FBI chief Kash Patel has sent FBI employees scrambling to probe a 20th-century mystery—this time over Jimmy Hoffa.
Keystone Kash ordered bureau staff to “immediately” search their workstations and digital archives for any material related to the disappearance of the former Teamsters boss, according to CNN.
The directive landed nearly a month into the federal government shutdown and is the latest in a series of odd internal orders demanding agents dig up records connected to decades-old mysteries.
It follows a Fox Nation segment in July that featured Hoffa’s son, James P. Hoffa, calling on President Donald Trump to release all FBI files tied to his father’s case.
“Let’s find out what really happened,” Hoffa said in an interview for the final two episodes of Fox Nation’s Riddle: The Search for James R. Hoffa with Eric Shawn. “President Trump, release the files. I don’t know what’s in those files... the American public, the Teamsters Union, our family deserve it, and I think you’ll do it.”
Two law enforcement sources told CNN that the Hoffa hunt has since been revived.
Hoffa’s name has haunted American true-crime history since July 30, 1975, when he vanished outside a Michigan restaurant. Once one of the most powerful labor leaders in the country, Hoffa was forced from the Teamsters after serving time for jury tampering and fraud in 1971.
In 1967, he was convicted of jury tampering, attempted bribery, and mail fraud after a years-long federal pursuit that exposed how deeply mob money had seeped into the union.
Prosecutors said Hoffa tried to buy off a juror during an earlier trial for taking illegal payments from trucking companies, and used union pension funds like his personal piggybank—funneling millions into shady loans that doubled as mob investments. The verdict sent the country’s most feared labor leader to federal prison in 1967.
His 13-year sentence was commuted by President Richard Nixon in 1971 on the condition that he steer clear of union activity until 1980. He ignored that, trying to claw back power from rivals with deep mob ties—and disappeared before he could succeed.
Over the decades, the FBI has chased Hoffa’s ghost through New Jersey marshes, Michigan fields, and suburban driveways, never finding a trace.
Hoffa was declared legally dead in 1982. He was immortalized in Martin Scorsese’s 2019 film The Irishman, in which he was portrayed by Al Pacino.
Theories about Hoffa’s demise have run wild, including that he was buried under Giants Stadium, dissolved in acid, or entombed beneath Detroit. The case remains one of the most famous unsolved disappearances in U.S. history.
Patel’s Hoffa directive fits a pattern inside the bureau. Earlier this month, CNN reported that FBI employees were told to perform a similar search for files tied to the disappearance of aviator Amelia Earhart. In that case, too, the hunt followed a wave of renewed media attention and speculation.
Since the start of the Trump administration, FBI agents have repeatedly been pulled from standard assignments—counterintelligence, violent crime, and immigration enforcement—to handle politically charged priorities. The current Hoffa order adds to that list, alongside past requests involving the release of documents connected to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
The Daily Beast contacted the FBI for comment. An automated response stated that the agency’s “operations are directed toward national security, violations of federal law, and essential public safety functions” due to the ongoing government shutdown.
