Martin Scorsese’s New Jimmy Hoffa Movie @jacklgoldsmith @nybooks @Harvard_Law

Harvard Law Professor Jack Goldsmith discusses Martin Scorsese’s new film The Irishman and the unsolved disappearance of union leader James (Jimmy) Hoffa here  for the New York Review of Books. Professor Goldsmith writes in part,

The Irishman purports to do what the FBI and others seem unable to do: tell us who killed Hoffa, and how. The film is based on a 2004 book by Charles Brandt called I Heard You Paint Houses (the title alludes to supposed mob slang for carrying out a hit). The book’s central claim is that Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran murdered Hoffa. Sheeran was a Teamsters official in Delaware, an associate of Hoffa’s as well as senior mob figures, and a well-known boozer and thug. Brandt’s book recounts Sheeran’s confession to the murder, and describes the house where he claims the murder happened. I have a personal stake in the veracity of Sheeran’s confession. Sheeran repeats the public conventional wisdom since 1975 that a man named Charles “Chuckie” O’Brien drove the car that picked up Hoffa from the suburban parking lot and delivered him to his killers. O’Brien was Hoffa’s closest aide for decades. He is also my stepfather. I was twelve years old when Hoffa disappeared, and I lived through the bedlam of the Hoffa investigation.

And yes, Professor Goldsmith’s essay gets more intriguing from there. Read on, Macduffs.