixon’s habit of recording telephone conversations and meetings also did not help his cause.

In 1974, the so-called “Smoking Gun” tape was released, proving that Nixon and his chief of staff, HR Haldeman, had discussed a cover-up as early as June 23, 1972.

Facing impeachment, “Tricky Dickie” resigned from office in August 1974. His successor, Gerald Ford, pardoned Nixon, but the former president’s reputation was destroyed forever.

The Iran-Contra affair (1985-1987)

Ronald Reagan

The idea that between 1981 and 1986 the Ronald Regan administration secretly facilitated arms sales to Iran is counterintuitive, to say the least. And yet, despite an arms embargo and the usual pugnacity of the two countries, the United States shipped more than 2,000 missiles to Iran without Congress being informed – at a time when Iran was at war with its Iraqi neighbor.

There were two distinct strands to the story. The first focuses on the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990). In 1982, as the conflict raged, the Islamist group Hezbollah began taking hostages, including Americans, in Lebanon. Hezbollah had close ties to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, and the administration hoped that in exchange for weapons, Iran would help secure the release of the American hostages.

What to do with the money collected? Vietnam veteran Oliver North, a member of the National Security Council, had a clever ruse to donate the proceeds of the sales to the Contras, counter-revolutionaries opposed to the ruling – and Soviet-backed – Sandinistas in Nicaragua. From the administration’s perspective, this ploy was necessary because in 1982 Congress decided to limit U.S. aid to the Contras, a group known for human rights atrocities.

In November 1986, the Lebanese magazine Ash-Shiraa revealed U.S. arms sales to Iran, and under political pressure, Reagan formed the Tower Commission to investigate what had happened. Although a final 1993 report by special counsel Lawrence Walshe found no direct evidence that Reagan had knowledge of aid to the Contras, it highlighted how the Cold war The warrior had “created the conditions that made crimes committed by others possible.”

The Clinton-Lewinsky affair (1998-1999)

Bill Clinton

In a strong area, this remains one of the most infamous statements ever uttered by an American president. On January 26, 1998, during a press conference, Bill Clinton said: “I did not have sexual relations with this woman, Ms. Lewinsky. There was only one problem: between 1995 and 1997, the president almost certainly had an affair with Ms. Monica Lewinsky, an intern.

The scandal that overshadowed the end of Clinton’s second term erupted in part because of another affair. In January 1998, official Linda Tripp learned that Lewinsky had given a sworn statement in the Paula Jones affair, in which Clinton was sued for sexual harassment (a case settled in November 1998), and had denied any physical relationship with Clinton . Tripp, Lewinsky’s confidant and colleague, had secretly recorded conversations that contradicted this denial.

Tripp gave the tapes to Ken Starr, then investigated Clinton on other topics such as the Whitewater controversy, which centered on the real estate investment made by the Clintons. With details as salacious as a semen-stained dress, the Republican-majority House impeached Clinton in December 1998. He was charged with “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

A Senate trial followed, but a two-thirds majority was required for Clinton’s conviction and removal. He survived and finished his presidency, although the vice president, Al Gore, took the blame his own defeat in the 2000 presidential election partly about what had happened. In 2018, Monica Lewinsky wrote an essay for Vanity Fair in which she looked back. She herself, she said, considered the affair a “blatant abuse of power” on Clinton’s part.