1974: Nixon Walked Free on a Pardon While His Own Attorney General Went to Prison: the Watergate Cover-Up Trial
Five men who had run Richard Nixon’s White House and Justice Department went on trial in Washington in October 1974, charged with conspiracy, obstruction of justice and perjury for trying to smother the investigation into the break-in at the Democratic National Committee offices two years earlier.
The trial ran three months. On January 1, 1975, a jury convicted former Attorney General John Mitchell along with chief of staff H.R. Haldeman and aide John Ehrlichman on multiple felony counts; a co-defendant was acquitted. The one man missing from the dock was Nixon himself, who had resigned the previous August and been pardoned by President Gerald Ford before he could ever be charged, leaving the men who had followed his orders to serve the time he never did.
