The Cheasty bribery trial was a June 1957 Washington prosecution arising from Jimmy Hoffa’s attempt to pay an investigator on the McClellan Committee for confidential information. Hoffa was caught in a photographed cash exchange and arrested, yet was acquitted after a defense that combined an attack on the investigator’s credibility with deliberate appeals to the jury’s racial composition. The episode joined a plainly documented transaction to a contest over how that transaction would be understood in court.

The Offer and the Informant

In February 1957, impatient to learn what the McClellan Committee was doing, Hoffa approached John Cye Cheasty, a New York lawyer whose investigative experience included service in the Navy and the Secret Service. Hoffa proposed that Cheasty take a job with the committee and report its activities to him. The arrangement offered $24,000, paid at $2,000 a month for a year; Hoffa also gave Cheasty $1,000 toward the expenses of obtaining the position.

The scheme depended on Hoffa having chosen a willing intermediary. Instead, Cheasty was an honest investigator and patriot, and he reported the offer immediately. Bobby Kennedy arranged for Cheasty to join the committee at a salary of $5,000 a year. The contrast between the two sums made the nature of Hoffa’s proposed arrangement explicit: the committee job would provide access, while the much larger cash payment was meant to purchase private reporting to Hoffa.

The Recorded Exchange

The FBI prepared to document the transaction, planting microphones and setting up cameras. Cheasty told Hoffa that he had an envelope containing sensitive committee documents and wanted another installment of cash in return. They met near DuPont Circle in Washington, D.C. Cheasty handed over the envelope; Hoffa handed over $2,000. The exchange was photographed, and FBI agents moved in and arrested Hoffa on the spot.

The arrest did not end the matter. In June, Hoffa went on trial for passing a bribe to a McClellan Committee investigator in exchange for inside information about the committee’s activities. The government’s account had a straightforward sequence—an offer, a down payment, an arranged exchange, cash, documents, photographs, and an arrest. The courtroom contest, however, would turn not only on what had happened but on whether the jurors trusted the people describing it.

The Defense’s Jury Strategy

The jury consisted of eight Black jurors and four white jurors. Hoffa and his celebrated attorney, Edward Bennett Williams, struck only white prospective jurors during selection. Hoffa also brought a Black woman lawyer from California to sit at the counsel table and arranged for The Afro-American to publish an advertisement presenting him as a champion of Black people, accompanied by a photograph of his Black-and-white legal team. Copies of the newspaper were delivered to the homes of the Black jurors.

The defense’s most visible gesture came through Red Dorfman, Hoffa’s Chicago underworld associate, who arranged for boxing champion Joe Louis to fly from Detroit. Hoffa and Louis embraced in front of the jury as though they were old friends, and Louis remained in court for several days of testimony. Sheeran later explained that they had never met before the trial, a fact the jurors did not know. The display made a public connection between Hoffa and a celebrated Black athlete, giving the jury an impression of personal familiarity that had been staged for the courtroom.

The defense also sought to unsettle Cheasty’s standing when he testified. Williams asked whether Cheasty had ever officially investigated the NAACP. Cheasty said he had not, but the question introduced the subject into the jurors’ minds. Together, the jury-selection decisions, newspaper advertisement, staged embrace, and cross-examination formed a sustained effort to shape the racial and political associations surrounding the prosecution. The defense was not limited to disputing the cash exchange; it worked to make the investigator and the case against Hoffa suspect in the eyes of the jury.

Acquittal and Its Irony

Hoffa was acquitted. The verdict sharply contrasted with the photographed exchange that had prompted his arrest: the evidence had established a conspicuous meeting and transfer of money, yet the prosecution did not secure a conviction. After the acquittal, Williams sent Bobby Kennedy a wrapped box tied with a ribbon. Inside was a toy parachute, a taunting reference to Kennedy’s remark that he would jump off the Capitol if Hoffa were acquitted.

The episode’s outcome therefore extended beyond the formal judgment. The toy transformed Kennedy’s confident prediction into a prop for the victor, while the acquittal demonstrated how courtroom persuasion could redirect attention from the transaction to the credibility, identity, and perceived loyalties of those involved. The trial stands in the book as an early instance of the bitter contest between Hoffa and Bobby Kennedy: an attempted purchase exposed and recorded by the government, followed by a defense that turned the courtroom into a struggle over who would command the jury’s trust.