Marine General Smedley Butler Testifies to Congressional Committee About Wall Street Plot to Overthrow FDR

On November 20, 1934, the U.S. House of Representatives Special Committee on Un-American Activities (McCormack-Dickstein Committee) begins secret testimony from retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, who alleges that wealthy Wall Street financiers plotted to overthrow President Franklin D. Roosevelt and install a fascist dictatorship. Butler, a two-time Medal of Honor recipient and the most decorated Marine of his era, testifies under oath that bond salesman Gerald MacGuire approached him in 1933-1934 on behalf of powerful financial interests to lead 500,000 veterans in a coup against FDR, armed by Remington and financed by Du Pont, J.P. Morgan, and other corporate interests. The plotters allegedly intended to intimidate Roosevelt into accepting Butler as “executive secretary of affairs”—effectively a dictator—while FDR would remain as a powerless figurehead.

The conspiracy emerged from corporate terror over Roosevelt’s New Deal policies, particularly his abandonment of the gold standard and programs providing subsidies and jobs for the poor, which bankers and industrialists interpreted as socialist threats to their power. Butler was targeted because of his military reputation and influence among veterans organizations, which the plotters hoped to mobilize as a fascist militia modeled on European movements. However, Butler instead reported the plot to the McCormack-Dickstein Committee, providing detailed testimony about meetings with MacGuire and the corporate interests backing the scheme. The committee questioned MacGuire for three days, during which he denied most of Butler’s allegations, repeatedly claiming he could not recall events or conversations.

On February 15, 1935, the committee submitted its final report finding that “there is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient.” Despite this confirmation, no prosecutions resulted from the investigation. The Business Plot received minimal contemporary media coverage, with The New York Times dismissing Butler’s testimony as “a gigantic hoax” in a November 22, 1934 editorial, reflecting the fact that major newspapers—whose owners largely opposed FDR—either mocked the story or ignored it entirely. The incident demonstrates how corporate elites, facing democratic reforms threatening their power, seriously contemplated violent overthrow of the U.S. government, establishing a precedent for corporate resistance to democratic accountability that continues through subtler institutional capture mechanisms.