No One Asked Me But… (April 24, 2024)

By DR. LARRY MOSES

No one asked me but… The 2024 Presidential election is wrapped up in scandal and the American people seemed shocked. Let me suggest to you that scandal is more common in American presidential politics that one would suspect.

During the 1828 presidential election, Andrew Jackson sought to unseat John Quincy Adams. Adams’ supporters accused Jackson’s wife, Rachel, of bigamy. Her husband had abandoned her and gone west. They had no contact for years and she assumed he was dead. So she married Jackson.

But shortly after the wedding the husband showed up very much alive and the Adams’ supporters accused her of being morally unfit to serve as first lady. Rachel died of a heart attack after Jackson’s election.

Ulysses S. Grant was seen as a man of great personal integrity but his presidential administration was plagued with corruption. Before the 1872 election, Grant sent his Internal Revenue supervisor to Missouri to bolster his waning political support. The supervisor established what became known as the “Whiskey Ring.” It was a criminal network in which whiskey distillers, Treasury and Internal Revenue agents, shopkeepers, and others manipulated liquor taxes to defraud the federal government of over $1.5 million per year.

In 1875, Grant appointed a special prosecutor, to investigate. It was determined that Grant was not involved, however, 110 individuals were convicted.

The Grant administration was also plagued by the Crédit Mobilier Scandal. The owners of the Union Pacific Railroad were building a transcontinental railroad on the government’s dime. They developed an investment firm, to pay themselves the cost of constructing the railroad. They netted a profit of between $33 million and $50 million. In order to curry government support and forestall a congressional investigation, the Crédit Mobilier leadership gave stock to over 20 members of Congress, as well as to Grant’s Vice President.

During the 1884 presidential election, the Democrats chanted “James G. Blaine the continental liar from the State of Maine.” However, roughly 10 years earlier, Cleveland had taken responsibility for a child born out of wedlock with Maria Halpin, a widow. After acknowledging paternity, Cleveland sent his son to an orphanage and had Halpin committed to a mental institution. When this was exposed, the Republican chant became “Ma, ma, where’s my pa?” Cleveland won the election, and Democrats added “Gone to the White House! Ha, ha, ha!”

Warren G. Harding, whose only ambition in life was to be a small-town newspaper editor, became a Presidential candidate by default.

Many members of Harding’s administration became embroiled in scandal. His Attorney General was accused of selling government supplies of alcohol during Prohibition. The head of the Veterans Bureau was convicted of bribery and corruption. His Secretary of the Interior transferred the Navy oil reserves held at Elk Hills, California, and Teapot Dome, from the Department of the Navy to the Department Interior. Then, he leased Elk Hills to the Pan American Petroleum Company and Teapot Dome to Mammoth Oil. Harding was never personally implicated in the scandal.

On a personal level President Harding, like Cleveland before him, had a secret out-of-wedlock child, a daughter he conceived with a 19-year-old woman named Nan Britton. He also carried on a long-term affair with the wife of a local dry goods store owner who blackmailed him for $50,000 and a cruise to China during the 1920 election.

Due to the Watergate scandal, Richard M. Nixon became the only U.S. President to resign from office. Five men were caught breaking into the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.’s Watergate complex on June 17, 1972. The trail eventually led to Nixon’s Republican administration and to the President himself.

On August 9, 1974, facing impeachment, Nixon stepped down. Nearly a dozen of Nixon’s advisers and acolytes received prison terms. Nixon was pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford.

President Clinton was involved in a relationship with a White House intern. For some eight months, Clinton who had survived earlier allegations of marital infidelity during the 1992 election campaign and again in 1996 vehemently denied having had sex with Monica Lewinsky. When DNA evidence surfaced that proved the affair, Clinton admitted to the relationship but denied lying under oath, saying “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”

The House of Representatives impeached Clinton on the grounds of perjury and obstruction of justice but the Senate acquitted him.

I am no fan of Donald Trump. That does not mean I don’t believe the multitude of court cases being brought against him are not purely politically motivated. The “Hush money” case centers on payoffs to silence porn star Stormy Daniels who claims she had extramarital encounters with Donald Trump as late as 2016.

The Manhattan District Attorney stated that Donald Trump made 34 false statements about business records that concealed his extra-marital conduct. These counts against Trump are linked to a series of checks that were written to Trump’s attorney to reimburse him for his role in paying off Daniels. Those payments, made over 12 months with nine of those monthly checks paid out of Trump’s personal accounts.

Prosecutors allege that the first instance of Trump directing hush money payments came in the fall of 2015. A former Trump Tower doorman was trying to sell information about an alleged out-of-wedlock child fathered by Trump. According to the indictment Trump made a $30,000 payment to the doorman. Does this not sound more like blackmail on the part of the doorman rather than a crime on the part of Donald Trump? It was later determined the doorman’s story was false.

Stormy Daniels admits to having at least two intimate encounters with Donald Trump. She sold her body with the hope of being selected to appear on Trump’s TV show The Apprentice. She became disgruntled when Trump refused to have her on the show as a contestant.

When Trump became a Presidential candidate, he began to make payments through his attorney to guarantee her silence. This amounted to over $130,000.

While for us peasants this seem like a lot of money, for a billionaire this is “chump change.” This appears to me to be a case of blackmail and the blackmailer, not the victim, should be prosecuted.

On CBS’s 60 Minutes, Daniels said she wanted to set the record straight. “I’m not a victim,” and the relationship was consensual. Since when do we convict an individual who is being black mailed as versus the individual doing the blackmailing?

Thought of the week… A good lawyer knows the law; a clever one takes the judge to lunch.