In October 1974, the nation was still reeling from the Watergate scandal. Two months prior, President Nixon had resigned, unwilling to face his inevitable impeachment for his role in the wiretapping and burglary of the Democratic Party’s headquarters, and for interfering with the investigation. His successor, President Ford, soon granted Nixon a controversial pardon of all charges. With the government’s reputation tarnished by the scandal, the nation was forced to contend with a leader who had lied to his people and gotten away with it.
By pardoning Nixon, did former president Gerald Ford set the precedent that a president like Trump could be above the law?
In 1974, many members of Congress were shocked by the pardon of a president who had betrayed the public’s trust. Among them was New York Representative and Brooklyn native Elizabeth Holtzman. At thirty-one, Holtzman had beaten eighty-four-year-old incumbent Emanuel Celler, then the House’s most senior member, to become the youngest woman elected to Congress at the time.
Holtzman was the only woman on the House Judiciary Committee that Nixon faced during the formal hearings for the impeachment inquiry, from May to July of 1974. By the end of the hearings, the Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment, charging Nixon with obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress. Having seen the extensive evidence against Nixon firsthand, Holtzman viewed Ford’s pardon as a violation of the justice system. Ford reasoned that pardoning Nixon for his crimes was in the best interest of the nation and believed a prolonged “prosecution and trial […] would seriously disrupt the healing of our country.” But Ford seemed to be lying about “healing” being the primary motivation for the pardon.
Rumors began to spread that, before Nixon’s resignation, it was determined that Ford would have the power to pardon Nixon if he resigned before being convicted, and that the two had made a deal to proceed in this fashion to avoid further political spectacle. Holtzman knew that such actions from the executive branch, if true, risked setting a “terrible precedent” for future administrations. She emphasized that “Ford’s pardon created a dual system of justice—one for ordinary Americans and another for the president.”
We are now experiencing the consequences of Ford’s pardon.
Even before the Supreme Court ruled, in July 2024, that a president has “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for any “official acts” undertaken while president, there were signs that a certain president felt the rules did not apply to him. In 2023, Donald Trump was indicted for storing hundreds of classified documents in a bathroom and ballroom at his Mar-a-Lago resort, exposing national security secrets to guests. These documents were brought to Mar-a-Lago in 2021 and held there when he was no longer president. In January 2021, Trump pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a top election official, to “find” 11,000 votes for Trump after he lost the state to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. This phone call was recorded and later made available to the public.
When Nixon’s “smoking gun” tape, a recorded conversation which proved his involvement in the Watergate cover-up, was released to the public, he lost all political support. But gone are the days of anyone being shocked that a president might illegally wiretap an opponent and then lie about it. Corruption has been normalized; like the national security files stored in a public bathroom, it is no longer even hidden. The lack of real consequences, or even notable dissent, for such corruption echoes Nixon’s own words that, whatever it is, “When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.”
In response to the rumors of a deal between Ford and Nixon, President Ford was invited to testify before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Criminal Justice on October 17, 1974. From the very first question, Holtzman felt that the tone of the hearing was distinctly deferential. It was immediately obvious to her that the other representatives on the committee were unwilling “to make a proper investigation,” and Holtzman noted how “nobody asked him any tough questions.” In her estimation, none of her colleagues sought to address what the American people were entitled to know.
Dressed in thick square glasses and a demure lavender suit, she sat calmly behind the microphone, waiting for her turn to speak. When she finally took the floor, it was with conviction: “We must all confront the reality of these suspicions and the suspicions that were created by the circumstances of the pardon which you issued… whether or not, in fact, there was a deal.”
What followed was a vigorous line of questioning. Holtzman likely called on her background as a Harvard-educated lawyer and the years during which she had given legal aid to the Civil Rights Movement. A quid pro quo deal would constitute an impeachable offense on its own. Yet, even amongst Democrats, there was no appetite for another scandal. “[My colleagues] may not have liked the pardon,” Holtzman recalled, “but they were not willing to challenge President Ford.”. Her audacity to do just that was described as “accusatory” by Lawrence Hogan, a Republican congressman and fellow committee member also in attendance. Even as a resilient lawmaker not unfamiliar with sexist attacks against female politicians, she could not have anticipated the ensuing scrutiny and widespread media attention. After the hearing, she received a “flood of mail” and “very vicious phone calls” from colleagues and constituents.
Years later, Holtzman would reflect on that moment, explaining how “people aren’t always ready to, in Congress, dig for the truth and find out the truth, and confront even the most powerful person.” Such tenacity requires a willingness to “go it alone.” On that day in 1974, it was clear to Holtzman that if she were to trust her instincts and moral compass, she would have to diverge from her peers. “I thought for sure somebody would ask President Ford about whether or not there was a deal about the pardon,” she told NowThis Media, “but nobody else asked him—so I did.”
When elected officials turn a blind eye to corruption for fear of further scandal, thereby eroding public trust in government, what is the benefit? Unlike Elizabeth Holtzman, whose principles demanded that she ask the sitting president about his potentially illegal dealings, and who suffered personal and career losses as a result, today’s politicians seem willing to normalize corruption if doing so will preserve their jobs and power. But what if their silence ultimately enables the collapse of the very institutions that employ them?
Even when the powers-that-be make decisions to “avoid scandal,” normalizing unacceptable behavior in the name of peace and healing, it’s important for people with a voice to be brave enough to name and investigate that behavior. People who were not yet born at the time of the Watergate scandal might not be aware that Nixon was later pardoned for it. What history remembers, thanks in part to brave people like Elizabeth Holtzman, is that Nixon betrayed the American public. Her testimony at the hearing is a counterpoint to a possible alternative narrative that no one thought Nixon’s actions were a problem, and that Ford’s pardon was unanimously considered righteous. When we cannot trust political and business leaders to make honorable decisions, those like Holtzman, who have a voice and platform, must use it to express dissent, so that the record may show that corruption didn’t have unanimous approval.