CommentsTHE COHEN COLUMN-- “When comparing criminal indictments of those serving in the executive branch of presidential administrations it's so lopsided as to be ridiculous. Yet all I ever hear is how corrupt the Democrats are. So why don't we break it down by president and the numbers.
Barak Obama (D) – 8 years in office. Zero criminal indictments, zero convictions and zero prison sentences. So the next time somebody describes the Obama administration as "scandal free" they aren't speaking wishfully, they're simply telling the truth.
Bush, George W. (R) – 8 years in office. 16 criminal indictments. 16 convictions. 9 prison sentences.
Bill Clinton (D) – 8 years in office. 2 criminal indictments. One conviction. One prison sentence. That's right nearly 8 years of investigations. Tens of millions spent and 30 yrs of claiming the Clintons to be the most corrupt ever and there was exactly one person convicted of a crime.
Bush, George H. W. (R) – 4 years in office. One indictment. One conviction. One prison sentence.
Ronald Reagan (R) - 8 years in office. 26 criminal indictments. 16 convictions. 8 prison sentences.
Jimmy Carter (D) – 4 years in office. One indictment. Zero convictions and zero prison sentences.
Gerald Ford (R) - 2 1/2 years in office. One indictment and one conviction. One prison sentence. Pardoned Richard Nixon.
Dick Nixon (R) – 6 years in office. 76 criminal indictments. 55 convictions. 15 prison sentences. Nixon himself would have been impeached and convicted if he had not resigned. Also previously resigning was his Vice President, Spiro T Agnew, for charges of corruption in taking kickbacks before and during his Vice-Presidency. He is the first and only US Vice President to resign because of corruption.
Lyndon Johnson (D) – 5 years in office. Zero indictments. Zero convictions. Zero prison sentences.
So, let’s see where that leaves us. In the last 53 years Democrats have been in office for 25 of those years while Republicans held it for 28. In their 25yrs in office Democrats had a total of three executive branch officials indicted with one conviction and one prison sentence. That’s one whole executive branch official convicted of a crime in two and a half decades of Democrat leadership.
In the 28 years that Republicans have held office over the last 53 years they have had a total of (a drum roll would be more than appropriate), 120 criminal indictments of executive branch officials. 89 criminal convictions and 34 prison sentences handed down. That's more prison sentences than years in office since 1968 for Republicans. If you want to count articles of impeachment as indictments (they aren't really but we can count them as an action), both sides get one more. However, Clinton wasn't found guilty while Nixon resigned and was pardoned by Ford. So those only serve to make Republicans look even worse.
With everything going on with Trump and his people right now, it's a safe bet Republicans are gonna be padding their numbers a bit real soon. So let's just go over the numbers one more time shall we.
120 indictments for Republicans
89 convictions and 34 prison sentences.
Those aren't "feelings" or "alternate facts" those are simply the stats by the numbers. Republicans are, and have been for my entire lifetime, the most criminally corrupt party to hold the office of the presidency.”
Remember dear reader, if you don’t vote you don’t count. Literally, you don’t exist. The voting booth is your voice.
(Michael N. Cohen is a former board member of the Reseda Neighborhood Council, founding member of the LADWP Neighborhood Council Oversight Committee, founding member of LA Clean Sweep and a contributor to CityWatch.)
-cw
