When was nixon pardoned

Ford Presidential Speeches and Writings page. Toggle navigation. Gerald R. President Gerald R. September 8, By the President of the United States of America a Proclamation Richard Nixon became the thirty-seventh President of the United States on January 20, and was reelected in for a second term by the electors of forty-nine of the fifty states.

Ford page Return to the Selected Gerald R. Lincoln knew of assassination plot. Lincoln and Douglas: The title match of titans. JFK hid serious health problems to become president.

And while you may know that the pardon happened, you may not realize how very big a deal it was then -- or how it set a precedent for presidential behavior we see today. Ford had been in the Oval Office for just a few weeks when he made his national address on September 8, One of the few men to become president without ever being elected to the job, Ford had been House Minority Leader when he took over for Nixon's disgraced vice president Spiro Agnew in When Nixon himself resigned the following year from the Watergate scandal , Ford ascended to the presidency.

Read More. But the public didn't like the taint of Watergate or the pardon, and it damaged Ford politically. Recall that Nixon's downfall came so very quickly after festering for so long. In , five men were arrested after breaking into the Democratic National Committee's headquarters in Washington, D.

For the next two years, the scandal consumed the country while Nixon claimed he had nothing to do with it. It wasn't until the release of the Smoking Gun tape in August that Nixon's involvement in the cover-up became clear. And within a month, the country watched their new President Ford grant Nixon a "full, free and absolute" presidential pardon. Becker said the discussion with Nixon was very difficult, and the former President kept trying to change the subject way from Burdick.

After he left the White House, Ford carried part of the Burdick decision with him in his wallet in case someone brought up the pardon. Toggle navigation. Ford appeared in front of a House judiciary committee in October to explain the pardon.