The time a sitting U.S. president was arrested: Here’s what happened

Donald Trump created a stir over the weekend over claims he would be arrested this week following a grand jury investigation into hush money paid to women who claimed they had an affair with the former president.

Executive level run-ins with the law are nothing new but there’s only one president that was arrested in office and it turns out it was for the strangest of reasons.

In 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant found himself on the wrong side of the law for speeding – and the case involved a horse.

Here’s what happened:

William Henry West, a former slave and Civil War veteran from Prince George’s County, Maryland, was one of two Black policeman to join the Metropolitan Police Department during Reconstruction. He’d been on the job about a year when he encountered President Grant while on patrol near 13th and M Streets NW in Washington, D.C.

Grant was behind the reins of his horse and buggy and was going too fast. Just the previous day, a woman was struck and injured in the same area by a reckless driver and MPD was cracking down on speeders of the two and four-legged varieties.

West stopped the president and gave him a warning for speeding. The next day, West was on patrol in the same officer when he spotted Grant and – again – the president was going too fast.

West stopped him and arrested the president for reckless driving.

According to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, West told the president, “I am very sorry, Mr. President, to have to do it, for you are the chief of the nation and I am nothing but a policeman, but duty is duty, sir, and I will have to place you under arrest.”

Grant was taken to the police station and released on $20 bond – about $500 today. He did not contest the fine or the arrest. And it wasn’t the president’s first citation for speeding. According to those close to the president, he received three citations for speeding in his horse-drawn carriage during his tenure as president.

And Grant didn’t hold it against the lawman. According to a Nov. 7, 1925 story from The Washington Post:

“Grant and West became solid pals after the incident, and in one of their frequent chats West informed the president that he, too, was a speed maniac, and that while off duty he had been arrested more than 20 times for speeding. West owned a stable of fine horses that at once attracted Grant’s admiration, and provided for the two men a strong bond of common interest.”

Grant, whose presidency was marred by a series of scandals, died in 1885. West died in 1915.