Presidential Misconduct (From George Washington to Today)

“A whole book devoted exclusively to the misconduct of American presidents and their responses to charges of misconduct is without precedent.” —from the introduction to the 1974 edition by C. Vann Woodward, Pulitzer Prize–winning Yale historian

The historic 1974 report for the House Committee on the Judiciary, updated for today by leading presidential historians

In a recent issue of the New Yorker magazine, historian Jill Lepore wrote about a long-forgotten government report commissioned in the 1970s as Richard Nixon was facing impeachment, and designed to benchmark Nixon’s misdeeds against those of the presidents who preceded him.

In a major publishing event, a group of distinguished presidential historians, under the leadership of James M. Banner, Jr., one of the historians contributing to the original report, has now come together to bring the report up to date. Chronicling the misdeeds and malfeasance of presidents Washington through Obama, this new edition offers unparalleled historical context for assessing the behavior of the Trump administration.

C. Vann Woodward wrote in the introduction to the original report that “the present work was prepared for the use of the Impeachment Inquiry Staff of the House Committee on the Judiciary. . . . It was their belief that historians could provide a study which would prove useful in debates in the House of Representatives should resolutions of impeachment be recommended and, if such resolutions were adopted, also in the trial proceedings in the Senate.” The current edition will be available to play a comparable—and crucial—role in the current political climate.