MASTER PLAN, Ep 6: The Maverick Vs. The Corruption Machine

In the 1980s, the U.S. government was anything but clean. After the landmark Supreme Court cases we told you about in Episode 5 turned money into “speech” in the 1970s, cash began flowing into elections unchecked. Big donors also expected big favors.

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It wasn’t such a surprise, then, when five U.S. senators got caught in 1989 for allegedly trying to pressure a federal bank regulator to go easy on savings and loan magnate Charles Keating. But what no one expected was that one of the so-called “Keating Five,” a relative newcomer named John McCain, would do far more than apologize for his mistakes; he’d transform into the staunchest campaign finance reformer since Watergate. 

McCain would need his unpredictable “maverick” energy for the fights ahead. Because once he set his sights on wrangling dark money out of politics, he’d find himself butting heads with two powerful members of his own party — a senator who’d been called the “Darth Vader of campaign finance reform” and a governor-turned-president backed by big donors.

To access Episode 6 bonus content, including recordings of regulators claiming they were being intimidated by senators, video of “Darth Vader” denying all instances of corruption, and the suspicious reactions of a president signing campaign finance reforms into law, become a paid subscriber at a discount right now.

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Episode 7: The Federalist Society Strikes Back (Premium Access Only)

After a series of setbacks in the push to legalize corruption, the master planners know they must take over the U.S. Supreme Court, and halt the trend of Republican-appointed justices siding with campaign finance reformers. So in the early 2000s, they deploy their new judicial machine in an epic battle to try to permanently change the courts from the bottom up.

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