TRUMP AND THE SCANDALS OF THE HARDING ADMINISTRATION

By Robert P. Bomboy

JULY 2, 2017

You may have learned about it long ago, perhaps in school. You may have heard about it somewhere: Teapot Dome. You may know that the scandal wasn’t about an actual teapot.

            No one alive today was old enough to vote when Warren G. Harding was elected president in 1920, so, until Donald Trump became president this year, no one alive today had seen criminal scandals comparable to the scandals of the Harding Administration.

            Like Trump, Harding was a president determined to revoke the good works of his predecessor. He personally overturned or permitted Congress to reverse the policies of President Woodrow Wilson and approved tax cuts for the rich. Like Trump, Harding lived the high life, and liked it; but, although he had character flaws, he was not a liar. He lived in a more honorable time, unlike our President Pinocchio.

As president, Warren Harding stumbled into a chain of events that set him up to be one of the worst presidents in our history. He surrounded himself with friends, cronies, and political supporters who were unqualified for the jobs they held. Just a few years after World War I, his choice to head the Veterans Bureau was a man he’d met while vacationing, who later engaged in a massive swindle.

We judge our presidents by the people they put in power, and what they do. "Harding’s choices across the board were perhaps the worst in American history,” says Princeton historian Kevin Kruse.

He appointed a platoon of corrupt officials, including his Interior Department secretary, Albert Fall, who created the infamous Teapot Dome scandal and became the first cabinet secretary to be put in jail. Fall leased oil-rich government lands in Wyoming to private companies, in return for personal loans and bribes, and was found guilty of corruption.

If you saw the Boardwalk Empire series on TV, you may recall HBO's portrayal of the real-life character Harry Daugherty, Harding's Attorney General, who was running criminal schemes that made him rich.

            There are a lot of similarities between Harding's bad choices and Trump's. He's appointed a woman named Lynne Patton, who organized golf tournaments at his hotels and planned Eric Trump's wedding, to start next week as the head of the New York and New Jersey offices of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. The fact that Patton has no experience in housing policy made New York Congresswoman Grace Meng tell Trump: "This is not The Apprentice; the federal government is not your personal patronage system.”

            He appointed his friend and onetime golf caddy, Daniel Scavino, Jr., to head the White House Office of Social Media, where he has already drawn a warning from federal authorities for violating the Hatch Act, which prohibits executive branch employees from engaging in electoral politics (Scavino on Twitter advocated the defeat of a Michigan congressman).

            Perhaps never before have we had such chaos in the White House. Other Trump appointees and associates are now under suspicion, as is Trump himself. The FBI is investigating him for possible obstruction of justice.

            Robert Mueller, the Special Counsel appointed by the Justice Department, is investigating Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his business dealings.

            The FBI is investigating Lieutenant General Mike Flynn, Trump's National Security Adviser, who had to resign after lying about his suspicious contacts with Russian officials.

Also because of his contacts with Russian officials, former Senator Jeff Sessions, whom Trump appointed U.S. Attorney General, has been forced to separate or recuse himself from involvement in any investigations of Russian tampering with the 2016 presidential election, because of a possible conflict of interest.

FBI agents have questioned Trump associate Carter Page at length about allegations that he may have acted as a kind of go-between for Russia and Trump's 2016 election campaign. 

Trump's campaign chairman until last August, Paul Manafort, is the focus of several inquiries - including an FBI investigation - looking into his business activities, his failure to file foreign lobbying disclosures, and possible collusion between Trump campaign associates and Russia.

You'll find that the list goes on. Where it will end no one knows, but the smoke is becoming a forest fire.

President Harding said of his appointees: "They're the ones that keep me walking the floors at night." I understand that President Trump doesn't sleep much either.

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