A Washington grand jury investigating the Watergate scandal voted to name President Richard Nixon an unindicted co-conspirator alongside seven aides already charged with obstruction of justice. The finding was kept under seal at the request of prosecutors, who feared indicting a sitting president, but it later became a critical piece of evidence in the impeachment process that pushed Nixon toward resignation five months later.
By early 1974, special prosecutor Leon Jaworski's team had assembled overwhelming evidence linking Nixon directly to efforts to cover up the June 1972 break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters. Rather than risk a constitutional confrontation over whether a sitting president could be indicted, Jaworski asked the grand jury to name Nixon an unindicted co-conspirator and to seal that finding, transmitting the evidence instead to the House Judiciary Committee.
The secrecy held for months, but the designation shaped everything that followed. When the House Judiciary Committee later received the grand jury's supporting materials — including the so-called Watergate Road Map — it gave them a prosecutorial roadmap for drafting articles of impeachment.
Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974, before the House could vote on impeachment, becoming the first American president to leave office in disgrace. The grand jury's quiet vote in March, largely invisible to the public at the time, proved to be one of the decisive hinges of the entire scandal.