Blood Feud

In the mid-1950s, a wealthy young Robert F. Kennedy is building a name in Washington, D.C., while his elder brother John F. Kennedy, a United States senator from Massachusetts, also rises on the national stage. Simultaneously, [Jimmy Hoffa], an intensely dedicated leader within the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, dreams of becoming a formidable force in the American labor movement. Hoffa makes an early move to ingratiate himself with Kennedy when they meet, but Kennedy is probing corruption in labor and harbors suspicions about Hoffa’s possible ties to organized crime.

Kennedy presses to secure a Senate committee that would investigate crime syndicates and their alleged links to union executives and pension funds, a promise he extracts from his brother. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover remains unwilling to acknowledge organized crime or even recognize its existence.

After JFK is elected president in 1960, Bobby is appointed to be his Attorney General. Hoffa, already feeling the pressure, grows more defiant. Longtime associates such as Edward Grady Partin and Randy Powers see how Hoffa’s bitter feud with Kennedy is affecting him, while Phil Wharton acts as Kennedy’s trusted ally. Hoffa presses ahead with his union power even as Kennedy pursues reform, and the public face-off intensifies in committee hearings, in the press, and in the courtroom, with attorney Edward Bennett Williams portraying Kennedy as a millionaire with little regard for “the working man.”

The assassination of JFK on November 22, 1963, is a horror to most Americans, but not to Hoffa, who behaves as if nothing matters beyond union business. The new president, Lyndon B. Johnson, surprises Hoffa by keeping Bobby Kennedy as his attorney general.

Hoffa’s paranoia grows. He becomes obsessed with finding informers within his organization and listening devices in his office. After one of his loyal allies, Partin, betrays him to federal authorities and testifies against him, Hoffa is convicted in 1964 of attempting to bribe a grand juror. He is later found guilty of misuse of a union pension fund. Appeals allow Hoffa to postpone incarceration for several years while Kennedy leaves LBJ’s administration to become a U.S. senator representing New York.

Hoffa alternately pleads for mercy and threatens vengeance. He begins his sentence behind bars in 1967. The personal animus between the two men ends with Bobby’s assassination in Los Angeles in 1968. Hoffa is granted an early release in 1971 after an arrangement with Richard Nixon results in a pardon, but he is unable to regain his Teamsters presidency upon being released. He disappears in 1975, never to be seen again.

Last Updated: November 29, 2025 at 00:47