In the 1930s, the Roosevelt administration conducted several high-profile tax evasion prosecutions against individuals such as Thomas W. Lamont and Jimmy Walker. In response to accusations levied by Republican Congressman Louis Thomas McFadden of Pennsylvania in early 1933, Attorney General Homer Cummings began an inquiry into Mellon's tax history. Between February 1935 and May 1936, the Board of Tax Appeals heard a widely covered case in which the federal government accused Mellon of tax fraud. During the proceedings, Mellon divulged numerous details of his business career that had previously been unknown to the public.