How Richard Nixon's pardon fueled Donald Trump's fight

WASHINGTON: Fifty years ago, newly elected President Gerald Ford was simply fed up with questions about the legal fate of his resigned predecessor, Richard Nixon.

And so, on September 8, 1974, Ford pardoned Nixon – triggering a political and legal earthquake that still resonates half a century later, in the age of Donald Trump.

In the eyes of some legal experts, the fact that Nixon was never tried on Watergate charges encouraged future presidents, especially the maverick Trump, to test the system.

“I think if Richard Nixon had been convicted of a crime, it might have deterred his successors from pushing the boundaries of legality,” says Barb McQuade, a former Obama-era federal prosecutor and now a law professor at the University of Michigan.

Ford's pardon of Nixon also played a role in the Supreme Court's recent decision to grant presidents immunity from prosecution for acts deemed “official.” McQuade said, “Now we're in a world where it's actually the case that if the president does something, it's not illegal, at least in the course of official conduct.”

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As Trump faces sentencing in the New York hush money trial later this year – and the 2020 election trials are still pending – Ford's pardon of Nixon will continue to be a central issue in American jurisprudence and politics.

“We certainly haven’t heard the last of Ford’s pardon,” said Ford biographer Richard North Smith.

A “complete, free and absolute pardon”

Ford was plagued by many questions immediately after taking office on August 9, 1974, the morning after Nixon announced his resignation as president.

Ford, wanting to put Nixon and Watergate behind him and the country, decided to seek a pardon even though Nixon had not been formally charged. “You can't pull a Band-Aid off slowly,” Ford said at the time.

Without the pardon, Nixon would have been tried for obstruction of justice. The charges against him were based on an attempt to cover up the “dirty tricks” of Nixon's campaign, including the break-in at the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate building in Washington, DC in 1972.

Ford doubted that Nixon would get a fair trial and feared that an indictment and jury trial of a former president would roil and divide much of the country. As it turned out, that prospect was put off for decades – until Trump went on trial in New York City in 2024.

“It will be months and perhaps years before Richard Nixon can have a fair trial before a jury,” Ford said as he granted his predecessor a “full, free and absolute pardon.”

The announcement, made on a Sunday morning, shocked the political world.

Critics, including Republicans, said Ford seemed more afraid that a Nixon trial would jeopardize his own re-election. They also wondered whether Ford had made some kind of “deal” with Nixon, something the new president vehemently denied in his testimony before Congress.

Then-Senator Walter Mondale (D-Minnesota), later Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate, said, “We don't even know what acts of Mr. Nixon the President is pardoning,” and may never know.

“Without the help of the legal process, we may never know the full extent of Nixon's complicity in the worst political scandal in American history, even though the pardon itself is further evidence of his direct involvement,” Mondale said at the time.

Ford's first press secretary, Jerald terHorst, resigned over the pardon, a decision that also contributed to Ford's loss in the 1976 presidential election to Democratic former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter.

As the years went by, however, Ford heard more and more praise for his pardon. In 2001, he received the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award.

“President Ford led this country in one of its darkest hours and, in his effort to heal a divided nation, made a very difficult decision that many believe could cost him the presidency,” said the statement from Caroline Kennedy, president of the Kennedy Library Foundation.

Ford was also convinced for a long time that Nixon had admitted his guilt by accepting the pardon.

The pardon and Trump

In the Trump era, criticism of Ford's pardon has been revived as Trump prepares for his imminent conviction in the hush money case.

McQuade, author of “Attack from Within: How Disinformation Sabotaged America,” said “we will never know how history would have turned out” if Ford had not pardoned Nixon and he had to stand trial for Watergate.

Still, it's safe to assume that President Trump felt emboldened by the lack of accountability for his alleged criminal conduct, she said.

When Ford issued his pardon, he said Nixon's acceptance meant an admission of guilt. That interpretation is now being challenged because the Supreme Court grants presidents immunity from prosecution for “official” acts.

When the Supreme Court considered the case, several lawyers argued that Nixon's pardon proved that presidents can be prosecuted for acts that are considered criminal. Otherwise, they said, a pardon would have been unnecessary.

In her dissenting opinion in the immunity case, Justice Sonia Sotomayor cited the Ford precedent in writing, saying, “Our country's history also points to an established understanding, shared by both presidents and the Department of Justice, that former presidents are criminally liable for their official acts.”

The court's ruling in Trump's case could make a president a “king above the law,” she said.

Legal expert Jeffrey Toobin, author of the forthcoming book “The Pardon: Nixon, Ford and the Politics of Presidential Mercy,” said the Supreme Court's immunity decision could shield future presidents from accountability. “The whole idea behind the pardon was that former presidents could be prosecuted,” Toobin said. “That's an open question now.”

Bradley P. Moss, a lawyer specializing in national security issues, said: “Before the verdict, I always viewed Ford's pardon as a reminder that no one, not even the president, is above the law.”

And now? “The legacy of Ford's pardon is that the legal premise upon which the public operated at the time was outdated and, according to the Supreme Court, legally flawed,” Moss said.

Nixon once famously said, “If the President does it, that means it’s not illegal,” Moss noted.

“And as Donald Trump proved with his legal victory in the Supreme Court,” he said, “Richard Nixon was clearly legally correct, and Ford's pardon was never necessary.”

How Richard Nixon's pardon fueled Donald Trump's fight

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