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Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod, a show about the past, rediscovered.

The other day we told you about a president, none other than Ulysses S. Grant, who had been arrested, yes, arrested while in office.

His crime? Speeding through Washington, D.C. on his horse and carriage.

We told you this because history has a funny and fascinating way of shutting light on the present,

like questions about whether our current president could be indicted.

So here's how weird history can really be. What a... whether our current president could be indicted.

So here's how weird history can really be.

What if I told you that the president who was arrested, Grant, the hero of the Civil

War, was also the same guy who fired a special prosecutor?

Well, it happened. In 1875, more than 140 years before the current

special counsel investigation led by Robert Mueller, Grant was under siege with a variety of scandals during his second term.

Financierge with connections to Grant tried to corner the gold market, leading to the 1869

gold panic. There was a railroad scandal involving bribes for contracts that implicated Grant's

vice president, Shiler Kofax.

And then came the whiskey ring, a nasty bit of alleged wrongdoing involving millions of dollars of stolen revenue from alcohol taxes.

Here's what went down.

Grant had appointed an old friend, General John McDonald, as supervisor of the Treasury

Department's internal revenue operations in St. Louis.

But really, his main job was to boost Republican efforts to re-elect Grant.

...