FBI employees ordered to dig for Jimmy Hoffa-related documents, sources say
Jimmy Hoffa waves from the back seat of his car as he leaves an airport in St. Louis in 1971.
By Josh Campbell, CNN
(CNN) — The Trump administration has ordered FBI employees to immediately search their workstations and digital media for any records pertaining to the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, two law enforcement sources told CNN.
The directive, which comes nearly a month into the federal government shutdown, is the latest in a series of highly unusual demands in recent months directing FBI employees to conduct priority searches for any files they may have on decades-old mysteries.
Hoffa’s presumed death has vexed investigators for decades. He was 62 years old when he was last seen outside a restaurant in Michigan on July 30, 1975.
The FBI has searched various locations over the years in their effort to locate Hoffa’s remains but have always come up empty-handed.
One of the most powerful union leaders at a time that unions wielded a great deal of sway over elections – and were notoriously tied to organized crime – Hoffa was forced out of the organized labor movement when he went to federal prison in 1967 for jury tampering and fraud.
President Richard Nixon pardoned Hoffa in 1971 on the condition that he not try to get back into the union movement before 1980. But Hoffa tried to regain control of the union, angering his rivals.
CNN has reached out to the FBI about the Hoffa documents search.
The request comes as FBI employees have been pulled away from other assignments since the start of the Trump administration to work on other priority topics like immigration enforcement, countering violent crime, and redacting files associated with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Earlier this month, CNN reported that FBI employees had received a similar order to conduct priority searches for material relating to the disappearance of Amelia Earhart.
“Per a priority request from the Executive Office of the President of the United States, please search any areas where papers or physical media records may be stored, to include both open or closed cases, for records responsive to Amelia Earhart,” the earlier message to employees stated.
Earhart was attempting to become the first woman to fly around the world when her plane went missing over the Pacific Ocean in 1937. She was declared lost at sea following a 16-day search.
President Donald Trump last month said he was directing his administration to “declassify and release all government records” related to Earhart.
Earhart, the first female pilot to fly solo over the Atlantic Ocean, broke a number of aviation records, and she has been a source of public fascination during her life and after.
Conspiracy theories have developed since the aviator’s disappearance, but as CNN noted in 2024, the US government suspected that Earhart and her navigator crashed into the Pacific when the plane ran out of fuel.
Trump has previously ordered the release of documents related to other high-profile deaths that have sparked conspiracy theories, including records related to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
CNN’s Brynn Gingras, Veronica Stracqualursi and Holmes Lybrand contributed to this report.
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