11 Biggest Political Scandals of All Time

10. The Keating Five

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In the late ’80s and early ’90s, five US senators, John McCain, Donald W.Riegle,Jr., Alan Cranston, Dennis DeConcini, and John Glenn, were accused of corruption and inappropriately intervening on behalf of Charles Humphrey Keating, Jr., who was the chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association. The investigation led by the Senate Ethics Committee started in 1989 and lasted almost two years.  In the same year, Lincoln Savings and Loan fell apart, and who knows how many investors lost all of their life savings. In the end, Keating served 4 years in prison, was convicted on 73 counts of fraud, and the senators suffered no legal but only political consequences, as this was the affair that had stained all of them for life.

Official U.S. Senate portrait of John Glenn, 1990s.