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Watergate
All special investigation charges since 1973
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Charged but not convicted
Pleaded guilty
Convicted
Conviction overturned
UPDATED Mar. 22, 2019, at 10:30 AM
By Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux and Julia Wolfe
Get the data on GitHub
Nearly two years after special counsel Robert Mueller was appointed to investigate possible Russian interference in the 2016 election, he has submitted his report to Attorney General William Barr. We don’t know yet what new information we’ll gain from Mueller’s report, but here’s how his investigation currently stacks up to other special counsel investigations:
Charged but not convicted
Pleaded guilty
Convicted
Conviction overturned
A total of 170 people have been charged in special or independent counsel investigations since the Watergate probe began in 1973. Individuals who pleaded guilty or were convicted are highlighted in blue, and overturned convictions are outlined in blue. Those who were charged but not convicted are highlighted in pink.
Mueller’s investigation stands out for the number of indictments. Since October 2017, Mueller has charged 34 people. That’s more than in any special counsel investigation since Watergate, when 61 people were indicted during the course of the inquiry (with seven others who faced charges only before the special prosecutor was appointed).
Mueller’s probe is also more international in nature than the other inquiries. Only one other special counsel investigation charged anyone who wasn’t a resident of the United States, but in the Mueller probe, 26 of those indicted were Russians living outside the country. This means that even though the Russia investigation is one of the few to have produced any guilty pleas or convictions, many people Mueller has charged are unlikely to ever see the inside of a U.S. courtroom.
There’s also the speed and length of Mueller’s probe. The first charges issued by Mueller appeared earlier in the investigation than many past special counsels. His probe has also been relatively short-lived so far: The average length of an investigation that resulted in at least one charge or conviction was about five years; Mueller’s investigation has lasted less than two years.
The Mueller investigation is also unusual because of how close it’s come to President Trump. The most famous comparison is Watergate, in which President Richard Nixon and his administration were investigated after a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters. As with the Mueller probe, the question of whether the president interfered with an election was central to the investigation — as well as whether the president illegally orchestrated a cover-up.
Watergate decisively ended Nixon’s presidency and put some of his closest aides behind bars — and a whopping 21 of those indicted worked in Nixon’s administration at some point. On the other hand, Mueller’s investigation has implicated only a few people who worked in and around Trump’s campaign. Only one — Michael Flynn — actually worked in the administration. This means that unless Mueller has some late-breaking blockbuster findings, the Russia investigation won’t be another Watergate.
So maybe a more apt comparison is the Whitewater investigation. In that case, President Bill Clinton and first lady Hillary Clinton were investigated over activity related to a failed Arkansas land deal.
As in the Mueller investigation, those implicated in Whitewater were also largely associates of the president from before he was elected. But the key difference here is that Clinton’s connections to most of these people were more than a decade old, while Trump’s are more recent. Independent counsel Ken Starr also took more than five years and was far less focused than Mueller. He eventually turned his investigation to Clinton’s attempt to cover up an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Starr lost credibility in the process, but that phase of the investigation did lead to Clinton’s impeachment. While Clinton had to negotiate a plea deal, the investigation didn’t cost him the presidency.
Another investigation that’s similar to the Russia probe — this one because of its international scope — was the Iran-Contra scandal. In that case, the Reagan administration sold arms to Iran (despite an arms embargo) in exchange for the release of seven hostages and $30 million, some of which was diverted to rebels in Nicaragua. As in the Mueller investigation, one central question was whether the president and his close associates were involved.
The Iran-Contra investigation weakened Reagan but didn’t end his presidency, and he was never indicted as part of the scandal. The convictions of two administration officials were overturned over the immunity they had been granted to testify before Congress. And Reagan’s successor, George H.W. Bush, effectively ended the investigation by pardoning six key figures — including the former secretary of defense.
With Mueller’s probe ending, a key question remains: Will the president pardon anyone implicated in the Russia investigation? He can pardon anyone implicated in the Russia investigation — except, perhaps, himself. Almost every major special counsel investigation has resulted in pardons — some even many years after the investigation wrapped up. So it would actually be out of the ordinary if no one convicted in the Russia investigation is ever pardoned. But Trump could open himself up to obstruction of justice charges if he issues pardons for people before Mueller’s work is over. Pardons usually come at the end of an investigation, and they’re usually issued at the end of a president’s term or by a subsequent president, perhaps because they are so unpopular.
Now that Mueller has closed the book on his investigation, Trump’s real liability will be political — issuing a pardon before 2020 could be a risky move. But regardless of how the Russia investigation turns out, it’s important to remember that Trump still has one last card to play.
Information for this story is drawn from an original data set of special counsel, independent counsel and special prosecutor investigations from 1973 to 2019. The data set was created by consulting historical sources, including final reports generated by independent counsels, special counsels and special prosecutors; reports in Congressional Quarterly; and contemporaneous news stories. Secondary historical sources were also consulted, including a 2006 Congressional Research Service report about independent counsel investigations and a history of the Watergate investigation by Stanley Kutler. Data about pardons was obtained from the Office of the Pardon Attorney. Indicted organizations were excluded from our analysis. The data set, which is available on Github, includes the names of all people charged as part of these investigations, as well as the outcome of their cases and the dates of major actions in their cases.
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