Jack Goldsmith

In 1975, labor union leader and American icon Jimmy Hoffa went missing. Forty-four years after Hoffa’s disappearance, the crime remains one of America's greatest unsolved mysteries. One of those frequently considered a suspect in Hoffa’s murder is Chuckie O’Brien, Hoffa’s longtime right-hand man. O’Brien also happens to be the step-father of Lawfare co-founder and Harvard Law Professor Jack Goldsmith. In a new book, "In Hoffa’s Shadow," Goldsmith details his own rigorous investigation of Hoffa’s disappearance and explains why the long-held assumption of Chuckie’s role in Hoffa's death is misguided. Yet, the book is more than a murder mystery. Goldsmith also reflects on the evolution of his own relationship with his step-father.

An essay by Jack Goldsmith: On june 16, 1975, when I was 12 years old, my mother, Brenda, married Charles “Chuckie” O’Brien, who a few weeks later would become a leading suspect in the notorious disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, the former president of the Teamsters union. Chuckie had known Hoffa since he was a boy, loved him like a father, and was his closest aide in the 1950s and ’60s, when Hoffa was the nation’s best-known and most feared labor leader. Soon after Hoffa went missing, on July 30, 1975, the FBI zeroed in on Chuckie.

Jimmy Hoffa, the brilliant but ruthless head of the Teamsters Union, had a taste for corruption and a knack for making powerful enemies, including his frequent business partners, the Mafia, and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. After President Nixon commuted his federal prison sentence, Hoffa planned to retake control of the Teamsters, much to the alarm of the mob. Then, one July day in 1975, Hoffa vanished without a trace from a restaurant parking lot outside of Detroit, a mystery that has inspired books, TV shows, movies (the most recent is Martin Scorsese’s film, “The Irishman”), and a raft of conspiracy theories. Jack L. Goldsmith, Henry L. Shattuck Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, was no Hoffa conspiracy buff, but he had good reason to think that Charles “Chuckie” O’Brien, Hoffa’s right-hand man and one of the FBI’s earliest suspects, had been falsely accused of driving Hoffa to his killers. First O’Brien’s alibi, although not airtight, eventually checked out enough that the FBI never charged him. And second, O’Brien is Goldsmith’s stepfather. In a new book, “In Hoffa’s Shadow,” Goldsmith dug through government and court records, FBI wiretap transcripts, and he spoke to dozens of FBI agents, prosecutors, and Hoffa experts to see whether, decades later, he could clear his stepdad’s name — and maybe even figure out what happened to Hoffa. The Gazette recently discussed his new book with Professor Goldsmith.

President Trump’s comments in a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in July have prompted the House of Representatives to launch an impeachment inquiry. Trump reportedly pressured his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate Joe Biden and the former vice president’s son, Hunter Biden, who served on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company. He also offered to enlist U.S. Attorney General William P. Barr and his personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, in that effort. Trump’s action — far from the first controversy the president has created while interacting with a foreign counterpart — appears to be a flagrant abuse of power. But it is one enabled by a system that extends presidents enormous freedom in conducting personal diplomacy with limited transparency and few checks on their power...Similarly, Trump often abruptly shifts American policy with little consultation with his aides, U.S. allies or Congress. And legally, he’s free to do so. “Putting it brutally, Article II gives the president the authority to do, and say, and pledge, awful things in the secret conduct of U.S. foreign policy,” Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith tweeted. “That is a very dangerous discretion, to be sure, but has long been thought worth it on balance.”

If you've followed the vanishing Jimmy Hoffa caper over the years, you've likely heard of Chuckie O'Brien, a burly, confidant who was his driver, gofer and conduit to the mob. Hoffa considered him like a son. One theory is that O'Brien was instrumental in Hoffa's July 1975 disappearance. Others disagree, or say any role was unwitting. Whatever the case, the FBI refers to O'Brien in 1976 as a pathological liar. Many books explore the Hoffa case. But now comes one of the more unlikely Hoffa-book authors -- Harvard Law Professor Jack Goldsmith -- a total opposite of O'Brien, his stepdad, who lives in the land of early bird specials, southern Florida.  Goldsmith's 368-page book, "In Hoffa's Shadow," came out this week and is about the former Teamsters union leader and O'Brien, now 84. Its subtitle is "A Stepfather, a Disappearance in Detroit, and My Search for the Truth."

Jack Goldsmith, who is the Henry L. Shattuck Professor of Law at Harvard University, couldn’t have chosen a more different career path than that of his stepfather, Charles “Chuckie” O’Brien. O’Brien was Teamsters Union President Jimmy Hoffa’s confidante and he also had close ties to the organized crime figures suspected in Hoffa's still unsolved 1975 disappearance. O’Brien could never shake suspicions that he drove Hoffa to his abduction. It’s not surprising that Goldsmith distanced himself from his stepfather as he moved toward adulthood and aspired to an elite legal career. He changed his name and ultimately cut O’Brien out of his life altogether.

So much has been written about Jimmy Hoffa, the former Teamster boss who vanished from a Detroit suburb in 1975, but a new book about him still contains surprises — not least because of who wrote it. Jack Goldsmith, the author of “In Hoffa’s Shadow,” happens to have a personal connection to the material. Goldsmith is perhaps best known for his work in the George W. Bush administration as the head of the Office of Legal Counsel, where he challenged the legality of “enhanced interrogation” and warrantless surveillance programs before resigning nine months after he started. In his 2007 book, “The Terror Presidency,” Goldsmith said he was hired in part because of his stalwart conservative worldview. But something came up in his vetting interview that gave White House officials pause. Asked whether anything embarrassing might emerge during his Senate confirmation hearing, Goldsmith replied: “My former stepfather is the leading suspect in Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance, and has long been associated with the Mafia.”

A new book penned by Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor and the former U.S. assistant attorney general, claims the FBI knows who killed legendary labor leader Jimmy Hoffa, but it won't admit that it blamed the wrong man. In his new book, "In Hoffa's Shadow," Goldsmith lays out his case for why he believes federal investigators allowed Chuckie O'Brien, the labor boss's protege, to be known as the key suspect in Hoffa's mysterious disappearance in 1975, despite evidence proving otherwise. Hoffa served as the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters labor union until 1971, making him a hero to many blue-collar Americans. He also had powerful enemies and ties to organized crime. Goldsmith is also O'Brien's stepson.

For more than four decades, Chuckie O’Brien has been known as a key suspect in Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance. Now, the author of a new book, "In Hoffa's Shadow," says the feds were planning to clear O’Brien. He also says the feds know who’s responsible for one of the most notorious crimes in American history, but they’re not revealing any names. Author Jack Goldsmith has a unique connection to the case: He’s Chuckie O’Brien’s stepson.

Chuckie O’Brien should not be confused with Robert O’Brien, the new national security adviser to President Trump whom I wrote about last week. In fact, finding two Americans more different in upbringings and career paths is hard to imagine. There’s a new book out this week about the first O’Brien, and it is the unlikeliest riveting read of the year: “In Hoffa’s Shadow” by Jack Goldsmith — Harvard Law professor, national security law maven and former assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel. It was Goldsmith who, while in the last role, played Samson in the temple to the Stellarwind surveillance program and its demise during the George W. Bush administration.

If a secret whistleblower complaint covers President Donald Trump's dealings with the president of Ukraine, as two major newspapers have reported, it raises profound constitutional questions about whether Congress can police the president's conversations with foreign leaders, legal experts say. ... Some legal scholars, such as Harvard's Jack Goldsmith, are making an even broader argument: that the president can say and do anything he wants in the conduct of foreign relations, which is purely an executive branch function. ... "Putting it brutally, Article II gives the president the authority to do, and say, and pledge, awful things in the secret conduct of U.S. foreign policy," Goldsmith, a former Bush Administration lawyer, said on Twitter. "That is a very dangerous discretion, to be sure, but has long been thought worth it on balance."

Democratic presidential candidates broadly agree that President Trump has shaken the presidency loose from its constitutional limits and say that the White House needs major new legal curbs, foreshadowing a potential era of reform akin to the post-Watergate period if any of them wins next year’s election. ... But though the candidates “seem committed to reforming the presidency,” they might have second thoughts from the vantage point of the Oval Office, said Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor and former senior Justice Department official in the George W. Bush administration who reviewed their responses. “The next Democratic president will happily accept new rules on tax releases, but will have a harder time accepting constraints on security clearances and emergency or war powers,” he said. “Institutional prerogative often defeats prior reformist pledges.”

“In Hoffa’s Shadow: A Stepfather, a Disappearance in Detroit, and My Search for the Truth,” Jack Goldsmith (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Goldsmith, a Harvard Law professor and former assistant attorney general, reunites with his estranged stepfather, a one-time Jimmy Hoffa associate, to find out more about the labor leader and his famously unexplained 1975 disappearance. Out September 24.

Mary Ann Glendon is the chair of the Commission on Unalienable Rights, announced by Secretary Pompeo on July 8, 2019, to great controversy. The commission was charged with examining the bases of human rights claims and the extent to which they are or are not rooted in the American rights tradition. The response of the human rights community was swift and fierce, with a lot of skepticism, a lot of anger, and a lot of criticism. Mary Ann Glendon, the Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, sat down with Jack Goldsmith to discuss the commission, what it is and isn't looking at, and why examining the root bases of human rights claims is a worthwhile endeavor for a State Department commission.

Jimmy Hoffa disappeared July 30, 1975...During the coming months, watch for more excellent reporting on the Hoffa case...And get ready for the upcoming, highly anticipated book—In Hoffa's Shadow: A Stepfather, a Disappearance in Detroit, and My Search for the Truth—by Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor, which will be released in September.  Goldsmith is the stepson of Charles “Chuckie” O’Brien, whom many believe had driven the car that took Hoffa to the scene of his murder.

Particular moments in history and strategic breaks with unwritten rules have helped many presidents expand their powers incrementally, leading some to wonder how wide-ranging presidential powers can be. [With comments from Noah Feldman, Mark Tushnet, Michael Klarman, Jack Goldsmith, Daphna Renan, and Neil Eggleston].

In public remarks and classified briefings, Trump administration officials keep emphasizing purported ties between Iran and Al Qaeda. Some lawmakers suspect that the executive branch is toying with claiming that it already has congressional authorization to attack Iran based on the nearly 18-year-old law approving a war over the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks...“If Iran has, in fact, been harboring Al Qaeda operatives, especially recently, then the A.U.M.F. by its terms plausibly authorizes the president to use force against Iran,” said Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor who ran the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel for a year under President George W. Bush. He cautioned that even if the Sept. 11 war law could be invoked, it would satisfy only the domestic law requirements for an attack and leave open a separate international law problem: The United States would also seem to need permission from the United Nations Security Council or a self-defense rationale to attack Iran. But once the two countries were engaged in an armed conflict, Mr. Goldsmith said, the United States could lawfully strike nuclear installations with a military dimension. Still, he said, if that is the only sort of attack the Trump administration has in mind, that would mean any invocation of purported Qaeda links to justify the conflict would seem “pretextual.”

Not long before Attorney General William P. Barr released the special counsel’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, he strategized with Senator Lindsey Graham, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, about one of his next moves: investigating the investigators...Less than two months later, Mr. Barr began his cleanup with the most powerful of brooms: a presidential order commanding intelligence agencies to cooperate with his inquiry, and sweeping power to declassify and make public their secrets — even if they objected...Given the president’s threat to indiscriminately declassify every document related to the Russia investigation, Mr. Barr’s ability to persuade Mr. Trump to outsource those judgments to him is comforting, said Jack Goldsmith, a conservative former senior Justice Department official who has repeatedly criticized Mr. Trump. “There is no way to know now what Barr will find in his investigation or whether or how he will use this power,” said Mr. Goldsmith, who is also a Harvard Law School professor. “But Barr is not someone inclined to harm our national security bureaucracy.”

An article by Jack Goldsmith: President Trump’s delegation of a narrowly defined declassification authority to Attorney General Bill Barr has attracted criticism, notably on this site by my colleagues David Kris and Benjamin Wittes. I think these criticisms tell only one side of the story, and that the matter is more complicated than they let on.