Bag Man: The Wild Crimes, Audacious Cover-Up, and Spectacular Downfall of a Brazen Crook in the White House

Overview
"Bag Man" tells the story of Spiro T. Agnew, the blunt-talking Baltimore native who rose from local politics to become Richard Nixon's vice president, and the long-buried pattern of payoffs and patronage that ultimately destroyed his career. Rachel Maddow reconstructs how routine corruption, practiced openly in Maryland's political culture, escalated into federal crimes that collided with the fraught politics of the Nixon White House. The narrative recasts a scandal that history has largely overshadowed by Watergate, treating it as a vivid, dramatic legal and moral saga.
Maddow frames the tale as both a crime procedural and a political thriller. The focus is not only on the illicit payments and the men who took them, but also on the patient, often lonely work of prosecutors, investigators, and reporters who piece together ledgers, receipts, and witness accounts to expose a vice president's criminality. The book moves from Agnew's personal rise to the painstaking accumulation of evidence that made accountability possible.

The crimes
Agnew's wrongdoing involved systematic kickbacks, bribes, and concealed income that flowed from contractors and developers who did business with the jurisdictions he controlled. Accepting cash payments and other favors in exchange for political influence, he built a pattern of corruption that, while common in certain local political machines, became federal crimes when it intersected with tax laws and interstate commerce. The book explains how everyday corruption turns into prosecutable offenses and why the mundane details , who kept the ledgers, how envelopes changed hands , matter so much in court.
The portrait of Agnew that emerges is unflattering and complex: charismatic and coarse, skilled in retail politics and eager to cultivate an image of plainspoken authenticity even as he profited from the system he publicly denounced. That duplicity made his fall especially spectacular and politically destabilizing, because it implicated not just a politician's character but the integrity of executive power.

The investigation
The investigation at the center of the story is a study in tenacity. Young prosecutors and federal agents, operating under limited resources and often against skeptical superiors, follow small clues that collectively expose a vast pattern of wrongdoing. Maddow shows how patience, attention to mundane documentary details, and careful witness cultivation gradually narrowed the circle of secrecy around Agnew.
Journalists and local officials play crucial roles in publicizing leads and sustaining pressure on law enforcement to act. The book conveys the procedural drama of warrants, subpoenas, and plea negotiations, and it highlights the strategic choices that prosecutors must make when a high-ranking target is involved. Ultimately, those choices culminate in a negotiated resolution that ends Agnew's political life and forces a reckoning over how power is policed.

Consequences and legacy
Agnew's resignation in 1973 and his subsequent legal settlement marked a rare moment when a vice president was driven from office by criminal allegations. The scandal reshaped perceptions of corruption and prompted questions about the vulnerabilities of American political institutions. Maddow argues that the episode deserves renewed attention partly because it reveals how ordinary corruption can metastasize when tolerated and how the integrity of democratic governance depends on quiet, persistent enforcement.
The narrative also probes the moral economy of politics: how patronage and gratitude can be weaponized into a system of pay-to-play, and how cultural acceptance of certain practices allows leaders to evade accountability until they meet determined resistance. The book leaves readers with a sense of both outrage at the abuses and admiration for the people who, often at personal cost, pursued justice.

Style and approach
Maddow combines meticulous archival research with a storyteller's instinct for pace and character. The prose is conversational but sharp, emphasizing evidence and procedure while illuminating the human flaws that drove the scandal. The result is an accessible, engrossing account that revives a neglected chapter of American political history and foregrounds enduring questions about power, corruption, and the rule of law.