"The day will come when another and more pure & virtuous legislature, will make null & void this sale of birthright" : the Yazoo Land Fraud -- "If I were to name this, I would call it the will o' wisp treason" : the Aaron Burr conspiracy -- "Mr. Sumner, I have read your speech twice over carefully. It is a libel on South Carolina, and Mr. Butler, who is a relative of mine" : the caning of Charles Sumner -- "Have those men dismissed by 3 o'clock this afternoon or shut down the bureau" : Grant administration scandals of the 1870s -- "Do you believe this man is crook? If He is a crook, convict him" : the Teapot Dome Scandal -- "I am the only candidate inspected by the United States government and found to be 100 percent pure" : William "Wild Bill" Langer -- "Nobody sat down in front of me with a suitcase of money" : Spiro Agnew -- "I am not a crook" : the Watergate Scandal -- "Money talks in this business, and bullshit walks" : the Abscam Scandal -- "I have been in government long enough to know that you don't have to ask the question explicitly to know what the message is" : the Savings & Loan Scandal -- "I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not" : the Iran-Contra Affair -- "All he was worried about was Jack. Jack has to get his next big check" : Jack Abramoff and influence peddling -- "Everybody's trying to get me. It's unfair. Now everybody's saying I'm going to be impeached" : 2016 Russian election enterference

"Political scandals have become an indelible feature of the American political system since the creation of the republic more than two centuries ago. This book surveys both the most infamous scandals as well as more obscure episodes in an effort to understand how these incidents have altered the course of American political history"--