Has any credible news outlet reported an arrest of a sitting U.S. president in U.S. history?
Executive summary
Yes — mainstream, credible news outlets have reported that a sitting U.S. president was arrested: multiple recent accounts describe newspaper and institutional reporting that President Ulysses S. Grant was stopped and taken into custody for speeding in Washington, D.C., while in office [1] [2]. At the same time, historians and the Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site caution that contemporaneous documentation is thin and some details of the story are disputed [3] [4].
1. The widely told story: Grant stopped, cited and — reportedly — arrested
Numerous reputable outlets and institutions recount an episode in which President Ulysses S. Grant was detained by Metropolitan Police officer William H. West for riding his horse-drawn carriage too fast; Smithonian Magazine summarized the anecdote and noted that Grant was “arrested” and released on bond, and regional reporting has repeated the same account [1] [2]. The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund recounts West’s reported words to Grant — “duty is duty” — and says Grant was taken to a police station and released after posting bond, a version that has been cited in modern recountings [5].
2. What the historical record actually shows — and where it frays
Close scrutiny reveals limits: historians and the Grant National Historic Site note a lack of contemporaneous sources for the most famous 1872 arrest account, and researchers have flagged that the detailed 1872 narrative appears in later newspapers rather than in the seven daily Washington papers of the time, making its historicity uncertain [3] [4]. Some 1866 incidents were reported contemporaneously by the D.C. National Intelligencer, but the more dramatic 1872 arrest story depends on later retellings and police department affirmations decades after the fact [3] [1].
3. Why the question matters: immunity doctrine and modern politics
The Grant anecdote is frequently invoked in debates over whether a sitting president can be arrested or indicted because it would seem to offer a historical precedent, but legal scholarship stresses that no sitting U.S. president has been criminally charged in modern federal courts and the Department of Justice has long held a policy against indicting a sitting president [6] [7]. Legal encyclopedias and academic summaries note that presidents have never been formally charged in a way that produced a definitive judicial ruling on the issue, making constitutional and prosecutorial norms central to the debate [6].
4. How credible outlets presented the story — with caveats
Major outlets such as Smithsonian Magazine and regional papers have presented the Grant arrest as the only instance of a sitting president being detained, but those same reports commonly include caveats about the documentary gaps and historians’ reservations, and some journalistic accounts rely on police-department confirmations or later interviews rather than contemporaneous primary evidence [1] [2] [3]. Legal reference sources like Cornell’s LII use the Grant episode as illustrative but underline that no president has been charged in court in a way that resolves the constitutional question [6].
5. Bottom line — answer to the question
Yes: credible news outlets have reported that a sitting U.S. president — Ulysses S. Grant — was arrested [1] [2] [5]. However, the underlying historical record is disputed: historians and the Grant National Historic Site point out the absence of contemporaneous documentation for the most cited version of the 1872 arrest, so while reputable media have reported the arrest, the event’s precise factual footing is contested in the historical record [3] [4]. Separate from the Grant episode, modern legal practice and Department of Justice policies reflect that indicting or arresting a sitting president remains legally fraught and unprecedented in federal court [6] [7].