When the affair became known, Congress directed President Harding to cancel the leases; the Supreme Court declared the leases fraudulent and ruled illegal Harding's transfer of authority to Fall. Although the president himself was not implicated in the transactions that had followed the transfer, the revelations of his associates' misconduct took a severe toll on his health; disillusioned and exhausted, he died before the full extent of the wrongdoing had been determined. Fall was convicted of accepting a bribe in the Elk Hills negotiations and imprisoned. Doheny and Sinclair were acquitted of charges of bribery and criminal conspiracy, but Sinclair spent 6 ¹/₂ months in prison for contempt of court and contempt of the U.S. Senate. Although the secretary of the navy, Edwin Denby, had signed all the leases, he was cleared of all charges. While “Teapot Dome” entered the American political vocabulary as a synonym for governmental corruption, the scandal had little long-term effect on the Republican Party. Calvin Coolidge, a Republican, was elected president in 1924.