[AJC-Official]

36 Republicans in a federal position have been convicted of a crime while in office since 1900. Meanwhile, 48 Democrats have been convicted in the same period. [0]

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_federal_polit...

Note for fact checkers: Search 'D-' or 'R-' and go through the listing to avoid the few non-political party references.

[bduerst]

Your methodology is wrong.

You need to find both (R- / (D- AND (R) / (D). This results in 94 Republican convictions and 73 Democrat convictions. [0]

Also when you look at this century, 19 Republicans have been convicted and only 8 democrats. That's twice as many Republicans convicted of crimes than Democrats.

Using your methodology (correctly):

- Political Scandals: 247 Republicans were involved in political scandals, compared to only 126 Democrats. This century: 105 Republicans and 20 Democrats - that's 5x more Republicans. [1]

- Sex Scandals: 47 Republicans have been involved in sex scandals, while only 44 Democrats have. This century: 28 Republicans, 9 Democrats - that's 3x more for the GOP. [2]

By your own logic, Republicans are both more criminal and more scandalous than Democrats, historically and even moreso now.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_federal_polit...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federal_political_scan...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federal_political_sex_...

[dragonwriter]

I haven't gone through the whole list, but the handful I did go through includes internal rules violations adjudicated by the House or Senate, and impeachments, as well as convictions by criminal courts. Rule violations aren't criminal convictions in any sense; impeachments (with convictions in the Senate) are, in a sense, but not strictly comparable to conviction by a criminal court.

[floren]

A good point. Counting from Reagan forward, you get 33 R, 30 D. Of course, that only gives you 2 Democrat presidents and 4 Republican, so if you step back and include Carter, you get 36 R, 35 D.

[lainga]

The count between 1961 and now is 46 Democrats to 48 Republicans, which includes all the Watergate convictions.

[c3534l]

The joke wasn't that Republicans are criminals, but that they (and by they, the poster probably meant Trump) is an "egomaniac sociopath or just really unintelligent." I'm not defending the comment which probably isn't appropriate for hackernews, but I think that's what the joke was.