This episode contains descriptions that reference self harm. If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the suicide and crisis lifeline or chat live at nine on his Senate committee staff. Hed admitted to it in that magazine article. Well, why hadnt he sounded an alarm about it at the time? Why hadnt he called the FBI? Why was he so soft on this issue? In the end, McCarthy never got his chance to ask.Washington. Former senator Robert M. La Follette, junior of Wisconsin was found shot to death in his Washington home today. Apparently he died by his own hand. He was 58.Robert La Follette, junior, drove home from work, closed himself in the bathroom and shot himself with a pistol his father had given him when he was a kid. Young Bob was known to have had a long history with depression. He also reportedly harbored deep regret about losing the US Senate seat once held by his dad. But according to his own son, it was the threat of being dragged in front of Congress by Joe McCarthy that most directly contributed to him taking his own life. La Follette told multiple people in the days before he died that he thought McCarthy had him in his sights. La Follette's son told McCarthy biographer Larry Tighe that he was fairly sure that McCarthy himself had actually called up Young Bob and personally made the threat that he was going to investigate him. His son said, quote, my dad committed suicide instead of being called before McCarthy's committee. No question at all.I don't much give a tinker's damn what anyone says about methods. I don't much care about the advice to stop this job must continue, my good friends, it will continue as far as I am concerned, as long as I am in the United States Senate, regardless of whether we hurt Democrats or Republicans or anyone else.During his time in the Senate, Joe McCarthy racked up a long list of people he hurt, principled members of both parties who couldn't stomach what McCarthy was doing and who tried to stop him. There was Senator Raymond Baldwin. Raymond Baldwin was a moderate republican senator. He was fair minded and he was conscientious. Baldwin chaired the Malmedy investigation in Congress, the committee McCarthy hijacked and turned into a forum to spread false, anti semitic nazi propaganda. Baldwin was so exhausted by McCarthy's behavior, so repulsed by dealing with him, that he up and quit the Senate altogether. Once the Malmedy investigation was done, the Malmedy report came out in October. Raymond Baldwin resigned his seat and left the Senate by December.It has been indeed a rare privilege and opportunity to serve this grand little state of Connecticut.Next was Maryland Senator Millard tidings. Tidings was the conservative democratic senator who had investigated and disproven McCarthys claims about supposed communists running rampant in the US State Department.Have you in your possession any memorandum, any affidavit, any paper?McCarthy took revenge on tidings by fabricating that fake photo of the senator posed next to a famous communist. Thanks to that dirty trick and to a blizzard of anti tidings attacks in the pro McCarthy conservative press. Miller tidings lost his seat in the Senate. McCarthy gloated about it, deriding him as Little Millard.Little Millard is with us no longer.Next would be Senator William Benton.Our distinguished guest for this evening is the honorable William F. Bentone, United States Senator from Connecticut.William Benton introduced an expulsion resolution against McCarthy to kick him out of the Senate altogether. In an hours long exposition, which was more like an indictment, Benton laid out McCarthy's record in detail on the Senate floor. Everything from his lies on behalf of the Nazis in the malmedy investigation to his personal financial corruption, to that fake photo dirty trick he used against senator tidings. Benton called McCarthy an amoral man of corruptibility, mendacity and gross irresponsibility who had followed a pattern of distortion and deceit. In response, McCarthy declared war. He hired a lawyer, believe it or not, yet another lawyer who defended nazis at the Nuremberg trials. And with the assistance of that counsel, he filed a multimillion dollar libel suit against Senator Benton. He baselessly accused him of having distributed lewd material during his time at the US State Department. He called him the hero of every communist, and he taunted him as little Willie Benton, Connecticut's mental midget.So if you're a member of the Senate next year. You mean when I'm a member? When you're a member of the Senate next.After the onslaught from McCarthy, William Benton did lose his seat. He was voted out. Joe McCarthy just plowed down any opponent who stood up against him. And even though he went after Republicans as well as Democrats, members of his own republican party mostly just stood by and watched it happen in awe of his power. How nothing seemed to take him down, how every confrontation, every scandal just seemed to increase his standing with his supporters.When they didn't stand up to him, it only got worse. It only emboldened him. And the number of lives that he ruined continued to mount up.That's Wyoming author Roger McDaniel. By the time Joe McCarthy had taken down Senator Baldwin and Senator tidings and Senator Benton, there was almost no one left in the Senate who was brave enough to stand up to McCarthy. Almost no one.It gives me pleasure to introduce to you at this time the honorable Lester Hunt.Lester Hunt, Senator from Wyoming. Like Raymond Baldwin and Millard Tidings and William Bentone, Lester Hunt was disgusted by the way Joe McCarthy conducted himself in politics. Not only what he was doing to his political enemies, but what McCarthy's type of politics was doing to the country. Unlike his colleagues, though, Lester Hunt had a unique vantage point to it all. Literally.Buddy Hunt told me that their home overlooked Joe McCarthy's apartment.Lester Hunt and Joe McCarthy were not just fellow senators. They were neighbors in Washington. They shared a property line which gave Lester Hunt literally clear sight lines into not just how Senator McCarthy behaved in the halls of the Senate when the lights and the cameras were on him, but how he behaved in private, too.From their backyard, they could look across the way and see the apartment where McCarthy had a patio, and they would watch him womanizing and drinking. It was just disgusting to this, well, this man of Lester Hunt's integrity.Lester Hunt had learned from the senators who came before him that publicly calling out McCarthy's bad behavior came with real risk.By now, he had seen McCarthy ruin people's lives, cost them their jobs, their livelihoods, in some cases, drive people to suicide.But Lester Hunt was undaunted. And he found a way to fight back for years, going all the way back to the malmedy investigation and to McCarthy's false attacks on Anna Rosenberg. Back before Joe McCarthy was famous, Lester Hunt had watched McCarthy at work. He had watched him traffic in disinformation and defamation and just lies, lies that McCarthy told with impunity and also with immunity.He came to understand that McCarthy was protected from any liability for slander or libel by the constitution.McCarthy was shielded by the us constitution, by the speech and debate clause, which protects members of Congress from being sued for anything they say in Congress. Even if it's slander or defamation. It's a constitutional protection for the freedom and independence of the legislative branch of government. It makes sense, but it is also open to abuse. Abuse that Senator Joseph McCarthy made into an art form. And so problem solver Lester Hunt proposed a reform, one that was designed to hit Senator Joe McCarthy right between the eyes.Senator Lester C. Hunt of Wyoming has introduced a resolution making members of Congress legally responsible and legally liable for their words and actions. Senator Hunt, is our congressional immunity being used today for the purposes originally intended by our founding fathers? It is not. I would say we're using it today for an entirely different purpose.Lester Hunt introduced legislation. He wrote newspaper op eds, did interviews. He went on the radio speaking as a senator. He said it was time to stop, to legally stop senators from making false allegations and lying about people, to hurt them. Lester Hunt's proposal was to limit congressional immunity, basically to allow regular citizens to sue senators for slander.Are you contending that as a United States senator, you have the right on the floor of the Senate to call somebody a communist, not with the true knowledge or facts that he is a communist. He may be an enemy of yours. You may have some ulterior motive. That man is smeared then throughout the United States for the rest of his life. Now, do you mean to say that there should be no means whereby that man can get redress for that injury that has been done to him? case had taken a bribe from Hunt to drop the charges.There is zero evidence that this was true. The detective himself told them it wasn't true. But McCarthy and his allies, they smelled blood.You have this opportunity that presents itself for him to take revenge on Lester Hunt.Lester Hunt had publicly called Joe McCarthy a drunk and a liar. And on those two points he knew of what he spoke. Hunt called out Joe McCarthy's lies on the malmedy investigation. Hunt had defended Anna Rosenberg after McCarthy had come for her. Also with lies. Hunt was now waging a public crusade to roll back the senatorial immunity. That was part of what allowed McCarthy to build all of his political crusades on abject lies.What is the advantage to a member of Congress when he uses such tactics? He gains notoriety and primarily that's what he's looking for, publicity.Well, now, Senator Joe McCarthy could make Lester Hunt pay for all of that because he could use hunts own son against him. Go for the son, hit the father in the heart. Before buddys trial date, McCarthy and his allies got a message to Senator Hunt that this could all be over, this could all be taken care of. The charges against Buddy could be dropped again if Lester Hunt would just leave the Senate, if he would not seek reelection. Senator Hunt refused to do it. And so Buddy went to trial.Buddy is tried in October. There's a week long trial. The hunts don't dodge it. They set through the trial. Some of his friends said you could watch him visibly age during that week as he watches his son on trial for what then was this really egregious charge? And Buddy is convicted.After he was convicted, Buddy Hunt chooses not to appeal. He's given the choice between jail time or a fine. He chooses the fine. He does get expelled from seminary school, but the whole ordeal mercifully is over. At least that's what they thought. Buddy had been arrested in June. His trial and conviction had been in October. But then in December, Senator Hunt's home in Washington DC was broken into.While he and his wife are back in Wyoming for Christmas, somebody breaks into their apartment in Washington and ransacks it. Nothing of significance is stolen. It's clear they're looking for something. And that was incredibly unnerving.It's not a normal burglary. The house is ransacked, every drawer turned out, but almost nothing is taken. Buddy remembers his father and his mother being profoundly rattled by this.And then the pressure is really put on.Then the pressure is really put on. McCarthy and his allies try a new approach. Buddy Hunts arrest and conviction for soliciting gay sex. How's that going to play back home in Wyoming? At this point, Buddy Hunt's arrest and his trial is conviction. It has made the press a bit, but not a lot. Only in a conservative Washington paper that was part of the Chicago Tribune family. And there was a small ap story, wire service story, but it didn't get much pickup. McCarthy and his allies, Senator Stiles Bridges and Senator Herman Welker, they threatened to change that.The threat is that if he stays in the race, bridges and Welker will print off 25,000. They look like wanted posters with Buddy's picture on it and information about the charges and distribute those to every mailbox in Wyoming. It was truly a significant way to try to blackmail Senator Hunt into leaving the Senate.Lester Hunt's son Buddy is not only going to be used as a weapon against his father, he's going to have his life ruined. His face, this incident in his private life plastered all across the delivered to the mailboxes of 25,000 Wyoming homes. For Lester Hunt, that was enough. It was finally enough.Almost a year to the day from Buddy's arrest, Senator Hunt announces that he's decided not to run for reelection. And he says it's because of health problems. That was clearly nothing the reason, but that's the reason he gave publicly.After a year of torment, despite having previously announced that he would seek re election, Senator Lester Hunt changes his mind. He gives in to the threats and the blackmail and the attacks on his son.I think he did agonize over the decision. The polls showed that he would win, but I think he came to realize that winning would have been ugly. It would have dragged his son through this all over again in a very public way. And so I think he was looking at all of that and thought this will all end if I don't run for reelection. But he was wrong about that.It still wouldnt be the end. Sure, getting Lester Hunt to withdraw from running for reelection, that was what they wanted. But then McCarthy decided he wanted more. If they could get hunt out now, immediately, if they could get him to quit before his term was even up, then they could flip control of the US Senate, which Democrats held by only one vote. If Hunt would resign and leave, Wyoming's republican governor would then get to appoint a Republican to fill his seat. That would give Republicans Senate control. It would give McCarthy even more power than he already had for them.It was not enough for him to simply not run for reelection. He had to leave the Senate. And so they weren't done yet with their threats.The finale of this blackmail campaign, the end game, it wasn't carried out by senators Welker or bridges, but by Joe McCarthy himself. Through an ominous statement to the press.Joe McCarthy announces that he intends to open hearings to investigate a democratic member.Of the Senate, a democratic member of the Senate, McCarthy said, who was linked to, quote, very serious charges, charges he personally had been checking into and would soon reveal.Now, if you're Lester Hunt, you know who they're talking about.Joe McCarthy made this threat. He announced it to the press on a Friday, the Friday before father's Day, 1954. The next day, that Saturday, Lester Hunt woke. Woke up early. He drove to the Senate and he took his own life.I suspect that that night, Friday night into Saturday, was spent thinking about what it meant to be the target of one of Joe McCarthy's hearings. Everybody had seen what happens, how ugly they were, how the truth was twisted, how reputations were ruined, lives destroyed. He knew that even though he wasn't running for reelection now, they intended to put him through this through a different means. And that was a public hearing headed by McCarthy. And so the next morning, he took his life.Lester Hunt, 61 years old, 22 years of service to his state and to the country, gone. Senator Hunt left a handful of notes behind before he fired his gun. He laid them on the desk in his office. There was a note for his wife. Another was written to his son, buddy, after his death.I've seen different reports that he left some letters.Yes, he did leave some. He left one to my mother, one to me. But the one to me was, this has nothing to do with you, sort of thing. Yeah, you mustn't think it does. And so on and so forth.This has nothing to do with you. And that is what buddy Hunt believed about his father's suicide up until the day, 25 years later, when that young grad student Rick Ewig walked into his living room in Chicago with the evidence of how Senator Lester hunts love and care for his son had been turned into a weapon against him.The only black male thing I see here is in regard to media. Am I missing something?No, that's basically it.I don't know about that, but maybe I wasn't supposed to. Maybe that was the whole issue that.Could be after the grad student began to lay out the evidence in front of him, the reporting from Drew Pearson and Marcus Childs and others, the links to McCarthy and his allies. But he does start to see it.One thing in here I thought you might be interested in, this was found in Senator Bridges files. A little note on your arrest. You know, looking at that, perhaps he did use that against your father.Well, he might have.Yeah, well, it all seems to point to that way.Yeah, maybe. So Pritchard's had that in his files, huh?Yeah, that was in his.That's where I got that.I'm learning more from you than you're learning from me. I just.Buddy Hunt died just a few years ago. In 2020, years before he passed, Wyoming author Roger McDaniel spent time with him. Roger had found records confirming that Senator Hunt had told at least two friends before he died about the blackmail plot, about what McCarthy and his republican allies in the Senate were threatening him with and how desperate he felt about it. It was Buddy himself who suggested that Roger McDaniel should write a book about his dad, about what was done to.Him in the end. Buddy called me after he read the manuscript and he said, thank you. This clears up a lot for me, and I'm thankful that you wrote the book so the people understand what really happened.Before he died, Senator Lester Hunt had been asked about the widespread expectation that Senator Joe McCarthy would make a run for the White House. Hunt responded that McCarthy didn't really need to. He said, as a senator, he's now acting secretary of state, acting president, and the chief high executioner of department heads in the White House. He would merely be a president. The list of political lives, in some cases, the actual lives that ended because of Joe McCarthy's reign in us politics, was young. Bob la Follette, Raymond Baldwin, Millard Tidings, William Benton, Lester Hunt. For some in the Senate, losing Lester Hunt, specifically, his suicide, was the last straw. They knew they had to do something to try to push back.Senator McCarthy will vigorously defend himself against these three charges.But how do you push back? What do you do when every attempt to constrain or confront a figure like that just makes his supporters more devoted to him, some of whom would soon turn turn up to the US Capitol, intent on stopping the proceedings there against him. To do that, they didn't have to bring along men with drawn weapons, but they did. An armored car pulls up to the Capitol building. And that is next time on Rachel Maddow presents ultra Rachel Maddow presents Ultra is a production of MSNBC. This episode was written by myself, Mike Yarwitz, and Kelsey Desiderio. The series is executive produced by myself and Mike Yarwitz. It's produced by Kelsey Desiderio and Jen Mulrainey Donovan. Our associate producer is Vasilios Carcelakis. Archival support from Holly Klopchin audio engineering and sound design from Bob Mallory and Katherine Anderson. Our head of audio production is Bryson Barnes. Senior executive producers are Corey Nazzo and Laura Conaway. Our web producer is Will Femia. Aisha Turner is the executive producer for MSNBC audio. Rebecca Cutler is the senior vice president for content strategy at MSNBC. Archival radio material is from NBC News via the Library of Congress.Huge thanks to Roger McDaniel, whose book on Lester Hunt is a fantastic read. It's called dying for Joe McCarthy's sins, the suicide of Wyoming senator Lester Hunt. And a special thank you to Wyoming historian Rick Ewig for providing us the audiotape of that amazing interview he did with Buddy Hunt back when Rick was a graduate student in 1979. There's also another really interesting interview with Buddy Hunt that was done by journalist Michael Issakoff for Yahoo News several years ago. We've posted a link to that and much more at our website, NBC.com ultra.The senator from Mississippi doesn't need the protection of this immunity. Many, many other members of Congress don't need this immunity or this privilege. You don't need it. There are a few who do need it, and to my way of thinking, those few shouldn't have it. Now, you say that I do not need it, and I'm flattered by your compliment. I can certainly say, knowing you as I do, that I don't think you'll ever need it as the law is now. But if you repeal that privilege, you'll wish you had it. You'll find the reason then I hope that why it was put in there when I need and hope I had that privilege. Take that privilege away and you'll need it, as certain as I follow the day. One more point, please. Before you take questions, I want to give him a little privilege. You've served the people long and well, and you've been subjected to slander and libel yourself. And you loved your country more, though, than you did despise the abuse that you had to take. That's why you're here.

on his Senate committee staff. Hed admitted to it in that magazine article. Well, why hadnt he sounded an alarm about it at the time? Why hadnt he called the FBI? Why was he so soft on this issue? In the end, McCarthy never got his chance to ask.

Washington. Former senator Robert M. La Follette, junior of Wisconsin was found shot to death in his Washington home today. Apparently he died by his own hand. He was 58.

Robert La Follette, junior, drove home from work, closed himself in the bathroom and shot himself with a pistol his father had given him when he was a kid. Young Bob was known to have had a long history with depression. He also reportedly harbored deep regret about losing the US Senate seat once held by his dad. But according to his own son, it was the threat of being dragged in front of Congress by Joe McCarthy that most directly contributed to him taking his own life. La Follette told multiple people in the days before he died that he thought McCarthy had him in his sights. La Follette's son told McCarthy biographer Larry Tighe that he was fairly sure that McCarthy himself had actually called up Young Bob and personally made the threat that he was going to investigate him. His son said, quote, my dad committed suicide instead of being called before McCarthy's committee. No question at all.

I don't much give a tinker's damn what anyone says about methods. I don't much care about the advice to stop this job must continue, my good friends, it will continue as far as I am concerned, as long as I am in the United States Senate, regardless of whether we hurt Democrats or Republicans or anyone else.

During his time in the Senate, Joe McCarthy racked up a long list of people he hurt, principled members of both parties who couldn't stomach what McCarthy was doing and who tried to stop him. There was Senator Raymond Baldwin. Raymond Baldwin was a moderate republican senator. He was fair minded and he was conscientious. Baldwin chaired the Malmedy investigation in Congress, the committee McCarthy hijacked and turned into a forum to spread false, anti semitic nazi propaganda. Baldwin was so exhausted by McCarthy's behavior, so repulsed by dealing with him, that he up and quit the Senate altogether. Once the Malmedy investigation was done, the Malmedy report came out in October. Raymond Baldwin resigned his seat and left the Senate by December.

It has been indeed a rare privilege and opportunity to serve this grand little state of Connecticut.

Next was Maryland Senator Millard tidings. Tidings was the conservative democratic senator who had investigated and disproven McCarthys claims about supposed communists running rampant in the US State Department.

Have you in your possession any memorandum, any affidavit, any paper?

McCarthy took revenge on tidings by fabricating that fake photo of the senator posed next to a famous communist. Thanks to that dirty trick and to a blizzard of anti tidings attacks in the pro McCarthy conservative press. Miller tidings lost his seat in the Senate. McCarthy gloated about it, deriding him as Little Millard.

Little Millard is with us no longer.

Next would be Senator William Benton.

Our distinguished guest for this evening is the honorable William F. Bentone, United States Senator from Connecticut.

William Benton introduced an expulsion resolution against McCarthy to kick him out of the Senate altogether. In an hours long exposition, which was more like an indictment, Benton laid out McCarthy's record in detail on the Senate floor. Everything from his lies on behalf of the Nazis in the malmedy investigation to his personal financial corruption, to that fake photo dirty trick he used against senator tidings. Benton called McCarthy an amoral man of corruptibility, mendacity and gross irresponsibility who had followed a pattern of distortion and deceit. In response, McCarthy declared war. He hired a lawyer, believe it or not, yet another lawyer who defended nazis at the Nuremberg trials. And with the assistance of that counsel, he filed a multimillion dollar libel suit against Senator Benton. He baselessly accused him of having distributed lewd material during his time at the US State Department. He called him the hero of every communist, and he taunted him as little Willie Benton, Connecticut's mental midget.

So if you're a member of the Senate next year. You mean when I'm a member? When you're a member of the Senate next.

After the onslaught from McCarthy, William Benton did lose his seat. He was voted out. Joe McCarthy just plowed down any opponent who stood up against him. And even though he went after Republicans as well as Democrats, members of his own republican party mostly just stood by and watched it happen in awe of his power. How nothing seemed to take him down, how every confrontation, every scandal just seemed to increase his standing with his supporters.

When they didn't stand up to him, it only got worse. It only emboldened him. And the number of lives that he ruined continued to mount up.

That's Wyoming author Roger McDaniel. By the time Joe McCarthy had taken down Senator Baldwin and Senator tidings and Senator Benton, there was almost no one left in the Senate who was brave enough to stand up to McCarthy. Almost no one.

It gives me pleasure to introduce to you at this time the honorable Lester Hunt.

Lester Hunt, Senator from Wyoming. Like Raymond Baldwin and Millard Tidings and William Bentone, Lester Hunt was disgusted by the way Joe McCarthy conducted himself in politics. Not only what he was doing to his political enemies, but what McCarthy's type of politics was doing to the country. Unlike his colleagues, though, Lester Hunt had a unique vantage point to it all. Literally.

Buddy Hunt told me that their home overlooked Joe McCarthy's apartment.

Lester Hunt and Joe McCarthy were not just fellow senators. They were neighbors in Washington. They shared a property line which gave Lester Hunt literally clear sight lines into not just how Senator McCarthy behaved in the halls of the Senate when the lights and the cameras were on him, but how he behaved in private, too.

From their backyard, they could look across the way and see the apartment where McCarthy had a patio, and they would watch him womanizing and drinking. It was just disgusting to this, well, this man of Lester Hunt's integrity.

Lester Hunt had learned from the senators who came before him that publicly calling out McCarthy's bad behavior came with real risk.

By now, he had seen McCarthy ruin people's lives, cost them their jobs, their livelihoods, in some cases, drive people to suicide.

But Lester Hunt was undaunted. And he found a way to fight back for years, going all the way back to the malmedy investigation and to McCarthy's false attacks on Anna Rosenberg. Back before Joe McCarthy was famous, Lester Hunt had watched McCarthy at work. He had watched him traffic in disinformation and defamation and just lies, lies that McCarthy told with impunity and also with immunity.

He came to understand that McCarthy was protected from any liability for slander or libel by the constitution.

McCarthy was shielded by the us constitution, by the speech and debate clause, which protects members of Congress from being sued for anything they say in Congress. Even if it's slander or defamation. It's a constitutional protection for the freedom and independence of the legislative branch of government. It makes sense, but it is also open to abuse. Abuse that Senator Joseph McCarthy made into an art form. And so problem solver Lester Hunt proposed a reform, one that was designed to hit Senator Joe McCarthy right between the eyes.

Senator Lester C. Hunt of Wyoming has introduced a resolution making members of Congress legally responsible and legally liable for their words and actions. Senator Hunt, is our congressional immunity being used today for the purposes originally intended by our founding fathers? It is not. I would say we're using it today for an entirely different purpose.

Lester Hunt introduced legislation. He wrote newspaper op eds, did interviews. He went on the radio speaking as a senator. He said it was time to stop, to legally stop senators from making false allegations and lying about people, to hurt them. Lester Hunt's proposal was to limit congressional immunity, basically to allow regular citizens to sue senators for slander.

Are you contending that as a United States senator, you have the right on the floor of the Senate to call somebody a communist, not with the true knowledge or facts that he is a communist. He may be an enemy of yours. You may have some ulterior motive. That man is smeared then throughout the United States for the rest of his life. Now, do you mean to say that there should be no means whereby that man can get redress for that injury that has been done to him? case had taken a bribe from Hunt to drop the charges.There is zero evidence that this was true. The detective himself told them it wasn't true. But McCarthy and his allies, they smelled blood.You have this opportunity that presents itself for him to take revenge on Lester Hunt.Lester Hunt had publicly called Joe McCarthy a drunk and a liar. And on those two points he knew of what he spoke. Hunt called out Joe McCarthy's lies on the malmedy investigation. Hunt had defended Anna Rosenberg after McCarthy had come for her. Also with lies. Hunt was now waging a public crusade to roll back the senatorial immunity. That was part of what allowed McCarthy to build all of his political crusades on abject lies.What is the advantage to a member of Congress when he uses such tactics? He gains notoriety and primarily that's what he's looking for, publicity.Well, now, Senator Joe McCarthy could make Lester Hunt pay for all of that because he could use hunts own son against him. Go for the son, hit the father in the heart. Before buddys trial date, McCarthy and his allies got a message to Senator Hunt that this could all be over, this could all be taken care of. The charges against Buddy could be dropped again if Lester Hunt would just leave the Senate, if he would not seek reelection. Senator Hunt refused to do it. And so Buddy went to trial.Buddy is tried in October. There's a week long trial. The hunts don't dodge it. They set through the trial. Some of his friends said you could watch him visibly age during that week as he watches his son on trial for what then was this really egregious charge? And Buddy is convicted.After he was convicted, Buddy Hunt chooses not to appeal. He's given the choice between jail time or a fine. He chooses the fine. He does get expelled from seminary school, but the whole ordeal mercifully is over. At least that's what they thought. Buddy had been arrested in June. His trial and conviction had been in October. But then in December, Senator Hunt's home in Washington DC was broken into.While he and his wife are back in Wyoming for Christmas, somebody breaks into their apartment in Washington and ransacks it. Nothing of significance is stolen. It's clear they're looking for something. And that was incredibly unnerving.It's not a normal burglary. The house is ransacked, every drawer turned out, but almost nothing is taken. Buddy remembers his father and his mother being profoundly rattled by this.And then the pressure is really put on.Then the pressure is really put on. McCarthy and his allies try a new approach. Buddy Hunts arrest and conviction for soliciting gay sex. How's that going to play back home in Wyoming? At this point, Buddy Hunt's arrest and his trial is conviction. It has made the press a bit, but not a lot. Only in a conservative Washington paper that was part of the Chicago Tribune family. And there was a small ap story, wire service story, but it didn't get much pickup. McCarthy and his allies, Senator Stiles Bridges and Senator Herman Welker, they threatened to change that.The threat is that if he stays in the race, bridges and Welker will print off 25,000. They look like wanted posters with Buddy's picture on it and information about the charges and distribute those to every mailbox in Wyoming. It was truly a significant way to try to blackmail Senator Hunt into leaving the Senate.Lester Hunt's son Buddy is not only going to be used as a weapon against his father, he's going to have his life ruined. His face, this incident in his private life plastered all across the delivered to the mailboxes of 25,000 Wyoming homes. For Lester Hunt, that was enough. It was finally enough.Almost a year to the day from Buddy's arrest, Senator Hunt announces that he's decided not to run for reelection. And he says it's because of health problems. That was clearly nothing the reason, but that's the reason he gave publicly.After a year of torment, despite having previously announced that he would seek re election, Senator Lester Hunt changes his mind. He gives in to the threats and the blackmail and the attacks on his son.I think he did agonize over the decision. The polls showed that he would win, but I think he came to realize that winning would have been ugly. It would have dragged his son through this all over again in a very public way. And so I think he was looking at all of that and thought this will all end if I don't run for reelection. But he was wrong about that.It still wouldnt be the end. Sure, getting Lester Hunt to withdraw from running for reelection, that was what they wanted. But then McCarthy decided he wanted more. If they could get hunt out now, immediately, if they could get him to quit before his term was even up, then they could flip control of the US Senate, which Democrats held by only one vote. If Hunt would resign and leave, Wyoming's republican governor would then get to appoint a Republican to fill his seat. That would give Republicans Senate control. It would give McCarthy even more power than he already had for them.It was not enough for him to simply not run for reelection. He had to leave the Senate. And so they weren't done yet with their threats.The finale of this blackmail campaign, the end game, it wasn't carried out by senators Welker or bridges, but by Joe McCarthy himself. Through an ominous statement to the press.Joe McCarthy announces that he intends to open hearings to investigate a democratic member.Of the Senate, a democratic member of the Senate, McCarthy said, who was linked to, quote, very serious charges, charges he personally had been checking into and would soon reveal.Now, if you're Lester Hunt, you know who they're talking about.Joe McCarthy made this threat. He announced it to the press on a Friday, the Friday before father's Day, 1954. The next day, that Saturday, Lester Hunt woke. Woke up early. He drove to the Senate and he took his own life.I suspect that that night, Friday night into Saturday, was spent thinking about what it meant to be the target of one of Joe McCarthy's hearings. Everybody had seen what happens, how ugly they were, how the truth was twisted, how reputations were ruined, lives destroyed. He knew that even though he wasn't running for reelection now, they intended to put him through this through a different means. And that was a public hearing headed by McCarthy. And so the next morning, he took his life.Lester Hunt, 61 years old, 22 years of service to his state and to the country, gone. Senator Hunt left a handful of notes behind before he fired his gun. He laid them on the desk in his office. There was a note for his wife. Another was written to his son, buddy, after his death.I've seen different reports that he left some letters.Yes, he did leave some. He left one to my mother, one to me. But the one to me was, this has nothing to do with you, sort of thing. Yeah, you mustn't think it does. And so on and so forth.This has nothing to do with you. And that is what buddy Hunt believed about his father's suicide up until the day, 25 years later, when that young grad student Rick Ewig walked into his living room in Chicago with the evidence of how Senator Lester hunts love and care for his son had been turned into a weapon against him.The only black male thing I see here is in regard to media. Am I missing something?No, that's basically it.I don't know about that, but maybe I wasn't supposed to. Maybe that was the whole issue that.Could be after the grad student began to lay out the evidence in front of him, the reporting from Drew Pearson and Marcus Childs and others, the links to McCarthy and his allies. But he does start to see it.One thing in here I thought you might be interested in, this was found in Senator Bridges files. A little note on your arrest. You know, looking at that, perhaps he did use that against your father.Well, he might have.Yeah, well, it all seems to point to that way.Yeah, maybe. So Pritchard's had that in his files, huh?Yeah, that was in his.That's where I got that.I'm learning more from you than you're learning from me. I just.Buddy Hunt died just a few years ago. In 2020, years before he passed, Wyoming author Roger McDaniel spent time with him. Roger had found records confirming that Senator Hunt had told at least two friends before he died about the blackmail plot, about what McCarthy and his republican allies in the Senate were threatening him with and how desperate he felt about it. It was Buddy himself who suggested that Roger McDaniel should write a book about his dad, about what was done to.Him in the end. Buddy called me after he read the manuscript and he said, thank you. This clears up a lot for me, and I'm thankful that you wrote the book so the people understand what really happened.Before he died, Senator Lester Hunt had been asked about the widespread expectation that Senator Joe McCarthy would make a run for the White House. Hunt responded that McCarthy didn't really need to. He said, as a senator, he's now acting secretary of state, acting president, and the chief high executioner of department heads in the White House. He would merely be a president. The list of political lives, in some cases, the actual lives that ended because of Joe McCarthy's reign in us politics, was young. Bob la Follette, Raymond Baldwin, Millard Tidings, William Benton, Lester Hunt. For some in the Senate, losing Lester Hunt, specifically, his suicide, was the last straw. They knew they had to do something to try to push back.Senator McCarthy will vigorously defend himself against these three charges.But how do you push back? What do you do when every attempt to constrain or confront a figure like that just makes his supporters more devoted to him, some of whom would soon turn turn up to the US Capitol, intent on stopping the proceedings there against him. To do that, they didn't have to bring along men with drawn weapons, but they did. An armored car pulls up to the Capitol building. And that is next time on Rachel Maddow presents ultra Rachel Maddow presents Ultra is a production of MSNBC. This episode was written by myself, Mike Yarwitz, and Kelsey Desiderio. The series is executive produced by myself and Mike Yarwitz. It's produced by Kelsey Desiderio and Jen Mulrainey Donovan. Our associate producer is Vasilios Carcelakis. Archival support from Holly Klopchin audio engineering and sound design from Bob Mallory and Katherine Anderson. Our head of audio production is Bryson Barnes. Senior executive producers are Corey Nazzo and Laura Conaway. Our web producer is Will Femia. Aisha Turner is the executive producer for MSNBC audio. Rebecca Cutler is the senior vice president for content strategy at MSNBC. Archival radio material is from NBC News via the Library of Congress.Huge thanks to Roger McDaniel, whose book on Lester Hunt is a fantastic read. It's called dying for Joe McCarthy's sins, the suicide of Wyoming senator Lester Hunt. And a special thank you to Wyoming historian Rick Ewig for providing us the audiotape of that amazing interview he did with Buddy Hunt back when Rick was a graduate student in 1979. There's also another really interesting interview with Buddy Hunt that was done by journalist Michael Issakoff for Yahoo News several years ago. We've posted a link to that and much more at our website, NBC.com ultra.The senator from Mississippi doesn't need the protection of this immunity. Many, many other members of Congress don't need this immunity or this privilege. You don't need it. There are a few who do need it, and to my way of thinking, those few shouldn't have it. Now, you say that I do not need it, and I'm flattered by your compliment. I can certainly say, knowing you as I do, that I don't think you'll ever need it as the law is now. But if you repeal that privilege, you'll wish you had it. You'll find the reason then I hope that why it was put in there when I need and hope I had that privilege. Take that privilege away and you'll need it, as certain as I follow the day. One more point, please. Before you take questions, I want to give him a little privilege. You've served the people long and well, and you've been subjected to slander and libel yourself. And you loved your country more, though, than you did despise the abuse that you had to take. That's why you're here.

case had taken a bribe from Hunt to drop the charges.

There is zero evidence that this was true. The detective himself told them it wasn't true. But McCarthy and his allies, they smelled blood.

You have this opportunity that presents itself for him to take revenge on Lester Hunt.

Lester Hunt had publicly called Joe McCarthy a drunk and a liar. And on those two points he knew of what he spoke. Hunt called out Joe McCarthy's lies on the malmedy investigation. Hunt had defended Anna Rosenberg after McCarthy had come for her. Also with lies. Hunt was now waging a public crusade to roll back the senatorial immunity. That was part of what allowed McCarthy to build all of his political crusades on abject lies.

What is the advantage to a member of Congress when he uses such tactics? He gains notoriety and primarily that's what he's looking for, publicity.

Well, now, Senator Joe McCarthy could make Lester Hunt pay for all of that because he could use hunts own son against him. Go for the son, hit the father in the heart. Before buddys trial date, McCarthy and his allies got a message to Senator Hunt that this could all be over, this could all be taken care of. The charges against Buddy could be dropped again if Lester Hunt would just leave the Senate, if he would not seek reelection. Senator Hunt refused to do it. And so Buddy went to trial.

Buddy is tried in October. There's a week long trial. The hunts don't dodge it. They set through the trial. Some of his friends said you could watch him visibly age during that week as he watches his son on trial for what then was this really egregious charge? And Buddy is convicted.

After he was convicted, Buddy Hunt chooses not to appeal. He's given the choice between jail time or a fine. He chooses the fine. He does get expelled from seminary school, but the whole ordeal mercifully is over. At least that's what they thought. Buddy had been arrested in June. His trial and conviction had been in October. But then in December, Senator Hunt's home in Washington DC was broken into.

While he and his wife are back in Wyoming for Christmas, somebody breaks into their apartment in Washington and ransacks it. Nothing of significance is stolen. It's clear they're looking for something. And that was incredibly unnerving.

It's not a normal burglary. The house is ransacked, every drawer turned out, but almost nothing is taken. Buddy remembers his father and his mother being profoundly rattled by this.

And then the pressure is really put on.

Then the pressure is really put on. McCarthy and his allies try a new approach. Buddy Hunts arrest and conviction for soliciting gay sex. How's that going to play back home in Wyoming? At this point, Buddy Hunt's arrest and his trial is conviction. It has made the press a bit, but not a lot. Only in a conservative Washington paper that was part of the Chicago Tribune family. And there was a small ap story, wire service story, but it didn't get much pickup. McCarthy and his allies, Senator Stiles Bridges and Senator Herman Welker, they threatened to change that.

The threat is that if he stays in the race, bridges and Welker will print off 25,000. They look like wanted posters with Buddy's picture on it and information about the charges and distribute those to every mailbox in Wyoming. It was truly a significant way to try to blackmail Senator Hunt into leaving the Senate.

Lester Hunt's son Buddy is not only going to be used as a weapon against his father, he's going to have his life ruined. His face, this incident in his private life plastered all across the delivered to the mailboxes of 25,000 Wyoming homes. For Lester Hunt, that was enough. It was finally enough.

Almost a year to the day from Buddy's arrest, Senator Hunt announces that he's decided not to run for reelection. And he says it's because of health problems. That was clearly nothing the reason, but that's the reason he gave publicly.

After a year of torment, despite having previously announced that he would seek re election, Senator Lester Hunt changes his mind. He gives in to the threats and the blackmail and the attacks on his son.

I think he did agonize over the decision. The polls showed that he would win, but I think he came to realize that winning would have been ugly. It would have dragged his son through this all over again in a very public way. And so I think he was looking at all of that and thought this will all end if I don't run for reelection. But he was wrong about that.

It still wouldnt be the end. Sure, getting Lester Hunt to withdraw from running for reelection, that was what they wanted. But then McCarthy decided he wanted more. If they could get hunt out now, immediately, if they could get him to quit before his term was even up, then they could flip control of the US Senate, which Democrats held by only one vote. If Hunt would resign and leave, Wyoming's republican governor would then get to appoint a Republican to fill his seat. That would give Republicans Senate control. It would give McCarthy even more power than he already had for them.

It was not enough for him to simply not run for reelection. He had to leave the Senate. And so they weren't done yet with their threats.

The finale of this blackmail campaign, the end game, it wasn't carried out by senators Welker or bridges, but by Joe McCarthy himself. Through an ominous statement to the press.

Joe McCarthy announces that he intends to open hearings to investigate a democratic member.

Of the Senate, a democratic member of the Senate, McCarthy said, who was linked to, quote, very serious charges, charges he personally had been checking into and would soon reveal.

Now, if you're Lester Hunt, you know who they're talking about.

Joe McCarthy made this threat. He announced it to the press on a Friday, the Friday before father's Day, 1954. The next day, that Saturday, Lester Hunt woke. Woke up early. He drove to the Senate and he took his own life.

I suspect that that night, Friday night into Saturday, was spent thinking about what it meant to be the target of one of Joe McCarthy's hearings. Everybody had seen what happens, how ugly they were, how the truth was twisted, how reputations were ruined, lives destroyed. He knew that even though he wasn't running for reelection now, they intended to put him through this through a different means. And that was a public hearing headed by McCarthy. And so the next morning, he took his life.

Lester Hunt, 61 years old, 22 years of service to his state and to the country, gone. Senator Hunt left a handful of notes behind before he fired his gun. He laid them on the desk in his office. There was a note for his wife. Another was written to his son, buddy, after his death.

I've seen different reports that he left some letters.

Yes, he did leave some. He left one to my mother, one to me. But the one to me was, this has nothing to do with you, sort of thing. Yeah, you mustn't think it does. And so on and so forth.

This has nothing to do with you. And that is what buddy Hunt believed about his father's suicide up until the day, 25 years later, when that young grad student Rick Ewig walked into his living room in Chicago with the evidence of how Senator Lester hunts love and care for his son had been turned into a weapon against him.

The only black male thing I see here is in regard to media. Am I missing something?

No, that's basically it.

I don't know about that, but maybe I wasn't supposed to. Maybe that was the whole issue that.

Could be after the grad student began to lay out the evidence in front of him, the reporting from Drew Pearson and Marcus Childs and others, the links to McCarthy and his allies. But he does start to see it.

One thing in here I thought you might be interested in, this was found in Senator Bridges files. A little note on your arrest. You know, looking at that, perhaps he did use that against your father.

Well, he might have.

Yeah, well, it all seems to point to that way.

Yeah, maybe. So Pritchard's had that in his files, huh?

Yeah, that was in his.

That's where I got that.

I'm learning more from you than you're learning from me. I just.

Buddy Hunt died just a few years ago. In 2020, years before he passed, Wyoming author Roger McDaniel spent time with him. Roger had found records confirming that Senator Hunt had told at least two friends before he died about the blackmail plot, about what McCarthy and his republican allies in the Senate were threatening him with and how desperate he felt about it. It was Buddy himself who suggested that Roger McDaniel should write a book about his dad, about what was done to.

Him in the end. Buddy called me after he read the manuscript and he said, thank you. This clears up a lot for me, and I'm thankful that you wrote the book so the people understand what really happened.

Before he died, Senator Lester Hunt had been asked about the widespread expectation that Senator Joe McCarthy would make a run for the White House. Hunt responded that McCarthy didn't really need to. He said, as a senator, he's now acting secretary of state, acting president, and the chief high executioner of department heads in the White House. He would merely be a president. The list of political lives, in some cases, the actual lives that ended because of Joe McCarthy's reign in us politics, was young. Bob la Follette, Raymond Baldwin, Millard Tidings, William Benton, Lester Hunt. For some in the Senate, losing Lester Hunt, specifically, his suicide, was the last straw. They knew they had to do something to try to push back.

Senator McCarthy will vigorously defend himself against these three charges.

But how do you push back? What do you do when every attempt to constrain or confront a figure like that just makes his supporters more devoted to him, some of whom would soon turn turn up to the US Capitol, intent on stopping the proceedings there against him. To do that, they didn't have to bring along men with drawn weapons, but they did. An armored car pulls up to the Capitol building. And that is next time on Rachel Maddow presents ultra Rachel Maddow presents Ultra is a production of MSNBC. This episode was written by myself, Mike Yarwitz, and Kelsey Desiderio. The series is executive produced by myself and Mike Yarwitz. It's produced by Kelsey Desiderio and Jen Mulrainey Donovan. Our associate producer is Vasilios Carcelakis. Archival support from Holly Klopchin audio engineering and sound design from Bob Mallory and Katherine Anderson. Our head of audio production is Bryson Barnes. Senior executive producers are Corey Nazzo and Laura Conaway. Our web producer is Will Femia. Aisha Turner is the executive producer for MSNBC audio. Rebecca Cutler is the senior vice president for content strategy at MSNBC. Archival radio material is from NBC News via the Library of Congress.

Huge thanks to Roger McDaniel, whose book on Lester Hunt is a fantastic read. It's called dying for Joe McCarthy's sins, the suicide of Wyoming senator Lester Hunt. And a special thank you to Wyoming historian Rick Ewig for providing us the audiotape of that amazing interview he did with Buddy Hunt back when Rick was a graduate student in 1979. There's also another really interesting interview with Buddy Hunt that was done by journalist Michael Issakoff for Yahoo News several years ago. We've posted a link to that and much more at our website, NBC.com ultra.

The senator from Mississippi doesn't need the protection of this immunity. Many, many other members of Congress don't need this immunity or this privilege. You don't need it. There are a few who do need it, and to my way of thinking, those few shouldn't have it. Now, you say that I do not need it, and I'm flattered by your compliment. I can certainly say, knowing you as I do, that I don't think you'll ever need it as the law is now. But if you repeal that privilege, you'll wish you had it. You'll find the reason then I hope that why it was put in there when I need and hope I had that privilege. Take that privilege away and you'll need it, as certain as I follow the day. One more point, please. Before you take questions, I want to give him a little privilege. You've served the people long and well, and you've been subjected to slander and libel yourself. And you loved your country more, though, than you did despise the abuse that you had to take. That's why you're here.