Here's Where It Gets Interesting - The Whiskey-Guzzling Womanizer in the White House

Episode Date: May 8, 2023

As the country went dry at the start of 1920, Americans were ready for a new leader. A stand-up guy, they thought, someone who reflects our morals–a man of the people. The elected Warren Harding, a handsome Ohioan who prided himself on his all-American principles. But behind closed doors, Warren Harding, 29th President of the United States, hid a plethora of dark secrets. Hosted by: Sharon McMahon Executive Producer: Heather Jackson Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder Written and researched by: Heather Jackson, Valerie Hoback, Amy Watkin, and Mandy Reid Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello friends, welcome. Welcome to the fourth episode in our series about prohibition from hatchets to hoods. Today's episode is one I've been waiting to do since the beginning of my podcasting career. And I have to start by telling you that the years leading up to the 1920 presidential election were filled with war, poverty, unemployment, and pestilence in the form of a global pandemic. The country was experiencing some very dark days. 100,000 American men died in World War I, and we lost 650,000 Americans to the influenza pandemic in 1918. Americans had had enough. They were done. It was time for things to be normal again, whether or not they actually were, which sounds kind of familiar, right?

And along came a candidate, a candidate who knew exactly how to tap into that yearning for normalcy. In fact, his campaign slogan was a return to normalcy. He pitched himself as a man of the people, and he charmed a nation that seemed hell-bent on making prohibition the law of the land. But behind closed doors, Warren Harding hid a plethora of dark secrets. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting. Okay, I have to give you just like a quick little note. Warren Harding was not a goody two-shoes, okay? You may want to listen to this episode with your headphones on or use discretion around small children. As far as presidents go, Warren Harding kind of slid under the radar when it came to nominations. He certainly wasn't anybody's front runner. That would have been the former president, Teddy Roosevelt, who already served

two terms, and he had run for a third term under a different party. And then everybody was like, who are we going to get to be the Republican nominee? Maybe Teddy Roosevelt. Of course, remember, this is before the constitutional amendment that made it so that presidents could only serve two terms in office. All signs were pointing to Teddy Roosevelt, whom historians like to refer to as TR. All signs were pointing to TR getting the Republican nomination in 1920. Except there was a small problem. He died. He died in 1919. And that kind of took the Republican Party by surprise. It derailed their plans. At their 1920 National Convention, delegates deadlocked over multiple candidates vying for the nomination. And after 10 ballots, they compromised and chose Warren Harding.

They compromised and chose Warren Harding. While he didn't initially get a super strong endorsement by the Republican Party, his popularity with the people began to quickly pick up speed. Part of this popularity came from his endorsements. The It Couple of Hollywood actors Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, as well as the wildly loved entertainer Al Jolson, threw their support behind Harding, who marketed himself as an average American from a small town. Jolson led a parade from Harding's home in Marion, Ohio, while singing a campaign song he had written. We need a man to guide us, who'll always be beside us. A man who is a fighter through and through.

A man who'll make the White House shine out like a lighthouse. And Mr. Harding, we've selected you. So it's Harding, lead the GOP. Harding, on to victory. We're here to make a fuss. Warren Harding, you're the man for us. Harding really leaned into the regular guy routine and gave so many speeches from his front porch that he eventually had to replace his trampled lawn with gravel. And with Jolson literally singing his praises, the presidential candidate's name recognition skyrocketed. As the U.S. Senator from Ohio, Harding excelled at fence-sitting. He avoided voting on controversial issues and seemed to think that he

could be mild, unobjectionable, and keep his seat if he didn't draw attention to himself with strong opinions. If boxed mashed potatoes were a politician, they would have been the early career of Warren Harding. Starchy, soft, and not authentic. But you still put a little on your plate, right? You still put them on there. Running against Harding in the 1920 election was a fellow Ohioan. The Democratic Party nominated Governor James Cox as their presidential candidate. Like Woodrow Wilson, Cox supported the formation of the League of Nations, but the Senate voted not to join as a member in November of 1919. I got to tell you this, Cox had no chance, okay? Wilson screwed up Cox's chance of getting elected. That's a story for another day, but he did. Even though World War I hadn't impacted the United States as directly as it did European

countries, most Americans were sick of war and foreign interventions. They were tired of being involved in European problems, and they argued that it was time to put America first. And that's just what Warren Harding promised them. Listen to this pledge he gave on the campaign trail. He said, but restoration, not agitation, but adjustment, not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality. It sounds soothing, right? It sounds good. It sounds calming. There's no hints of like death and disease and destruction, just a return to normalcy, a return to the good old days, which of course had only been good for a small portion

of the population. In a move that was equally insulting, or as the kids these days would say, cringe, Harding and his campaign highlighted that the ratification of the 19th Amendment in August of 1920 gave white women the right to vote, and they chose to make their pitch to the newly enfranchised by gushing about Harding's appearance. They encouraged these new voters to elect the quote-unquote handsome Warren, assuming his dashing and distinguished looks would be the only measure of importance to white women casting ballots for the first time. People have long argued about whether this tactic actually worked. I already mentioned that Woodrow Wilson made it next to impossible for Cox to win the election.

So the fact that Harding had such incredible name recognition went a very long way. But nevertheless, Harding and his running mate, Calvin Coolidge, won in a landslide, and it marked the first time that a sitting senator was elected president. Born and raised on a farm in Ohio, the eldest of eight children, Harding had an idyllic childhood. Or so he claimed of the memories of a childhood that seemed straight out of Little House on the Prairie episodes. His stories of farm life became the foundation of his down-home appeal that resonated with voters in 1920. The Harding kids were educated in a one-room school. Until Warren, at 14, followed in his father's footsteps and attended Ohio Central College.

Afterward, he purchased the nearly defunct Marion Daily Star newspaper with a few friends. And as these things go, he met a woman. Florence Kling had not been raised on a farm like Warren and his siblings. She had been born into a wealthy family, and at the age of 19, she eloped with a man named Henry DeWolf. But like Carrie Nation from episode one, she soon realized that her husband was an alcoholic. He abandoned Florence and their young son, and the couple eventually divorced. Before she eloped, Florence had trained to become a concert pianist, so to support herself when her husband left and her father refused to let her come home,

she earned a living giving piano lessons. Florence met Warren when one of his younger sisters became her student, but their path to wedded bliss was a rough one. Florence was five years older than Warren. She was a divorcee and a mom to a 10-year-old. She also had an angry father who threatened to kill Warren if he married Florence. Florence's father wasn't just overprotective. He was also racist, and he had heard a rumor that there were Black people in Warren Harding's family, which by the way, descendants demonstrated does not seem to be the case via DNA evidence. Florence and Warren ignored the haters and married in July of 1891. Florence managed the

newspaper's business and she was a natural. The paper was quite successful, and she later supported Warren's interest in politics as well. Interestingly enough, to those who knew the couple, their marriage seemed to be based more in companionship and professional partnership than in a deep passion. Florence had once pursued Warren with a fervor, but once they were married, she chose not to be known as Mrs. Harding, but instead added her maiden name in there and scrapped the honorific. No Mrs. Harding, she preferred Florence Kling Harding. She also opted not to wear a wedding ring, which was quite progressive for the time. Years of political reporting for the Marion Daily Star became the catalyst for Harding's desire to work in politics. And in 1899, he was elected to the Ohio State Senate, where he eventually served two terms.

He made a solid name for himself as one of the most popular Republicans in Ohio. He left office six years later and returned to his home and newspaper. six years later and returned to his home and newspaper. And this, my friends, is where the wholesome portion of our story concludes. The Hardings had formed many close friendships during their years in Marion, Ohio, especially with their neighbors, Jim and Carrie Phillips. The Phillipses had two children, a daughter named Isabel and a son who died at a young age. Wrecked by his son's death and encouraged by Warren, Jim Phillips checked into a sanitarium for treatment of depression in 1905. Meanwhile, Florence began suffering from prolonged bouts of illness.

Historians guess that if diagnosed today, she may have had lupus. But back then, it was just cycles of extreme fatigue and kidney pain that left her bedridden for months on end. And if you are quick at putting two and two together. You can guess what happened next. In the summer of 1905, with their spouses incapacitated, Carrie and Warren began to meet in secret. In his love letters to her, Warren claimed to Carrie that there was no affection in his marriage and that it is merely existence necessary for appearance sake. And when I say that the rest of his correspondence was explicit, I mean explicit to the point where it was actually difficult to find a snippet to share with you today that wouldn't require us to give this episode an explicit language rating.

I mean that literally. So here's one of the more tame lines he fed to Carrie. I love you garbed, but naked more. And then he underlined naked two times. And it only gets more blunt from there. Okay. That's the tame portion. With letters like that, That's the tame portion. With letters like that, their infidelity was discovered and their respective spouses took different approaches to the news. Jim, back home in Marion, ignored it while a furious Florence spread rumors about Carrie throughout their town. The Phillips family got out of Dutch. In September of 1911, Carrie and Jim moved with their daughter, Isabel, to Berlin for schooling. Except Carrie just couldn't quit Warren. Distance allegedly makes the heart grow fonder, and in this case of Carrie and Warren, the geographical distance was unbearable.

Records indicate that they managed to steal away multiple times for secret meetings. And their graphic correspondence continued. Some of the letters were 25 pages long. The old adage of if they'll cheat with you, they'll cheat on you seemed to prove true in 1913 when Carrie confessed to Warren that she was dating someone else. She had a side piece on her side piece. Warren thought that Carrie had chosen the other geographically closer man, so he refocused his energy into politics and decided to run for the United States Senate in 1914. Warren won the primary and later the general election to become a Republican senator from Ohio. Under the leadership of President Wilson, Democrats controlled both the House and Senate when Warren joined as part of the Republican minority.

Warren was a fair weather senator, though, who took note of how others voted before he cast his own votes. And we can see this play out in his votes both for and against prohibition laws. And what's more, Harding skipped out on attending key debates on both the prohibition and suffrage amendments and was absent for more sessions than he attended. His non-presence, he assumed, was the key to making few enemies. He was a good guy who didn't want to get political, which, you know, is kind of like the exact opposite of the job he signed up for, Senator. I want to be a senator, but I don't want to be political. Nope, that is not how that works. But things were about to get tricky for Wallflower Warren.

Why? Because Carrie was back, and her influence over Harding was being watched. Carrie and her daughter returned to Ohio in the summer of 1914. She and Warren resumed their affair. she and Warren resumed their affair. Steamy letters and all, many of which, with absolutely zero forethought on his part, Warren wrote, get this, on official Senate stationery.

So while the U.S. sided against Germany in World War I, Kerry had grown to love the country and was not shy in sharing her pro-Germany sentiments. Remember, they left and moved to Berlin, then she came back. There is a line between sympathizer and spy, and historians can't quite agree on whether or not Carrie Phillips crossed that line. We do know that Warren Harding was nervous about how often Kerry expressed her devotion to Germany. In a few of his letters from 1918, again on Senate stationery, he urged her to be less forthright about her pro-German sympathies and said that she was on the government's radar. He told her, people said you influenced my votes. Then, despite Carrie's protestations, Warren voted for almost all of the war legislation.

Carrie had a bit of a fit. Their relationship cooled off, and she threatened to expose their affair, which she could do easily with the hundreds of incriminating letters she had in her possession. Because remember, both Florence Harding and Jim Phillips were still very much alive and very much married to Warren and Kerry. When Harding received the Republican Party's nomination for the presidency, he fessed up and disclosed his longstanding affair to the RNC, who had to be like, are you kidding? And she has proof on Senate stationery. Warren wrote Carrie a letter. And in one of the letters, he said, I will pay you

$5,000 per year in March each year, so long as I am in public service. It's not so big. so long as I am in public service. It's not so big. It's not what you have asked. Carrie took the money. To ensure that she stayed quiet during the election season, the RNC paid Carrie and her husband to travel on an all-expense-paid grand Asian vacation during his campaign, and through his campaign manager, Albert Lasker, a hush fee of $25,000. Which isn't to say that people didn't talk because they did. But Carrie stayed true to the agreement she made with Warren and the Republican Party and never publicly spoke about the affair. Over 1,000 pages of love letters between Warren Harding and Carrie Phillips were sealed and handed over to the Library of Congress after Carrie Phillips's death in 1960. They were

closed to the public for over 50 years until just nine years ago when they were unsealed in July of 2014. And if you think that that's where Warren Harding's scandal starts and ends, let me tell you, we have barely scratched the surface. I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends. And together we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office with insane behind the scenes stories, hilarious guests and lots of laughs. Guess who's sitting next to me? Steve! It's my girl in the studio! Girl, in the studio. Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from the office and our friendship with brand new guests. And we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments.

So join us for brand new Office Lady 6.0 episodes every Wednesday. Plus, on Mondays, we are taking a second drink. You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. Enter into the picture Nan Britton, a young woman also from Marion, Ohio, who was 30 years younger than Harding. In 1917, Nan wrote Warren a letter asking him to help her find a secretarial job. He agreed, and they met in New York. He was then a 52-year-old senator, married to Florence, having an affair with Carrie, and he began having an affair with Nan as well, who had just turned 20. In a tell-all book she wrote in 1927, Nan confirmed that a number of these trysts happened in his Washington, D.C. Senate office.

On one such visit in January of 1919, their daughter, Elizabeth, was conceived. Warren set Nan up with a place to live in New Jersey, and in October of 1919, Nan gave birth to his child, And in October of 1919, Nan gave birth to his child, although Elizabeth's paternity wouldn't officially be recognized until almost 100 years later. So what is a guy to do when he's hiding two extramarital affairs and one illegitimate daughter? The answer is, of course, run for president, right? The answer is, of course, run for president, right? For the three years that Warren Harding was president, he paid not only Kerry and Jim Phillips to keep silent, but also Nan Britton.

In the weeks following his election, when Nan's sister visited him to discuss his obligations. Warren arranged to pay Nan $500 a month in child support, and he expected Nan's silence, of course. Warren Harding entered office with an additional personal payroll of hush money payments, $75,000 a year in today's money to one former mistress and $7,500 a month in today's money to the mother of his secret daughter. And we haven't forgotten about Florence, his actual wife. Florence continued to support Warren's ambition to be president, but she worried about what his candidacy would mean for them, and how effective he might be in the role. She knew that his legislative laziness and his fondness for liquor and women could become big problems in the most public role in the nation. But Florence

fully supported him, reservations and all, and was quite active throughout his campaign. Florence marketed herself as the other half of Warren's down-home-return-to-normalcy persona. She regularly spoke to the media about her skills as a housekeeper and a cook. But once Warren secured the win, Florence was all business, much as she had been with their newspaper business so many years earlier. As for Harding, when he entered the White House, he was wildly popular with the American people, and he pushed an agenda of reducing taxes on corporations, limiting immigration, and working on the federal budget system. To maintain his everyday man brand, he did things that average American men might do, like attend sporting events and playing golf.

Only he made sure that a photographer documented his activities. There's actually a great snapshot of Harding at Yankee Stadium, shaking hands with Babe Ruth. Harding appointed four justices to the U.S. Supreme Court, including former President William Howard Taft to the role of Chief Justice. Taft is the only former president to serve on the Supreme Court, by the way. Things seem to be going well for Warren. Great even, except for a couple of dudes who began to misbehave. As is common, recently elected officials reward close allies and big campaign contributors with positions of power. Harding's administration was no different. He appointed loyal supporters from his time in the Senate to his cabinet, and collectively they were known as the Ohio Gang. Their new jobs put these men in proximity to large amounts of government money,

which they, guess what? They stole. Shocking. In a shocking turn of events, they manipulated the books and they stole money. This isn't to say that everyone Harding appointed was corrupt, but the misconduct and scandal of Harding's appointees reflected badly on the entire cabinet and on Harding too. President Harding reportedly said to a newspaper editor, my friends, they're the ones who keep me walking the floor nights. Future President Herbert Hoover was appointed as the Secretary of Commerce. He was not part of Harding's inner circle Ohio gang and didn't really think much of them. But in 1952, he recalled in his memoirs, Harding enjoyed the company of his old Ohio associates in and out of the government. Weekly White House poker parties were his greatest relaxation.

The stakes were not large, but the play lasted most of the night. I had lived too long on the frontiers of the world to have strong emotions against people playing poker for money if they liked it, but it irked me to see it in the White House. poker for money if they liked it, but it irked me to see it in the White House. Poker wasn't the only vice happening at the White House. Despite the fact that this episode is full to bursting with affairs and scandals, this is a series about prohibition, and we need to talk about the alcohol consumption in Warren Harding's administration. Harding's poker cabinet, as it was sometimes called, included Ohio gang members like Attorney General Harry Doherty and Secretary of War John Weeks. There was essentially no such thing as temperance among these men. At the poker parties, often held not once but twice a week,

whiskey flowed freely. I mean, it's much harder to take someone's money during a card game if they're stone cold sober, right? And this was not done in secret. It's not like Warren and his buddies were hiding away in some drafty, unused closet, quietly sipping their outlawed alcohol. No. In fact, the Hardings entertained in the yellow room, a large oval room with big picture windows that's located in the residential south side of the White House. And I said Hardings plural because Florence was often present too. The late Teddy Roosevelt's oldest daughter, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, was a regular at the White House during these parties, and she claimed that the First Lady even mixed the drinks from a vast supply of bottles. Do you want to take a guess where all this alcohol was coming from?

It was procured by a few members of the Ohio Gang, men who had access to the Justice Department and the alcohol that had been confiscated by Prohibition agents. They brought in bootlegged and confiscated liquor by the cartful. Essentially, they were drinking the whiskey they took from the people. By 1923, in the third year of his first term, Warren Harding's facade of his successful Republican president was beginning to crumble. He still looked the part on the surface, but underneath, he was buried in scandals, trying to keep his own under wraps, as well as the indiscretions and schemes of his cabinet. He sought counsel from the religious and uncorrupt Herbert Hoover about ethically which should take precedence, the good of the party or the good of the country. Harding's health began to deteriorate from the stress. He grew gaunt and tired easily. Nevertheless, that summer, he and several others, including Herbert Hoover and his wife Florence, embarked on a 15,000-mile cross-country trip through the West

and into the territory of Alaska. During their journey, Harding developed such severe chest and stomach pain that he was bedridden by the time they finally made it to San Francisco. It was there, as Florence read to him from the Saturday Evening Post, that Warren had a heart attack and died, three months shy of his 58th birthday. Calvin Coolidge was sworn in as the 30th President of the United States in the morning of August 3rd, 1923. Even after Warren's unexpected death, all of his papers and correspondence were boxed up and given to Florence. Before 1978, presidential papers were not confidential or property of the United States. Florence was free to do whatever she wanted with Warren's things.

And what she wanted was to protect him. She had an employee of Harding's newspaper feed many of the papers to the furnace. Although she had been well-loved as a first lady, Florence understood that the scandals coming to light besmirched Warren's presidency, and by extension, her. Warren Harding's death shocked the nation, and people demanded answers. When those were not forthcoming, rumors spread. The president's doctors were accused of malpractice and incompetence. Florence, the last person to see him alive, was accused of deliberately poisoning him. This poisoning allegation spread like wildfire, fueled by Florence's refusal of an autopsy and her inheritance of his large estate. This theory was the premise of a book written by a shady former FBI agent, Gaston Means.

Published in 1930, the strange death of President Harding implies that Florence chose to punish Warren for his affairs by poisoning him. It was quickly debunked, but even today, it persists as a conspiracy theory. Florence Kling Harding died just 16 months after her husband. And as the merchant of Venice tells us, the truth will out. And so the revelation of scandal after scandal began to systematically chip away at the Harding legacy. Attorney General Harry Doherty and his aide Jess Smith were running a huge scam with alcohol. Under the Volstead Act, pharmacies were legally allowed to buy and sell alcohol if they acquired the appropriate permits from the government. But Smith sold these permits to bootleggers who in turn then purchased and sold alcohol under the guise of owning a pharmacy.

Smith and Doherty pocketed the money they made selling permits. Smith was also the White House fixer and had his hand in a number of shady deals. It was also rumored that he and Doherty were lovers. In 1923, Jess Smith was found face down in a garbage can with a bullet in his head. in a garbage can with a bullet in his head. His death was ruled to be suicide, but there's also a lot of robust speculation that Jess Smith's death was actually a homicide. Fixer Jess Smith was the guy in charge of paying off Harding's former mistresses through a special fund set aside for blackmail. Smith also kept a Washington Post editor, Ned McClain, in his pocket, bribing him with booze and hush money to keep damning coverage of Harding out of the press. There's a particularly salacious story that has emerged in recent years about a woman named Grace

Cross, who was Harding's aide during his time in the Senate. They had an affair. In a moment of anger during their relationship, she slashed him with a knife, which meant that when the affair ended badly and Warren became president, Grace threatened to go public with their love letters, much like Carrie had, and she talked openly about her ability to identify the birthmark she'd given him with that knife. Fixer Jess sought to solve the problem with the help from Grace's friend, Bertha Martin. Bertha agreed to help on the condition that she was given the job of society editor at the Washington Post, and because Smith had an in with Ned McLean there, he made it happen. In exchange, Bertha took her friend Grace to lunch. Knowing she had always kept them with her,

Bertha asked Grace if she could see the letters that Warren had written her. When Grace pulled them out of her purse, Bertha snatched them away and bolted out of the restaurant. Grace lost her proof. Bertha became the society editor, and President Harding's affairs stayed in the dark. Jess, unfortunately, wound up dead. Perhaps being a fixer meant that he knew too much, because in addition to keeping Harding's old flames flush with hush money and selling permits to bootleggers, he also had ties to another scandal, one that you may have heard of, the Teapot Dome scandal. During his presidency a decade earlier, William Howard Taft designated as Special Naval Oil Reserve several oil fields located all over the country. The Teapot Dome oil field in Wyoming was one of them. In the midst of a vast, mostly barren landscape, there was a large rock formation that had once strongly resembled a teapot, which is what gave the valley its name.

In 1921, Interior Secretary and Ohio gang member Albert Bacon Fall convinced President Harding to sign Executive Order 3474, which transferred control of the Teapot Dome Naval Oil Reserve to the Department of the Interior. Definitely not suspicious. Don't be suspicious, okay? Suddenly, Interior Secretary Fall was rolling in money. He paid for 10 years worth of back taxes all at one time, which a cabinet member with a decade's worth of back taxes is a whole different scandal entirely, right? Fall purchased land in New Mexico and made substantial improvements to the properties he already owned. Again, don't be suspicious. Nothing to see here. The scandal broke before Warren Harding's death when the Wall Street Journal reported in 1922

that officials in his administration had secretly leased drilling rights at Teapot Dome to the oil magnate Harry Sinclair. It also later came out that Interior Secretary Fall had leased naval oil fields to another oil baron. And these leases were worth more than $200 million. That's the equivalent of $3 billion today. That's like buy an island kind of money, right? The Senate decided, you know what, we should investigate. We should look into this. We should look into this Teapot Dome situation. Secretary Fall resigned in hopes of quieting the reporting and investigation. He returned to the private sector at his ranch in Three Rivers, New Mexico, which just so happened

to have a brand new giant influx of cattle. Harding covered for Fall and claimed that the leases were done with his approval. The story faded by the summer of 1923 when the president left on his trip west. Additionally, the Republicans who controlled the Senate weren't overjoyed to be pressing too hard against one of their own, so Democratic Senator Thomas Walsh of Montana took the lead in the investigation, while Senate Republicans worked on thwarting any future probe. The corrupt Harry Doherty, President Harding's attorney general, directed federal agents to Montana to search for information that would discredit Senator Walsh. And Secretary Fall buried the Senate committee with more than 5,000 documents in order to bog down and prolong the

investigation. The Senate hearings finally began in October of 1923 after Warren Harding's death. The inquiry confirmed that Secretary Fall had received bribes of about $400,000, which is like $6 million today, from the oil executives Harry Sinclair and Edward Doheny. What did they get for their money? Exclusive oil production rights at several oil fields, including Teapot Dome. Additionally, the source of the funds Secretary Fall used to pay his back taxes and improve his properties was discovered to be a $100,000 no interest loan from one of the oil magnets. Six criminal trials and two civil trials followed these congressional hearings. followed these congressional hearings. And in 1929, Fall was convicted of criminal conspiracy and bribery and spent, get this, one year in prison for his crimes. Fall had the honor of being the first presidential cabinet member to be sentenced to prison. And the Teapot Dome scandal was the most serious

governmental scandal until Watergate 50 years later. In 1927, the Supreme Court invalidated the oil leases and transferred the control of the fields back to the Navy. Back when the scandal was first revealed, Attorney General Doherty and President Harding had to work hard to rein in the scrutiny their leadership now faced. And who knew their most sordid of secrets? Jess Smith. It's reported that before he left for his trip west, Harding told Daugherty that he wanted Jess Smith gone from Washington, D.C. And Jess was found dead just weeks later. Do we have hard evidence to say for certain that Jess's death was planned by someone other than

himself? No, we don't. But with an administration that was neck deep in scandal and cover-ups, is the idea far-fetched? Maybe not. Let's tie up one more loose end before we end for today. With Warren Harding's sudden death in 1923, Nan Britton, once his lover and the mother of his daughter, no longer received her monthly stipend of $500. Nan needed money for Elizabeth's care and education, and so she wrote a book and called it The President's Daughter. Nan spared no details in her expose, to the point where Congress literally introduced bills to prevent its publication. After that, no publisher would touch it with the 10-foot pole. But finally, in 1927, four years after Harding's death, the book found a publisher and it became

an instant bestseller. It began with a dedication that read, this book is dedicated with understanding and love to all unwedded mothers and to their innocent children whose fathers are usually not known to the world. For decades, Nan's credibility and the paternity of Elizabeth were questioned. But in a 2015 DNA test, samples from both relatives of Harding and Nan Britton confirmed the truth. Warren and Nan's daughter, Elizabeth Ann Blessing, died in 2005. She was Harding's only known biological child. In the years that followed Warren Harding's early death, endless tales of illegal drinking and gambling in the White House came to light in the same way that his love affairs did. But the drinking, it didn't surprise anyone.

Men like Harding spent the majority of America's dry years living it up, drinking when they wanted and making money off of it too. Stay tuned, because next time we're going to talk about loopholes, the kind that absolutely made it easy for wealthy men to profit off of prohibition. I'll see you then. Thank you for listening to Here's Where It Gets Interesting. This episode is written and researched by Sharon McMahon, Heather Jackson, Valerie Hoback, Amy Watkin, and Mandy Reed. Our executive producer is Heather Jackson. Our audio producer is Jenny Snyder. And it's hosted by me, Sharon McMahon.

If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to hit the follow or subscribe button on the podcast platform of your choice. We also benefit so much from ratings, reviews, and sharing on social media. Thanks for being here, and we'll see you again soon.