Randa Abdelfattah and Ramteen Arablui

Everyone was convinced, I think, of Mellon's innocence, except perhaps for Franklin Roosevelt and Henry Morgenthau.

It was politics driving this.

Elmer showed him, okay, if you ask me to do this, I'll put my best agent on it and eventually showed the judge that the guy was innocent beyond a reasonable doubt.

If the case is not there, he's going to make it known that the case is not there.

But it is telling that if he was a different person who got that request and understood the subtext, like, we don't like this guy, find something on him.

you know, what havoc that could have wreaked on the government.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, look, he even talks about it, that an investigation could destroy a person.

And he preached to agents, follow strictly the rules of the Constitution and the laws that govern criminal investigations.

That was what it meant to be a civil servant.

In 1935, Roosevelt's starting to gear up for his first re-election campaign.

That year, Roosevelt pushes through the Social Security Act and the so-called wealth tax, which raised the federal income tax on the highest income earners.

Those in the very highest tax bracket had to pay 79%, and there was no war to fund this time.

Now, full disclosure, that 79% only applied to one person.

It was John D. Rockefeller Jr.

Even J.P.

Morgan Jr., who had a lot of money, didn't have that kind of money.

So is that a meaningful tax?

Well, it's not meaningful in the amount of revenue it's going to raise, but it might be meaningful in terms of the message that it sends.

These kind of rhetorical attacks on the wealthy were terrific politics.