Pod Insights SNAFU with Ed Helms S3E4: Trust Issues About this episode Prohibition... wasn't going so well. Mabel Walker Willebrandt cooks up a new approach to prosecuting the biggest bootlegger in the nation. Meanwhile, government hypocrisy is on the rise and a mysterious gunshot rings out from the Attorney General's suite at the Wardman Park Inn.
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1:05 Speaker 04 Hey there, it's your host, Ed Helms here. Real quick, before we dive into this episode, I wanted to remind you that my brand new book is coming out on April 29th. It's called Snafu: The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest Screwups. And you can preorder it right now at snafu-book.com. Trust me, if you like this show, you're gonna love this book. It's got all the wild disasters, spectacular face plants we just couldn't squeeze into this podcast. And here's the kicker, I am also going on tour to celebrate. That's right, I'm coming to New York, DC, Boston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, and my hometown, Los Angeles.
1:48 Speaker 04 So if you've ever wanted to see me stumble through a live Q&A or dramatically read about a kitty cat getting turned into a CIA operative, now's your chance. Again, head to snafu-book.com to preorder the book and check out all the tour details and dates, or just click the link in the show notes, that'll work too. Okay, that's it, on with the chaos. This is Snafu, Season 3, Formula 6.
2:17 Speaker 04 Previously on SNAPU, the head of prohibition enforcement cracked down on bootleggers.
2:23 Speaker 05 Mabel Walker Willebrandt was a very serious woman. If she woke up every day, the first thing she did was take an ice cold bath.
2:29 Speaker 04 World War I soldier George Cassidy became the top bootlegger to Congress.
2:34 Speaker 06 He was a dapper dude. You would have thought he was a general of the most powerful army in the world or something.
2:41 Speaker 04 And as deaths from alcohol began to rise, American drinkers kept right on drinking.
2:48 Speaker 07 This acceptance of risk that came with prohibition at these levels is kind of horrifying, but it was there and it was real.
3:04 Speaker 04 On a November afternoon in 1922, Assistant Attorney General Mabel Walker Willebrandt takes a trip to the Capitol Building. I imagine her with a bulging briefcase, maybe a couple of clerks scrambling along behind her, trying to keep up. Miss Willibrand, slow down! They're carrying everything she needs for the case she's about to argue. She climbs the stone steps and crosses into the shade of white stone columns, then enters a red carpeted two-story chamber with a domed ceiling. It's the old Senate chamber, which in 1922 was home to the Supreme Court, and today, Mabel is presenting her case before the nine Supreme Court justices.
3:47 Speaker 04 It's her big moment. The gallery is packed for a court case that's made national news, the United States versus George Remus. So far, prohibition enforcement wasn't going so well. It wasn't going well in the liquor capital of America, New York City, where the bodies were piling up at Alexander Getler's lab, and it wasn't going well in the nation's actual capital, Washington, D.C., where speakies were popping up on every corner and business was booming for the bootleggers. And no bootlegger was making a bigger profit than George Remus. Remus wasn't just a bootlegger, he was a lawyer and a pharmacist, too, a trifecta that
4:31 Speaker 04 made him one of the richest men in America. Since the start of prohibition, Remus had been building an illegal alcohol empire that rivaled Al Capone's, which made him the target of Mabel Walker Willebrandt.
4:45 Speaker 04 When she faced George Remus in court, Mabel was determined that this would be a turning point in her war. Remus was a big fish, and Mabel was gonna gut him with the whole nation watching.
5:06 Speaker 04 I'm Ed Helms, and this is Snafu, a show about history's greatest screw-ups. This season, a dark tale from the heart of the prohibition era: Formula 6. How prohibition's war on alcohol went so off the rails that government wound up poisoning its own people. Today, we'll follow Mabel Walker Willebrandt in Washington, DC, as she faces one formidable challenge after another. Her bosses are drunks, her agents are incompetent, and she's about to realize that across the government, and even within her own Department of Justice, she can't trust anyone.
6:01 Speaker 05 She was a lone warrior.
6:02 Speaker 04 That's historian and author Dan Ockrent.
6:05 Speaker 05 And she really had an uphill battle for a bunch of reasons.
6:09 Speaker 04 As you may remember, Mabel was surrounded at her job by straight-up drunks, starting with the president.
6:16 Speaker 05 Harding drank a lot. Harry Dougherty, the Attorney General, who was the immediate boss to Mabel Willebrandt, he was A, a drunk, and B, corrupt.
6:25 Speaker 04 And again, like we said before, the guy leading the Treasury Department and supervising the prohibition bureau owned a whiskey company. So when it came time for Mabel to do some basic stuff, like hire clerks for legal research, well, she hit a wall.
6:43 Speaker 05 She didn't have much in the way of financial support. And one of the things that was indicative of the attitude of the Drys is that they passed these laws but gave no money for enforcement.
6:54 Speaker 04 She didn't have anywhere near the manpower she needed to stop the alcohol coming across two borders and 60,000 miles of open coastline.
7:03 Speaker 05 The fact that there were only 2,600 prohibition agents covering the entire Canadian border, the Mexican border, and both coasts, it's ridiculous.
7:12 Speaker 04 And as for that army of agents, even that manpower was quickly dwindling. Hundreds of agents were being dismissed around the country for brazen corruption. And even the ones who weren't corrupt were pretty much useless. Sure, they were given guns and cars, but little or no training to do the actual job.
7:30 Speaker 05 Someone said about the Canadian border, you know, you can't stop a liquid from leaking through a dotted line, that dotted line on the map.
7:39 Speaker 04 So what could Mabel actually do from behind her barge-sized mahogany desk in room 501 at the Department of Justice?
7:46 Speaker 05 Well, she had the power to bring indictments.
7:49 Speaker 04 The power of the courts. And as you may remember, her job was to work with the bespectacled accountants at the IRS, a group of agents supremely qualified to crack down on inflated tax deductions, but maybe not so much collecting the evidence of illicit bootlegging.
8:07 Speaker 07 Open up, IRS. No one's here. Oh shit, look, there's a whole case of chartreuse. We should collect that. Can't let good evidence go to waste. I like the way you enforce the law.
8:21 Speaker 04 But Mabel was undeterred. And in the fall of 1922, she decided to get creative. She came up with a plan to round up every last bootlegger, and she was gonna start by going after the biggest bootlegger of all.
8:35 Speaker 07 George Remus? Yes? You're under arrest for violating Title II of the Volstead Act.
8:42 Speaker 04 You ever watch Boardwalk Empire? When the show's writer, creator, Terry Winter began researching George Remus, he couldn't believe what he found. Here's Terry. George Remus, one of the craziest stories you hear about, like incredibly successful defense attorney becomes... Like the biggest bootlegger ever. You're making a mistake. No, you can't do this. Remus doesn't get arrested. In the show, Remus is a large, bald, rich weirdo who, yes, you heard it right, refers to himself in the third person. And it's like, if I made that up, you've got, come on. And this absolutely all happened.
9:20 Speaker 04 Yeah, all of that's true, including the third person thing. His parties were so over the top that people think he may have been the inspiration for the Great Gatsby. The whole city packed into automobiles and all weekend, every weekend, ended up at Gatsby's. In 1922, no one in America owned more of the illegal alcohol trade than Remus. At one point, he controlled 30% of the liquor making its way into America.
9:50 Speaker 07 Because he had bought up a whole bunch of huge rickhouses full of whiskey.
9:54 Speaker 04 That's historian Garrett Peck. Remus's warehouse stored $25 million worth of alcohol, which he sold and distributed using a prohibition loophole for medicinal alcohol.
10:06 Speaker 07 And then he bribed people so he could have three or four times as much as that he could distribute than he was legally allowed to. So he made a fortune, you know, just by, by being able to sell alcohol without any taxes on it.
10:19 Speaker 04 Since Remus did all the illegal selling without paying taxes, obviously, Mabel saw an opportunity. Maybe she could actually use tax law in her favor. He could exploit loopholes in prohibition law, but maybe she could finally bust Remus through the unforgiving tax code. And this wasn't just about Remus. She wanted to send a message to all of the bootleggers across the country. One way or another, she was coming for them. With those black-robed justices staring down from their tufted leather thrones, the room can be an intimidating place. But for Mabel, nah, she's unflappable. So cool in the courtroom that people joke she has ice in her veins.
11:05 Speaker 04 All that is to say, Mabel is tough. And it was a good thing, too. The New York papers lined up against her. In their coverage of a Supreme Court hearing, one newspaper reported that Mabel wasn't, quote, "exactly pretty" because her features were, quote, "too large and too serious for that." And she suffered from a, quote, "suggestion of plumpness", which is what I might call a suggestion of shitty misogynistic journalism. And to top it all off, they couldn't even get her job title right. One paper called her "the woman assistant of the Attorney General", but she's actually Assistant Attorney General. These things matter. Just ask Dwight Schrute.
11:48 Speaker 06 I am now senpai, which is assistant sensei. Assistant to the sensei? That's pretty cool. Assistant sensei.
11:54 Speaker 04 Mabel wasn't shy about her disdain for how she and other women in the working world had to deal with what she called girly girly stuff. She once sat down for an interview with a literary magazine called The Smart Set, basically the 1920s version of an Instagram Live.
12:11 Speaker 07 A boy must do the job well and develop personality. A girl must do the job well and develop personality, plus break down skepticism about her ability. Walk the tightrope of sexlessness without loss of her essential charm. Make the hard choice between giving up children and home life in order to advance or having them in the face of increased prejudice.
12:34 Speaker 04 So when Mabel faces down bootleggers like George Remus in court, she knows the guy in front of her isn't her only opponent. But she's undaunted. She's got to get shit done. And now, before the Supreme Court, she makes a stirring case. Where other prosecutors might have overlooked tax law as a hammer, I mean, let's be honest, it's pretty boring, obscure stuff, Mabel saw nothing but potential. Her approach was ingenious, and her arguments impassioned.
13:07 Speaker 07 The tax penalties outlined in Internal Revenue laws are highly important in the enforcement of prohibition. The government isn't giving its stamp of approval to an illicit business by taxing them. An illegitimate business should not be exempt from paying taxes that legitimate businesses should pay. They must pay up, too.
13:27 Speaker 04 George Remus, he was making a fortune because he was selling liquor without paying taxes on it. This was bold. No one had the audacity or imagination to prosecute any major crime figures for income tax evasion. But Mabel, determined, unflinching Mabel, decided that if it was going to take tax law to enforce prohibition, then so be it. After arguments concluded and the justices began deliberations, Mabel was on edge because this trial clearly wasn't just about Remus. This was about all the fat cat bootleggers in America, including a fella named Willie Har. Remember him?
14:09 Speaker 04 Leader of the massive bootlegging operation, the Savannah Four down in Georgia? And also captain of the vaunted and audaciously meta recreational baseball squad, the Bootlegger Team? Well, Har and his whole gang were anxiously following Remus's trial from Savannah, knowing that their fate was tied to Remus's. This is because Mabel had also charged Har with the same crime, having determined the Savannah Four owed $2 million in unpaid taxes from their illegal bootlegging. If the Supreme Court ruled in Mabel's favor and decided bootleggers had to pay taxes, well, that could be the ballgame for Har and the Bootlegger Team, of course.
14:54 Speaker 04 A few days later, Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes renders the court's decision. First, some bad news for Mabel. Remus's arrest in this case had occurred a year earlier, in October 1921. The tax statutes that Mabel was resting her entire case on, they had passed a month later in November. So Remus is exempt. The law Mabel was trying to slap onto him didn't even apply.
15:22 Speaker 04 She missed her shot by a month. For now, Remus was still a free man. That might seem like a setback for Mabel, but she's a creature of the law. She knows that hidden under the surface of a defeat, victories can be won piece by piece. And in this case, there was a surprise twist. Even though Remus got out on a technicality, the justices decided that Mabel was actually right. In addition to all their other crimes, bootleggers also owed taxes on their ill-gotten revenue. And if they didn't pay up, it was another mark against them, one that came with serious jail time.
16:03 Speaker 04 And that decision reverberated all the way down to Savannah. And that is a win for Mabel, because she sees the potential of this ruling to dramatically change prohibition enforcement. So even though George Remus is acquitted, Mabel emerges from the old senate chamber ecstatic. Think about this: she's having trouble locking up bootleggers because it's virtually impossible to catch them red-handed. But this gives her a whole new angle of attack. If she can prove they've been doing business and not paying taxes on the income, she can lock them up without ever having to enter a keg into evidence. Boom!
16:45 Speaker 04 And even though Remus had just gotten off the hook, he was bound to keep bootlegging, and he probably wasn't gonna just start paying taxes. So, it wouldn't be long until Mabel would see him in court again. Mabel can feel the tide beginning to turn. I can picture Mabel now, striding out of that Capitol with a bounce in her step, bursting with pride. Which is sadly ironic, because somewhere across town, a man is strolling along carrying a suitcase, with a smile. He tips his green hat to the people he passes. He's on his way to make a delivery, and casually undermine everything she's fighting for.
17:31 Speaker 03 OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval. Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.
18:15 Speaker 01 People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.
18:26 Speaker 03 And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies. So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat, it's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeartRadio app today.
19:04 Speaker 04 This green-hatted fellow would be George Cassidy, merrily strolling through the halls of Congress, because business is good. George is averaging two dozen deliveries a day. A bottle of Sweet Red Vermouth to a congressman, two bottles of Red Star Gin to a junior senator, a case of Duncan Harwood's Canadian whiskey for the House Speaker. Yep, those are some big-ass suitcases that George hauls around. His delivery's done, he now takes the stairs down to the basement and finally arrives at an unassuming door.
19:42 Speaker 04 George takes out his keys, unlocks the door, steps in, and flips on the lights. The windowless room has a mahogany poker table, swivel chairs, and lots and lots of bottles of booze. Welcome to George's office. You see, a few months ago, one of George's clients, a congressman, hooked George up with an office, which quickly became the warehouse for some of the best liquor in town. Not that his clients could tell the difference between a McAllen 1878 and a George's bathtub 1922. These politicians may have considered themselves connoisseurs, but they had no idea they were just drinking a cheap blend with some food coloring. At the time, only George himself knew just how much water he was using to cut the imported
20:27 Speaker 04 alcohol. The congressmen start marching in. One of these men of high taste is one of George's most loyal customers. When he walks into George's tavern, hopefully in a straight line, his colleagues joke, "Get out the corn and put up the rye." He's known around the Capitol as a bottle-a-day man. George serves him a tall glass of his special elixir all the way to the brim. And the crazy thing? Rumor had it that he was one of the most eloquent speakers on the House floor.
21:02 Speaker 07 I would like to make an inquiry to the Senate for the purpose of understanding just the scope of this resolution.
21:12 Speaker 04 John Nance Garner. He would later become Speaker of the House and then Vice President of the United States under FDR. Add this guy to the list of luscious that surrounded Mabel Walker Willebrandt as she tried to do her job. Back in George's office, the boys are getting comfortable. This fully operational speakeasy is home to a secret congressional drinking club. They even have a name for themselves, the Barflies Association, or BFA for short. Washington sure loves a three-letter bureau.
21:45 Speaker 06 He had a whole closet full of alcohol there. He'd sell to everyone. Also, people could come down and play cards with him. Mind you, this is a guy with a third grade education, and yet he was enormously charming.
21:55 Speaker 04 That's Garrett Peck again.
21:57 Speaker 06 He was on a first-name basis with all these different congressmen, and they liked him. He knew how to put all the congressmen at ease, didn't have to sit there and talk politics. They could just come down and shoot the breeze with him and play some poker.
22:12 Speaker 04 At George's office, the nights are late. Sometimes George comes home, sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes the party continues elsewhere, outside the Capitol. Like on this particular night, as we follow George from the House Office Building to a Victorian townhouse on a tree-lined street, just blocks from the White House. This is K Street, and the house is made of green limestone with one big magnolia tree out front. It has a nickname: The Little Green House. Every night, The Little Green House is full of men smoking, playing poker, and, you guessed it, drinking.
22:53 Speaker 04 There's always plenty of liquor on hand, the best stuff, thanks to cases streaming in on Wells Fargo wagons driven by armed guards. The regulars were men in high places: George's lawmaking pals, sure, but also the prohibition commissioner, the Attorney General, and even on occasion, the President himself.
23:14 Speaker 04 George didn't supply The Little Green House, but he was a welcome guest, along with several of his bootlegging compatriots, including the most notorious bootlegger of all, the bald guy in the resplendent suit, George Remus.
23:31 Speaker 04 The Little Green House was where guys like George Remus could ask for favors, like for a big stack of permits that gave them access to some booze. You see, under prohibition law, there were still allowances made for a few kinds of alcohol. It was permitted for sale for religious ceremonies and medical purposes, as long as you had a permit. And there was one regular at The Little Green House who had bags stuffed with those permits and could fix it up for bootleggers. He was, in fact, one of George Remus's pals. He was the man with black wire glasses and a bushy mustache, standing in a corner of the room. It was a face that Mabel Walker Willebrandt would have known well, because he was a DOJ man named Jess Smith.
24:16 Speaker 04 See, Jess was the right-hand man of the Attorney General, a fixer for the entire Department of Justice. And his office was literally next door to Mabel's. And Jess was always happy to oblige the fellows he met in the little greenhouse. It seemed like Jess almost relished undermining Mabel's work. He was happy to give out permits and even make promises of immunity to loads of bootleggers like Remus, happily handing him wads of cash in return. But all this wheeling and dealing was about to catch up with Jess Smith. And it was only a matter of time before Mabel caught wind of all his shenanigans.
24:58 Speaker 03 OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval. Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.
25:42 Speaker 04 People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.
25:53 Speaker 03 And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies. So join us and hear their stories and more. Because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis.
26:15 Speaker 04 To At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.
26:28 Speaker 04 In May of 1923, a few months after her big legal win, Mabel Walker Willibrand had big plans. She was gonna take a vacation. And she deserved it. Mabel was still on cloud nine over her Supreme Court win. She wrote to her parents.
26:45 Speaker 07 It was a gorgeous victory, and one of which I am prouder than of anything I've done so far.
26:50 Speaker 04 And months after the Supreme Court decision, Mabel actually went after George Remus again. And this time, she nailed him on the tax evasion charges. This case had been a simple one. Conviction in no time flat. Yep, George was headed to the slammer, and not only him. Willie Har had been convicted of breaking tax law, too. Willie was also going to prison. It had taken some careful maneuvering and some patience, but Mabel had lined him up and knocked him down. So she was in a mood to celebrate. Her bags were packed. She was headed west for a few days of R and R. You know, a little me time in those ice baths. Mabel was just about out the door when
27:34 Speaker 04 her phone rang. The Attorney General on the line with news about her colleague Jess Smith. Oh, yeah, that guy at the office with the weird mustache. What about him could possibly warrant a call from the Attorney General? Well, she recalls that the Attorney General and Jess are pretty buddy buddy. They even share an apartment at the Wardman Park Inn. It's the swankiest place in town, with its white gloved bellhops, chandeliers the size of merry-go-rounds, and gold-plated atrium. It was a hotel, hotspot, and home to DC's upper crust. A place where meetings and soirees would go on into the night. He
28:15 Speaker 04 tells her that in the wee hours of last night, May 19, 1923, a gunshot rang out across the hotel's sixth floor.
28:25 Speaker 04 It came from a corner suite. The Attorney General's own apartment. The very one he shares with Jess Smith. As fate would have it, directly below Dougherty's sixth-floor suite lives the director of the Fed's brand-spanking-new Bureau of Investigation, which is the predecessor to the FBI. Moments after the gunshot, the director of the Bureau is on the scene, with, I'm assuming, a very bad case of bedhead. The Bureau Director enters the suite to find a body twisted on the floor. The man on the floor is wearing black-rimmed glasses and a bushy mustache. It's not Attorney General Dougherty. The guy is in his pajamas, lying on the blood-soaked carpet.
29:10 Speaker 04 There's a hole shot through his right temple, and his head is in a garbage can atop ashes of burned papers. The man isn't famous. He isn't even a politician. And his death is quickly ruled by the Bureau Director as a suicide. But things don't really add up. Like, how on earth could a man shoot himself and have his head end up inside a wastebasket? Why was the weapon, a gun, missing from the scene when the cops arrived? And why was Jess carrying around his will in his pocket to be magically discovered by police hours later, like a gift on Christmas morning?
29:51 Speaker 04 To an analytical mind like Mabel's, the pieces weren't adding up. Until, as the cops dig deeper into Smith's stuff, they discover evidence that Jess Smith may have been at the center of something quite criminal. Turns out, Smith was carrying a long list of bootleggers from across the country. George Remus, yep, he was on there. Also, Jess Smith had something that was a little unusual for an employee of the Department of Justice: wads and wads of cash.
30:28 Speaker 04 Back at the DOJ, rumors are flying around the office about what exactly was behind Smith's "suicide." Maybe Smith and someone at the Department of Justice had a falling out. And maybe Smith threatened to expose the corruption that was going on behind closed doors. Maybe George Remus was getting back at Smith after his arrest. A hit job by a big bootlegger wouldn't be out of the question. Now, Mabel and Jess, they weren't tight, even though Jess's office was right next to hers at the DOJ. She knew that Jess pushed papers and dealt with permits, but she didn't know what Jess did with those permits. And Mabel certainly didn't know that Jess was chummy with George Remus. Her mind was reeling.
31:16 Speaker 04 After the phone call, Attorney General Dougherty summoned Mabel to his office. He was probably smelling a bit suspicious himself after a late night at the Little Green House. Was that a hint of oak-aged corn whiskey under the reek of cigar smoke? I imagine him dramatically spinning around in his chair to pass along some unfortunate news. Yes, it was true Jess was in the pockets of every big-time bootlegger in America, running his operations from out of his DOJ office right next to Mabel's. Not only that, Jess was involved in another, totally different but equally massive bribery scandal for completely different crimes. Turns out there was a lot of corruption under that mustache.
31:59 Speaker 04 Yep, Dougherty admitted to Mabel that the DOJ was one big ol' shitshow, which is why, he said, he would totally understand if Mabel wanted to hand in her resignation.
32:11 Speaker 04 And as you can probably imagine, Mabel went bananas. Vacation totally canceled. Basically, while she had been fighting Remus in court, her office neighbor had apparently been at Remus's beck and call, and now Dougherty was asking her if she wanted to step down? Mabel had no intention of quitting, and she told her boss exactly that. Her war was just beginning. She had her Supreme Court win, and she had this too. George Remus was headed to a federal penitentiary in Atlanta. So was Willie Har. The country's biggest bootleggers were going down.
32:53 Speaker 04 And Mabel was gonna make sure both were going to do hard time like any other criminal. As Remus was making furious attempts to get his conviction overturned, Mabel went straight to President Coolidge to smash Remus's hopes, writing:
33:07 Speaker 07 "I am of the emphatic opinion that no respite should be given George Remus or any of the defendants convicted with him. George Remus and his group of co-conspirators are defiant, dangerous lawbreakers. He has exhibited a rare ability to surround himself with seemingly respectable and unimportant citizens while he hides behind their operations. In my opinion, it would be a grave mistake to treat these defendants in any manner differently than the thousands of offenders convicted of much lesser crimes under the liquor laws."
33:37 Speaker 04 She got her wish. Remus was locked away behind bars in Atlanta, Georgia. But then, one morning, a few months later, Mabel got a call from an agent down south. He had a little update on how her pal Remus was doing down there in Atlanta. Turns out old Georgie Remus was doing pretty good. Sure, George Remus was technically in prison, just in the part of the prison that was more like, I don't know, Versailles? Thanks to his connections, George was living like Marie Antoinette. He had his own quarters, his own kitchen, his own private bath. He dined separate from the rest of the inmates, except for one guy. To add insult to injury, his dining mate was Willie Har.
34:20 Speaker 04 Remus and Har were dining each night on linen tablecloths with fresh floral centerpieces and playing games of high-limit poker with a minimum bet set at $50. Their section of the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary would soon have its own nickname: Millionaires' Row. And within two years, both men would be out to pick up right where they left off. Now, as Mabel sank into her ice-cold bath in her DC apartment, she couldn't help but think of George Remus dining on steak, chomping on a cigar, having the last laugh. No matter how hard she was trying, she was really losing her fight with the bootleggers.
35:06 Speaker 04 Not only were her colleagues at the Justice Department worthless in supporting her, they were actively undermining her at every turn. And that's when the ice queen finally cracked.
35:22 Speaker 04 Doing things by the book at the Department of Justice wasn't getting the job done. Arrests, convictions, not only were they hard as hell to get, they hardly meant anything when the consequences were, well, luxurious. The Ice Queen's head was cold, but it was also clear. If she was ever gonna get American bootleggers and drinkers to respect the law, she was going to have to take new measures. More extreme measures. The consequences for breaking prohibition law would have to hurt. That's next time on Snafu. He loved to show off. If he could have the opportunity to show off his sharp-shooting skills, he would.
36:05 Speaker 04 There are rumors that he would shoot apples off the top of people's heads. The governor recognized the fact that if we're going to have prohibition agents, we need people that are fearless. Richard Hart was somebody who would fit that to a tee.
36:27 Speaker 04 Snafu is a production of iHeartRadio, Film Nation Entertainment, and Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio. It's executive produced by me, Ed Helms, Milan Popelka, Mike Falbo, Whitney Donaldson, and Dylan Fagan. Our lead producers are Carl Nellis and Alyssa Martino. This episode was written by Albert Chin and Carl Nellis, with additional writing and story editing from Alyssa Martino and Ed Helms. Additional production from Stephen Wood. Tori Smith is our associate producer. Our story editor is Nikki Stein. Our production assistants are Nevin Kalapali and Akimini Ekpo. Fact checking by Charles Richter. Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Editing, music, and sound design by Ben Chug. Engineering and technical direction by Nick Dooley.
37:12 Speaker 04 Andrew Chug is Gilded Audio's creative director. Theme music by Dan Rosato. The role of Mabel Walker-Wilbrant was played by Carrie Bichet. Special thanks to Allison Cohen, Daniel Welsh, and Ben Ryzak.
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38:00 Speaker 03 She's been thinking about this sleepover all week, but I think about her food allergies all the time. Fortunately, her doctor prescribed Zolair, omalizumab. It's proven to significantly reduce allergic reactions if a food allergy accident happens.
38:13 Speaker 01 Zolair 150mg is a prescription medication used to treat food allergy in people one year of age and older to reduce allergic reactions due to accidental exposure to one or more foods. While taking Zolair, you should continue to avoid all foods to which you are allergic. Don't use if you are allergic to Zolair. Zolair may cause a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. Tell your doctor if you ever had anaphylaxis. Get help right away if you have trouble breathing or if you have swelling of your throat or tongue. Zolair should not be used for the emergency treatment of allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis. Zolair is for maintenance use to reduce allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, while avoiding food allergens. Serious side effects such as cancer, fever, muscle aches and rash, parasitic infection, or heart and circulation problems have been reported. Please see zolair.com for full prescribing information. Ask an allergist about Zolair. This is an advertisement for Zolair,
38:58 Speaker 01 paid for by Genentech and Novartis.
39:00 Speaker 00 This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
Previous S3E3: Battle Lines Next S3E5: Double Barrel Page updated November 3, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated