Richard Nixon And The Watergate Scandal

The 37th president of the United States, Richard Nixon, was involved criminally in a case during his presidency. He took many steps to try to cover the crime, steps that were crucial to his presidency. Nixon may not have planned the scandal, nor was he even a part of the burglary, but he did many things to make it seem like he had no idea that any of the scandal had occurred. Nixon was eventually caught and it impacted him and the government immensely.
On June 17, 1972 several men were arrested for the break in of the Watergate Office in Washington, D.C. The scandal was eventually led back to the White House, where Richard
Nixon was president. However, Nixon did not want word about the crime to get out, so he almost immediately created
Nixon eventually handed over a tape, in which the judge found an eighteen minute gap in. Supreme Court demanded Nixon turned over the tapes and on August 5, he did so, releasing the tapes that had the most information on them (Benedict). The tapes did show in fact that he was covering up the crime, and he was greatly involved, but it however did not give any direct evidence to say that Nixon ordered the break in at the Watergate office (Genovese). It was guaranteed that Nixon was going to be impeached because of his involvement with the scandal and his attempt of covering up the crime. Nixon was far from interested in becoming impeached, so on August 9th, 1974, he resigned (Benedict). Many of Nixon’s officials and top aides of the White House were caught and has to spend time in jail (Genovese). These were his Administration and officials of the Committee for the Re-Election of the president. These were people he trusted and some of his close friends. In Nixon’s speech, he blames these officials for trying to cover up the illegal activity that he was involved in
As stated before, Nixon resigned as president because he was to be impeached due to the tapes that Nixon handed over (Benedict). Richard Nixon had sunken into a deep depression and his health was slowly getting worse because of his involvement in the scandal (Hamilton). However, because Nixon resigned, there was no other choice but to automatically choose vice president Jerry Ford to become president (Miller). He had became the only president who entered office without having to face a national election (Stachecki). Because Ford became president five months into his vice presidency, he also needed to choose someone quickly to take his place as vice president. President Ford decided to choose former New York governor as vice president, Nelson A. Rockefeller, on August 20 (Hamilton). As the new president, John Ford, was going through his interviews, the topic of the Watergate scandal was constantly being brought up, that was the topic of every discussion. Ford hoped to bring an end to the scandal and to the questioning, so on September 8th, 1974, he gave a full pardon to Nixon for all of his wrongdoings without full reasoning that Nixon wasn’t the one to devise the plan (Stachecki). Accusations came up after Ford pardoned Nixon. Nixon was accused of resigning so that Ford could take his position, in which he did, and pardon all of Nixon’s wrongdoings, in which Ford also did. Former domestic affairs