While the US has had a very volatile political scene for a while now, the events of the 2010s present several incredible storms of political intrigue and discord. The more prominent ones are laid down below, covering both wildly impactful events and some personal ones.
1. Edward Snowden leaks thousands of confidential documents from the NSA
The early 2010s brought with them the story of Edward Snowden. Snowden managed to leak an incredible amount of NSA documents to the press. Journalist Glenn Greenwald and documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras were the two figures Snowden decided to initially forward the information to.
The communication was done through encrypted emails, to secure the exchange of information between the parties. However, the information soon spread and started to come out consistently. The total number of documents disclosed by Snowden was between 9,000 and 10,000.
2. Rick Scott’s Assistant Attacks Mannequin
According to Scott Jason Cooper, one of the scandals that were more entertaining than they were actually hazardous happened when Florida Governor Rick Scott’s Assistant Joshua Cooper was caught with an ”ice penis” in front of a mannequin. This caused some stirs in the public life of Joshua Cooper who tried to explain to everyone that the situation wasn’t as it seemed.
3. Anthony Weiner’s sex scandals
The story of Anthony Weiner’s multiple escapades and effect on his career is decently long but we will cut it down here. Unlike some other sex scandals, which end up being more fiction than fact, Weiner’s are very real and even confirmed by him. The first prominent appearance Weiner made in the controversial waters was when he accidentally posted a picture of his crotch on his Twitter account in 2011.
Said picture was aimed at one of several women he met on the internet. He resigned from Congress after the incident but that was just the start. The next appearance of Weiner occurred during his redemption tour in July 2013. Screenshots of erotic conversation including Weiner and another woman appeared online and were later confirmed by Weiner to be real.
This cost him the mayoral campaign but it didn’t stop the slew of scandals. In 2016, Anthony Weiner was in the public eye once more. This time due to sending sexually explicit messages with a 15-year-old girl. He acknowledged the texts and in May 2017 pleaded guilty to one count of transferring obscene material to a minor. Weiner served 18 months in jail for this incident.
4. Benghazi and its impact
During the whole Snowden incident, American politics got yet another scandal to deal with. The Benghazi attacks sparked incredible disturbance throughout the political system. The attack was committed upon a diplomatic compound along with a CIA annex near said compound on September 11, 2012.
The Libyan town of Benghazi’s Islamist militias suddenly decided to form an active invasion of the two locations and proceeded to engage the compound. It resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador, Christopher Stevens. There were multiple accusations of attempted cover-ups flung across the political floor.
This lead to a more extensive investigation of the currently active politicians, including Hillary Clinton. Later, the investigation would uncover that Clinton used a private email service for governmental business. This find would drag in even more accusations into the already active storm and would become a major talking point during the 2016 presidential elections.
5. Trump’s impeachments
The 2016 presidential elections could be split into multiple events that were very influential in the political world but the resulting presidency resulted in even more storied examples. The two firm ones are the impeachments of Donald Trump, 45th president of the USA.
Trump’s first impeachment was sparked by Trump’s alleged efforts to coerce Ukraine and other foreign countries into providing negative narratives on his political opponent, Joe Biden. It resulted in a huge political wildfire that concluded with the impeachment.
The second one pins the January 6th, 2023 insurrection on Donald Trump encouraging his supporters to raid Capitol. While his entire mandate has been filled with minor and major events, the double impeachment has to be the most prominent one as it’s the first for any president of the country.
