This Day in History: 27 July 2020
27 July 1974
46 years ago, today, the House Judiciary Committee recommended that President Richard M. Nixon be impeached and removed from office. The proceedings resulted from a series of political scandals that involved the Nixon administration, later collectively known as Watergate. This scandal first came to light following a break-in at the Democratic Party's national headquarters two years earlier, in the Watergate apartment-hotel complex in Washington, D.C. Nixon denied any involvement with the men linked to the crime, but several of his staff members were eventually implicated in an illegal cover-up. One of Nixon's former staff members also revealed the existence of secretly taped conversations between the president and his aides, which was reluctantly and partially released by the White House.
Formal impeachment hearings against Nixon began in May 1974, with the first article of impeachment being passed on this day. Two more articles, for abuse of power and contempt of Congress, were approved a few days later. New evidence released later clearly implicated him in the cover up of the Watergate break-in. On August 8, Nixon announced his resignation, marking him as the first president in US history to voluntarily leave office. Nixon was replaced by Vice President Gerald Ford, who, controversially, pardoned Nixon, making it impossible for him to be prosecuted for any crimes he may have committed while in office. Before Nixon, President Andrew Johnson was also impeached in 1868, as well as President Bill Clinton in 1998 and President Donald Trump in 2019. While Nixon was not impeached, the impeachment process against him is so far the only one to cause a president's departure from office.
Want to find out more about the impeachment of Richard Nixon? Click here for more information, or here for more about other presidential impeachments.
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