Richard Nixon resigns

On August 8, 1974, President Richard Nixon announced from the White House that he would resign, and on August 9, 1974, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger received Nixon's formal resignation letter in Washington. Nixon acted after the House Judiciary Committee approved articles of impeachment and after the Supreme Court's decision in United States v. Nixon forced the release of White House tapes that revealed his role in the Watergate cover-up. Vice President Gerald Ford took the oath of office on August 9, 1974, making Nixon the only American president to resign.

Nixon's departure turned Watergate into a constitutional demonstration that presidents remained accountable to Congress, the courts, and the criminal process. Republican leaders such as Senator Barry Goldwater concluded after the released tapes that Nixon no longer had enough support in the Senate to survive an impeachment trial. The resignation also deepened public distrust of executive power, because the abuses exposed in Watergate included political espionage, obstruction of justice, and misuse of federal institutions for partisan ends.

Ford's succession and Ford's pardon of Nixon on September 8, 1974 followed directly from the resignation crisis. Post-Watergate reforms, including the 1974 amendments to the Federal Election Campaign Act and later congressional investigations of intelligence agencies, grew out of the breakdown of trust that Nixon's resignation made impossible to ignore.