Wundry Plus subscribers can binge new seasons of American scandal early and ad free right now.

Join Wundry Plus in the Wundery app or on Apple Podcasts. from Wundery I'm Lindsay, and this is American scandal. The presidency of Warren G. Harding took place against the backdrop of the roaring 20s.

It was a time of flappers, gangsters, and prohibition.

The federal government was supposed to be a beacon of stability and law, but instead,

Harding's presidency was anything but.

His Interior Secretary, Albert Fall, made secret deals with oil magnates Edward Doheini and Harry Sinclair.

He gave them lucrative leases to drill oil in Wyoming's teapot dome and two other locations

in California.

The scandal would tarnish public trust and

government for decades to come. But Teapot dome was just one instance of

corruption happening during the Harding administration. The President's

friends came to be known in the press as the Ohio

gang, a group of men with loose ethics who rode Harding's coat tails into

office. And once in Washington this good old boy network, which included Attorney General Harry Doherty,

flouted the rules as they lined their pockets.

Suspecting that Doherty was involved in shady dealings, the Senators from Montana worked to hold him accountable.

They used hearings and investigations to shine a light on the alleged corruption, and the attorney

general leveraged the FBI to retaliate. My guest today is Nathan Masters, host of the PBS series

Lost LA and author of the book Crooked, The Roaring Twenty's Tale of a corrupt attorney general,

a crusading senator, and the birth of the American political scandal.

Our conversation is next. Can't get enough true crime. Do you have what it takes to be a detective?

Listen to cold tapes, the hit Murder Mystery Podcast, where you must solve the case.

...