Note, incidentally, that Congress could still have impeached him anyway, if they chose: The power of pardon is explicitly limited to not apply to cases of impeachment. An impeachment would have been mostly pointless, since he was resigning anyway, but they could still have barred him from holding any further office.
And I’ve never bought the argument that accepting a pardon is an admission of guilt. Suppose that I’m the President (or a governor, if we’re talking about a state crime), and there’s some case where I think the defendant got railroaded, and that he really genuinely didn’t do it. What, in such a case, should I do? I think it’s obvious that I ought in such a case to exercise my pardon power. Does that mean that, because I think that the guy didn’t do it, that he’s forced to admit that he did? That’s an absurd result.
Ford presented the argument that Nixon accepting the pardon was an admission of guilt. I have no idea if that has any weight under the law, or could since he was pardoned and never could be tried to determine if he was guilty under the law. Nixon continued to insist he had done nothing illegal, though resorting to the famous line “When the president does it that means it’s not illegal”.
Here are some Gallup poll results for those interested. Looks like Americans (polled) said poll was the wrong thing to do than the right thing to do in 1974, numbers were tied in 1982, and more Americans polled though it was the right thing by 1986.
You didn’t follow closely enough, or pay enough attention in history class. Or play enough trivia. Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton are the only two US presidents to have been impeached, but neither was removed from office (2/3 vote is required in Senate. Johnson snuck through by one. Clinton needed 67 votes to be removed from office, and had 50 and 45 voting in favor of conviction on the two counts in a Republican controlled Senate [55 R senators]).
Does a Presidential pardon cover state crimes too? For instance could California have gone after him if they could tie him to the break-in to the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist?
No. Only federal crimes can be pardoned by the president. I don’t know what happens if someone convicted of a federal crime is pardoned and then the state tries to charge them with the same crime at the state level.
What happens is it goes to trial in a state court, and if the state jury finds the defendant guilty, then the state judge imposes a sentence, and the defendant has to fulfill it. Just like if there hadn’t been federal involvement.
I was wondering if double jeopardy applied but according to this website it would not and the person could be prosecuted in both jurisdictions. The article says that it’s rarely done once a defendant is found guilty, but it’s rare for a person to be pardoned in this manner also.
And of course, resigning before he was impeached & convicted was a big financial gain for Nixon.
He got to keep his pension, his free Secret Service protection, secretarial help with his papers, all the ‘security’ improvements that had been made to his property, etc. He probably would have lost those had he been convicted.
Some states have laws that forbid dual state and federal prosecutions for the same crime – that is, the state won’t prosecute if there’s a federal conviction. But that’s a state policy, not a constitutional prohibition. For double jeopardy purposes, two sovereigns, state and federal, means two prosecutions are allowed.