Which U.S. presidents have been convicted of felonies and what were the charges?

1. The lone convicted president and the charges that produced history

A New York jury in 2024–2025 convicted Donald J. Trump on 34 counts of falsifying business records related to payments intended to silence a woman who alleged an affair and the bookkeeping used to conceal those payments, a scheme prosecutors said was aimed at influencing the 2016 election ^{[1] [2] [5]}. The counts are state‑level class E felonies in New York and formed the first criminal conviction of a former—and later incumbent—U.S. president, a fact emphasized across major outlets and legal summaries ^{[1] [6] [2]}. Reporting notes that sentencing choices and collateral consequences are subject to judge discretion and appeal, and that some federal matters involving the same individual were paused or dismissed under doctrines of presidential immunity while he was in office ^{[7] [5]}.

2. Near‑misses: Watergate, pardons, impeachment and arrests that fell short of criminal convictions

American presidential history contains several high‑profile scandals and legal brushes that stopped short of a criminal conviction for the president himself: Richard Nixon was named by a grand jury as an unindicted co‑conspirator in Watergate but resigned and was later pardoned by Gerald Ford before criminal prosecution could proceed ^{[3] [8]}. Bill Clinton faced criminal referrals tied to his testimony about the Lewinsky affair but was never charged with a felony by prosecutors and instead faced impeachment in Congress ^[8]. President Ulysses S. Grant was briefly taken into custody for a speeding violation—an arrest resulting in a fine, not a criminal conviction on felony charges ^{[4] [8]}. These episodes demonstrate a historical pattern where scandal and legal exposure frequently affected associates, aides, or led to pardons, rather than producing a president’s felony conviction ^{[8] [3]}.

3. The legal contours: indictment, immunity and uncharted constitutional territory

Scholars and legal institutions underline that indicting, trying, and convicting a sitting or former president raises unsettled constitutional questions—Supreme Court precedent is limited and often circumstantial—and for decades prosecutors treated the prospect as legally fraught ^{[4] [7]}. The Trump matters tested those boundaries: special counsel probes, state prosecutions, and a Supreme Court discussion of presidential immunity all intersected with the convictions and dismissals that followed, leaving aspects of prosecutorial authority and immunity in play and some questions yet unresolved by the high court ^{[7] [4]}.

4. Political and civic consequences of a presidential felony conviction

News organizations and policy analysts stressed that the conviction’s legal import—penalties, appeals, and collateral effects—plays out separately from its political repercussions, with scholars noting it does not automatically bar ballot access under the Constitution but can influence public opinion, campaign dynamics, and administrative licensing rules in unexpected ways ^{[6] [9] [1]}. Major outlets reported both the historical singularity of the verdict and the immediacy of its political reverberations as multiple investigations and appeals unfolded, underscoring how legal outcomes and electoral politics now overlap in new ways ^{[5] [7]}.

5. What this reporting can and cannot show

Contemporaneous reporting and legal summaries clearly identify Donald Trump as the only U.S. president convicted of felonies and document the nature of the New York charges and their context ^{[1] [2]}. Sources likewise document the absence of prior presidential felony convictions and catalog near‑misses, arrests, pardons and prosecutions of associates ^{[4] [8] [3]}. Where constitutional questions about indicting presidents remain unsettled—such as the full scope of immunity for official acts—sources note ongoing debates and court activity rather than definitive legal closure ^{[4] [7]}.