Scandals of the Reagan administration

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandals_of_the_Reagan_administration#:~:text=The%20most%20well-known%20and,six%20U.S.%20citizens%20being%20held

 The presidency of Ronald Reagan was marked by numerous scandals, resulting in the investigation, indictment or conviction of over 138 administration officials, the largest number for any president of the United States.

The most well-known and politically damaging of the scandals since Watergate, the Iran-Contra affair came to light in 1986 when Ronald Reagan conceded that the United States had sold weapons to the Islamic Republic of Iran as part of a largely unsuccessful effort to secure the release of six U.S. citizens being held hostage in Lebanon. It was also disclosed that some of the money from the arms deal with Iran had been covertly and illegally funneled into a fund to aid the right-wing Contras counter-revolutionary groups seeking to overthrow the socialist Sandinista government of Nicaragua. The Iran–Contra affair, as it became known, did serious damage throughout the Reagan presidency. The investigations were effectively halted when Reagan's vice-president and successor, George H. W. Bush pardoned Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger before his trial began.[2]

Savings and loan crisis in which 747 institutions failed and had to be rescued with $160 billion in taxpayer dollars.[24] Reagan's "elimination of loopholes" in the tax code included the elimination of the "passive loss" provisions that subsidized rental housing. Because this was removed retroactively, it bankrupted many real estate developments which used this tax break as a premise, which in turn bankrupted 747 Savings and Loans, many of whom were operating more or less as banks, thus requiring the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to cover their debts and losses with taxpayer money. This with some other "deregulation" policies, ultimately led to the largest political and financial scandal in U.S. history to that date. The ultimate cost of the crisis is estimated to have totaled around $150 billion, about $125 billion of which was directly subsidized by the U.S. government, which further increased the large budget deficits of the early 1990s.