It centered on Interior Secretary Albert Bacon Fall, who had leased Navy petroleum reserves at Teapot Dome in Wyoming, as well as two locations in California, to private oil companies at low rates without competitive bidding.

[3] Congress subsequently passed permanent legislation granting itself subpoena power over tax records of any U.S. citizen, regardless of position.

In 1921, President Harding issued an executive order to transfer control of Teapot Dome Oil Field in Natrona County, Wyoming, and the Elk Hills and Buena Vista Oil Fields in Kern County, California, from the Navy Department to the Department of the Interior.

He also leased the Elk Hills reserve to Edward L. Doheny of Pan American Petroleum and Transport Company.

[6] The lease terms were very favorable to the oil companies, and secret transactions associated with the two deals made Fall a rich man.

Carl Magee, who later founded The Albuquerque Tribune, wrote about this sudden affluence and also brought it to the attention of the Senate investigation.

[9] In April 1922, a Wyoming oil operator wrote to his senator, John B. Kendrick, angered that Sinclair had been given a contract to the lands in a secret deal.

[15] for his refusal to cooperate with a U.S. Senate committee investigating his brother's failures to prosecute the perpetrators in the Teapot Dome Scandal.

[17] However, the Supreme Court decision to uphold Mal's contempt conviction would also result in the Midland Bank case against Daugherty passing into history.

[22] Further, Doheny's corporation foreclosed on Fall's home[23] in the Tularosa Basin of New Mexico, because of "unpaid loans" that turned out to be that same $100,000 bribe.

[28] The Supreme Court's ruling in McGrain v. Daugherty (1927) for the first time explicitly established that Congress had the power to compel testimony.

[29] In response to the scandal, the Revenue Act of 1924 gave the chairman of the United States House Committee on Ways and Means the right to obtain the tax records of any taxpayer.