Disgraced Politicians

01

R. Budd Dwyer

Treasurer Budd Dwyer called a press conference, handed out envelopes to reporters, then pulled a .357 Magnum from a manila folder and fired it through the roof of his mouth — live, on Pennsylvania state television, January 22, 1987.

02

Jean-Bédel Bokassa

Bokassa spent $22 million — one-third of the Central African Empire's annual budget — on a coronation modeled on Napoleon's, including a throne cast as a two-ton golden eagle, while France quietly paid the bill.

03

Duke Cunningham

Randy 'Duke' Cunningham kept a handwritten 'bribe menu' on a sheet of congressional letterhead: a sliding scale of contract values against requested yacht upgrades, antique furniture, and cash — the most literal corruption document in U.S. congressional history.

04

Spiro Agnew

Sitting Vice President Spiro Agnew received cash in small envelopes — handed directly to him inside the White House — while simultaneously prosecuting law-and-order rhetoric on national television. He resigned October 10, 1973, pleading no contest.

05

Gaius Verres

Roman governor Verres stripped temples across Sicily so thoroughly that towns hosted empty pedestals for years; Cicero destroyed him with only his opening speech — Verres fled before the second was ever delivered.

06

Abscam

FBI agents dressed as Arab oil sheikhs invited seven U.S. congressmen to a fake Washington townhouse and filmed them pocketing cash bribes — one congressman stuffed $25,000 into his suit pockets on camera and said, 'I'm gonna keep this.'

07

Dominique Strauss-Kahn

IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was hauled off an Air France plane at JFK in his underwear, May 2011, accused by hotel maid Nafissatou Diallo of assault — ending the near-certain next presidency of France.

08

John Profumo

British War Secretary John Profumo shared a mistress, 19-year-old Christine Keeler, with Soviet naval attaché Yevgeny Ivanov — then lied about it to Parliament. The lie cost him his career; the affair may have cost Britain state secrets.

09

Rod Blagojevich

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, phone tapped by the FBI, tried to sell Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder — stating on tape, 'I've got this thing and it's fucking golden, and I'm just not giving it up for fucking nothing.'

10

Horst Mahler

Horst Mahler co-founded the Red Army Faction as a leftist anti-fascist lawyer, then transformed into a Holocaust-denying neo-Nazi who greeted his 2009 prison sentence with a raised-arm Hitler salute in the courtroom.