When Dwight Eisenhower was president, his chief-of-staff Sherman Adams accepted a gift of a vicuña fur coat for his wife from a clothing manufacturer. The guy who gave the coat to Adams was under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission. This was in 1958; I was a sophomore in high school and wasn’t sure what a vicuña was. That was decades before Wikipedia. (It looks like a llama with a really skinny neck.)
This was a major scandal. Adams resigned in disgrace.
Think of that. For a coat. Not for insurrection. Not for trying to fix an election. Not for accepting gifts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Not for raping a woman. Not for lying under oath. Not for threatening government workers. For accepting a fur coat.
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