“It seems incontrovertible that political scandals have now acquired a prominent and important place in American political life.”

British political scientist Robert Williams

Political scandals begin with various forms of wrongdoing by public officials. Money is often at the center of scandals in which politicians exploit their public office for private gain. Some scandals stem from acts of private misconduct, such as sexual misbehavior. Others involve abuses of government power that jeopardize people’s rights and (in America) violate the U.S. Constitution.

However, mere wrongdoing is not enough to create a scandal. Scandals require public outrage and reaction, which in turn requires public disclosure. This is why, as Robert Williams notes in his 1998 study Political Scandals in the USA, countries with totalitarian or authoritarian political systems do not have scandals. “If the public are not allowed to know about the behaviour of politicians...