Our Score So Far: Republicans 89, Democrats 1

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

This comes via a 4th-grade friend, who got it from some guy on Facebook, who probably got it from Daily Kos, who got it from Wikipedia:

In the criminal convictions contest, the score is Republicans 89, Democrats 1. And that’s not even counting all the high-level Iran-Contra folks who probably would have been convicted of various felonies if they hadn’t been pardoned by GHW Bush.

Among Democrats, there’s been only one criminal conviction in the past 50 years. The unlucky schmoe is Ron Blackley, who was collateral damage from a special prosecutor who even Ken Starr thought was kind of nuts. The guy ran amuck in a futile attempt to pin something on Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy,1 and in the process he managed to win a perjury conviction against Blackley, who served as Espy’s chief of staff, for failing to disclose a pittance in consulting fees from a former consulting business in Mississippi.

I wonder if Donald Trump can break Nixon’s record? One thing going against Trump is that he’s barely able to hire anyone these days, and you can’t garner lots of corruption convictions if you don’t have anyone working for you. On the other hand, he’s Trump. You never know.

1He got a grand jury to hand down a bunch of indictments, but his case was so thin that Espy didn’t even bother mounting a defense. The jury acquitted Espy of everything.

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate