As Donald Trump is looking to roll back environmental regulations, lease more public lands, and re-organize government to follow business practices, he would be wise to remember the Teapot Dome scandal of 95 years ago, the biggest presidential scandal until Watergate.
On April 7, 1922, President Warren G. Harding's secretary of interior, Albert Fall, leased the oil reserves at Teapot Dome in Wyoming to Harry Sinclair's Mammoth Oil Company. Several weeks later, Fall leased more reserves at Elks Hill in California to Edward Doheny of the Pan American Petroleum and Transport Company. The deals were done in secret, and Fall was later convicted of taking a $100,000 bribe—the only cabinet officer ever to be found guilty of a crime. The scandal trashed Harding's reputation.
Read Full Article »