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The Only President Arrested While In Office

And no, it wasn’t Trump

Grant Piper
4 min readJan 10, 2025

Presidents do not get arrested while in office. There are numerous reasons for this. First, presidents get a hefty amount of legal immunity. While legal immunity has been thrust into the political spotlight in recent years, it makes sense. If I ordered someone to use a drone to murder a person, I would be arrested for murder. When a president does it, he is lauded for making “tough decisions.” Presidents make decisions that are considered questionable or outright illegal out here in the “real world.”

Second, even if a president makes a minor infraction while in office, arresting the president would be tricky due to jurisdictional reasons. Who has the power to arrest the president? Who would have the gall to do so? Lastly, arresting the president over something minor that falls outside of presidential immunity would be highly disruptive. Is it worth causing a global story and massive political disruption for a misdemeanor? Usually, no.

For those reasons, only one president has been arrested while in office, and even then, the story has some questions regarding its historicity.

The only president to be arrested while in office was Ulysses S. Grant. According to a man by the name of William West, a former Washington DC police officer, Grant was arrested for…

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Grant Piper
Grant Piper

Written by Grant Piper

Professional writer. Amateur historian. Husband, father, Christian.

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