Nixon and the never-ending presidential crime wave – OpEd – Eurasia Review

August 8 marked the fiftieth anniversary of President Richard Nixon's resignation. Unfortunately, that anniversary gave little cause for reflection or lamentation about how lawless the federal government has become in the ensuing half century.

In addition to his Watergate offenses, Nixon was guilty of illegally invading a foreign country (Cambodia), maintaining the Vietnam War for political purposes and his 1972 re-election campaign, violating the rights of tens of thousands of Americans through the illegal FBI program COINTELPRO, condoning CIA violence and subversion around the world, and many other offenses. Nixon also founded Amtrak.

The friends of Leviathan have profited enormously from covering up, if not burying, most of the crimes of the Nixon era. The more clearly people remember Nixon's abuse of power, the harder it will be to convince them that the government is fundamentally benevolent and trustworthy. The media's version of Nixon regularly begins and ends with Watergate. It is typical of the establishment media to treat a crime against a rival political party as a more serious offense than the violation of the rights of tens of thousands of Americans.

Nixon resigned, knowing he would be destroyed in a Senate trial. But President Gerald Ford compounded the damage caused by Nixon's presidency when he granted his predecessor a sweeping pardon, effectively condemning future generations of Americans to be ruled by lawless presidents.

Ford's rationale for the pardon deserves a place in the pantheon of American political idiocy. In his televised announcement of the pardon, Ford stated that if Nixon were tried, “the credibility of our free government institutions at home and abroad would once again be called into question.” Ford also claimed that a prosecution of Nixon would “destroy the calm that has been restored to this nation by the events of the past few weeks” after Nixon resigned. But Ford's actions made it easier for subsequent presidents to disrupt the “calm” and virtually everything else.

Many people assume that President Ford pardoned Nixon only because of Watergate. In reality, Ford's pardon was so comprehensive—he forgave Nixon for every single crime he may have committed—that Nixon would have even been spared from being charged with genocide:

“I, Gerald R. Ford, President of the United States, pursuant to the pardoning power vested in me by Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution, do hereby grant an unrestricted and unlimited pardon to Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed, or in which he participated, during the period from January 20, 1969, to August 9, 1974.”

With Ford's pardon, Nixon was effectively immune from accountability for his crimes against the Constitution, Americans, and millions of other people around the world. Ford's pardon of Nixon set a precedent for absolute presidential immunity for any crimes committed while in office. Ford's pardon proclaimed a new doctrine in American law and politics – that a president can pardon another president for all of his crimes and murders. His pardon signaled the formal end of the rule of law in America.

The lesson that Ford's top advisers seemed to take from the pardon is that the government can break the law with impunity. Ford's former chief of staff, Dick Cheney, brought this doctrine into the W. Bush administration, where it helped unleash torture around the world.

If Nixon had been tried publicly and his misdeeds fully laid out for the American public, it might have been far more difficult for subsequent presidents to cover up their crimes. Politicians who remember Nixon's punishment and humiliation might not have had to lie the country into unnecessary foreign wars for as long. If Ford was so determined to pardon his benefactor, he should have had the decency to wait until the evidence was on the table.

Ford's extensive use of the pardon power paved the way for George HW Bush's Iran-Contra pardons, which largely thwarted the investigation of special counsel Lawrence Walsh. On Christmas Eve 1992, Bush pardoned six Reagan administration officials for their roles in the Iran-Contra deal, the illegal arms-hostage deal that overshadowed the final years of Ronald Reagan's presidency. Former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger was scheduled to go on trial two weeks later for lying to Congress. University of California professor Eric Rauchway stated that Bush's “pardons has done more to prevent future criminalpresidencies even than Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon.” If Walsh's investigation had led to Bush's conviction, Bush's reputation might have been so damaged that no other Bush would have been able to ascend to the presidency.

President Bill Clinton built on these precedents and issued a flood of pardons on his last day in office, including two former Cabinet members, his brother Roger, his Whitewater colleague Susan McDougal (whose silence helped save Clinton), and former Congressman Mel Reynolds (who had been convicted of having sex with a 16-year-old campaign aide and of bank and wire fraud). slatecondemned Clinton's pardon of fugitive billionaire Marc Rich, who was charged with tax evasion, wire fraud, organized crime and trading with the enemy, as “the most unjust presidential pardon in American history.” Rich's pardon was facilitated by Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder, who smuggled the pardon effort past the normal Justice Department checks and balances. (Holder was reportedly the key factor in selecting Kamala Harris's vice presidential running mate this month.)

Trump issued a spate of pardons in his final weeks in office that boosted his profile, including 143 on his last day. Trump pardoned political crooks, foreign agents, some of his prominent supporters, and a founder of Death Row Records. A White House press release justified the pardon of notoriously corrupt Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick by saying he “taught public speaking classes and led Bible study groups with his fellow inmates.” Plus, the guy is from a swing state that will run in the next presidential election.

Were Friedrich Hayek still alive, he might add a few paragraphs on the pardon power of American presidents to his famous chapter “Why the Worst Get the Upper Hand.” Ford's blanket pardon of Nixon helped transform America into a democracy of impunity, where rulers pay no price for their misdeeds. Presidential pardons often exclude the truth: the chances of learning the facts about official crimes drop by 98% when the threat of prosecution has been removed.

• An earlier version of this article was published by the Libertarian Institute