House of Representatives’ sole power to impeach

The House of Representatives’ sole power to impeach is the constitutional authority that places the decision to initiate impeachment in the House. During the Watergate investigation, it became a crucial institutional boundary: prosecutors argued that an incumbent President could not be indicted, while the grand jury recommended transferring its report and accompanying evidence to the House. The rule did not itself establish guilt or determine the outcome; it directed where evidence bearing on presidential accountability could be considered.

Constitutional Authority

The Constitution gives the House the “sole power to impeach.” In the account of the Watergate inquiry, the House Judiciary Committee acted for the full House, beginning the first investigation in more than a century into possible action against a President. The distinction is between the House’s constitutional role in impeachment and the criminal process conducted by prosecutors and grand juries. The committee could investigate whether impeachment was warranted; the grand jury’s criminal proceedings did not substitute for that constitutional function.

The Investigative Record

The referral arose from an investigation that had traced concrete connections between campaign money and the Watergate operation. A cashier’s check for $25,000, payable to Kenneth H. Dahlberg, was deposited with four Mexican checks, bringing the deposit to $114,000; four days later, $25,000 was withdrawn, with the remaining $89,000 withdrawn separately. Later reporting stated that funds for the espionage operation were controlled by principal assistants to John Mitchell and kept in a special account at the Committee for the Re-election of the President. The account held more than $300,000 for sensitive political projects, and records relating to it had been destroyed.

Testimony supplied a further link between authority and expenditure. Hugh Sloan said that, when first approached for money, he called John Mitchell at the Justice Department, and Mitchell told him to distribute it. Sloan described Mitchell as initially the sole person authorized to approve expenditures, with authority later passing to others, including Jeb Magruder. These statements established reported lines of authorization; they were evidence to be assessed, not a verdict by themselves.

The investigation also reached the alleged cover-up. Jeb Magruder told reporters through sources that John Mitchell and John Dean had approved and helped plan the bugging operation, and that Mitchell and Dean later arranged to buy the silence of the seven convicted conspirators. Sources further said that Dean had described the same matters to others and wanted to tell the grand jury everything if he could reach an agreement with prosecutors. In another account conveyed by Deep Throat, L. Patrick Gray had been told that files were “political dynamite” and should “never see the light of day”; Gray later said he put them in a burn bag. Together, such allegations and records widened the inquiry from the break-in itself to questions about authorization, obstruction, and the handling of evidence.

Referral to the House

On March 1, the Watergate grand jury returned major indictments charging seven former White House and campaign aides with conspiracy to obstruct justice. It also gave John Sirica a briefcase containing a report and supporting evidence concerning the case against the President. Because prosecutors had argued that the Constitution precluded indicting an incumbent President, the grand jurors recommended that the report and evidence be turned over to the House committee.

That handoff gave practical effect to the House’s constitutional authority. The grand jury could investigate and indict other alleged participants, but it could not make the House’s impeachment decision. Its referral preserved the investigative record for the body empowered to consider impeachment, while keeping the distinction between criminal charges and the House’s constitutional process in view.

Significance and Limits

The rule mattered because the investigation’s evidence pointed beyond the original burglars and campaign operatives toward senior officials and the President. It supplied a constitutional route for legislative scrutiny at a moment when prosecutors maintained that criminal indictment of a sitting President was unavailable. The grand jury’s recommendation was therefore consequential without being a finding that the President was guilty or a decision to impeach him.

The account records the opening of the House Judiciary Committee’s investigation and the transfer of the grand jury’s material, but does not establish the committee’s eventual judgment or the outcome of impeachment proceedings. The rule marks the point at which the criminal investigation’s accumulated evidence was directed toward the House’s separate constitutional responsibility.