Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day 2002, former Congressman James Trafficant, then 61 years old, is led away from a Cleveland courtroom in handcuffs after a federal judge sentenced him to eight years in prison.

The Democrat had argued that he couldn't be sentenced in court because he'd already

been punished by his colleagues getting kicked out of Congress.

And the judge was like, yeah, nice try, but you actually broke actual laws and there's an actual sentence here.

So they sent him off to jail.

He'd been convicted of bribery, tax evasion, racketeering, which is quite a notable trio of shady activities,

and traffic on himself was quite a notable person, a huge personality known for his profane

tirades on the house floor, and I don't know exactly how to put this but a kind of trash

to pay. Let's be honest.

Pretty good way to put it.

Pretty bad, pretty bad to pay.

Which we'll get to.

But we did get an email from a listener, James,

suggested that we talk about trafficking.

And I want to read from that email

because it frames this really well.

So James writes, quote, I grew up

in the rural suburbs of Youngstown, Ohio.

The odd demise and prosecution of Jim Tafficant helps to explain the continued cynicism

that abounds in the rust belt around American politics, and the story resonates with Donald Trump and George Santos.

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