Why the post-Nixon era shouldn't inform the post-Trump era

(Image credit: Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

published 14 September 2020

New York's Jonathan Chait argues that President Trump should be tried for his alleged crimes whenever his presidency ends, even if it sparks a political crisis.

His reasoning stems, in part, from the fact that former President Gerald Ford pardoned his predecessor, former President Richard Nixon, after he resigned in 1974 over the Watergate scandal. Chait notes Ford's ultimate legacy was that of statesman who helped the country move on from Nixon's scandals.

Should the Democratic nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden, defeat Trump this November, he'll need to execute a similarly peaceful transition of power, Chait writes, and will likely "be tempted to offer a pardon" to Trump "as a gesture of magnanimity." In Chait's view that would allow Biden to create some form of social peace, while freeing his administration up "to use all his partisan chits on substantive policy."

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But Chait goes on to make the case that Ford's decision to remove the burden of Nixon's crimes from the United States' proverbial shoulders eventually led to Trump's 2016 victory and left post-Nixon reforms — like establishing inspectors general offices and barring the attorney general from political prosecutions — "in ruins" under the Trump administration. Meanwhile, Chait notes Roger Stone committed crimes to help Trump get elected in 2016 and was subsequently pardoned by the president. Chait suggests if Nixon "had faced prison" people like Stone wouldn't have "set out to elect a crook" and Trump would not have "gleefully mimicked so many" of Nixon's crimes. "If Trump isn't persecuted, what will his successors do?," Chait asks. Read more at New York.

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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.