Legal Career and Politics
Hungate was admitted to the Missouri bar in 1948, Illinois Bar in 1949, and immediately entered private law practice in Lincoln County (Troy), Missouri. He was then elected prosecuting attorney of Lincoln County, Missouri, serving from 1951 to 1956. From 1958 to 1964, he served as a Missouri Special Assistant Attorney General. on November 3, 1964, he was elected simultaneously as a Democrat to the Eighty-eighth and to the Eighty-ninth Congress by special election, to fill the vacancy caused by the death of United States Representative Clarence Cannon. He was reelected to the five succeeding Congresses, serving until January 3, 1977.
Hungate was a member of the House Judiciary Committee, and was chosen to propose the second of the three articles of impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon. He was the Chair of the Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Criminal Justice. This "Hungate Subcommittee", as it became known, investigated the presidential pardon of Nixon by Nixon's successor, Gerald R. Ford in 1974. On September 24, 1974 Ford appeared before the subcommittee, the only occasion on which a sitting President has given sworn testimony before Congress.
Hungate was not a candidate for reelection to the Ninety-fifth Congress in 1976, and he was succeeded by fellow Democrat Harold L. Volkmer.
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