Both JFK and Bobby were against Bobby being appointed JFK’s Attorney General, but old Joe Kennedy insisted, and since it had been the old man’s money that got President Kennedy elected, both son consented. Old Joe Kennedy had made a pact with the mob to get his son elected, not to have the government go after them.
· In 1952, he served as campaign manager for his brother's (Congressman John F. Kennedy) election to the United States Senate. ... He managed John F. Kennedy's 1960 Presidential campaign. On January 21, 1961, President Kennedy appointed him Attorney General of the United States, and he held the office until September 3, 1964. Kennedy was elected ...
· Robert Kennedy was the U.S. attorney general from 1961 to 1964 and a U.S. senator from New York from 1965 to 1968. A graduate of Harvard University and the University of Virginia School of Law ...
Answer (1 of 7): Nothing JFK couldn't deflect with a joke... > "I can't see that it's wrong to give him a little legal experience before he goes out to practice law." Behind the scenes, there was some opposition due to his lack of experience in a courtroom. The Senate was opposed. The New York ...
Robert Francis Kennedy (November 20, 1925 – June 6, 1968), also referred to by his initials RFK or by the nickname Bobby, was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 64th United States Attorney General from January 1961 to September 1964, and as a U.S. Senator from New York from January 1965 until his assassination in June 1968. He was, like his brothers John …
After winning the 1960 presidential election, President-elect John F. Kennedy appointed his younger brother attorney general. The choice was controversial, with publications including The New York Times and The New Republic calling him inexperienced and unqualified.
(Gilder Lehrman Collection) At the end of 1962, President John F. Kennedy asked his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, to compile a report on the Civil Rights enforcement activities of the Justice Department over the previous year.
Cabinet Members Under KennedySecretary of StateDean Rusk, 1961Secretary of DefenseRobert S. McNamara, 1961Attorney GeneralRobert F. Kennedy, 1961Postmaster GeneralJ. Edward Day, 1961 John A. Gronouski, 1963Secretary of the InteriorStewart L. Udall, 19615 more rows
President Kennedy defined civil rights as not just a constitutional issue, but also a “moral issue.” He also proposed the Civil Rights Act of 1963, which would provide protection of every American's right to vote under the United States Constitution, end segregation in public facilities, and require public schools to ...
After several minutes, medical attendants arrived and lifted Kennedy onto a stretcher, prompting him to whisper, "Don't lift me", which were his last words; he lost consciousness shortly after.
Kennedy's campaign was especially active in Indiana, Nebraska, Oregon, South Dakota, California, and Washington, D.C. Kennedy's campaign ended on June 6, 1968 when he was assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California, following his victory in the California Primary.
Kennedy won a 303 to 219 Electoral College victory, and he won the national popular vote by 112,827, a margin of 0.17 percent.
Kennedy spent the eight weeks following his election choosing his cabinet, staff and top officials....Administration.The Kennedy CabinetOfficeNameTermSecretary of StateDean Rusk1961–1963Secretary of the TreasuryC. Douglas Dillon1961–1963Secretary of DefenseRobert McNamara1961–196329 more rows
While there are many advisors that are associated with President John F. Kennedy, his closest advisor without a doubt was his younger brother and Attorney-General Robert F. Kennedy.
President John F. KennedyPresident John F. Kennedy proposed the initial civil rights act.
Despite Kennedy's assassination in November of 1963, his proposal culminated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. President Lyndon Johnson signed it into law just a few hours after it was passed by Congress on July 2, 1964.
Now RFK - decided to go after organized crime and he decided to go after people he considered corrupt and criminal such as Jimmy Hoffa… He was good at his job, perhaps so good at his job that he might have had some part in the murder of his Brother…
Now we’re into such partisanship that the most minor defect is objectionable. Possible benefit is we’ll never see nepotism again, at least not in this partisan atmosphere. JFK when asked why he nominated RFK, said he’s a new attorney and “he needs to practice law,” giving new meaning to the expression “practice” law. Anyone a victim of legal or medical malpractice knows that phrase all too well, “practice medicine,” or “practice law.” Like hit & miss, and miss too all often. Even back then, in the era of good feelings, and Senatorial deference to presidential nominations, the RFK nomination was the most controversial, but as it goes, not controversial enough to prevent it.
No, he could not. It’s because of the closeness of John and Bobby Kennedy that there is now a law prohibiting presidents from hiring relatives.
John had no desire to appoint Bobby, believing that Bobby was indeed the “runt" of the family.
The sole saving grace for the appointment was that RFK had extensive, for his age, experience in the justice department and was a top flight thinker in civil rights, and area that JFK was intent on pushing. There was problems with the brothers being in those offices in that RFK had to recuse himself from many oversight duties, but this was common of many DOJ people in the era and not unusual or even much discussed.
Yes and yes. RFK was mocked for his youth and inexperience more than his fraternal connection. Keeping Hoover’s mouth shut was an administration goal. Hoover was a Mafia denier and RFK was on the tracks.
JFK actually at first tried to honor his Dad’s pact with the mob, but not Bobby. After Bobby was announced JFK’s choice, before being confirmed, RFK announced he was going after New Orleans mob boss Carlos Marcello, and began assembling a mob task force.
From 1957 to 1960 Kennedy was chief counsel of the Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field.
Artist: Robert Francis Kennedy was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on November 20, 1925. He served with the United States Naval Reserve from 1944 to 1946. He earned a B.A. degree from Harvard University in 1948, was a correspondent on The Boston Post, and in 1951 graduated from the University of Virginia Law School.
After John F. Kennedy was elected president in November 1960, he named his brother Robert Kennedy as America’s 64th attorney general. In this role, Kennedy continued to battle corruption in labor unions, as well as mobsters and organized crime. In 1964, Jimmy Hoffa was convicted of jury tampering and fraud.
senator from New York from 1965 to 1968. A graduate of Harvard University and the University of Virginia School of Law, Kennedy was appointed attorney general after his brother John Kennedy was elected president in 1960. In this role, Robert Kennedy fought organized crime and worked for civil rights for African Americans. In the Senate, he was a committed advocate of the poor and racial minorities , and opposed escalation of the Vietnam War. On June 5, 1968, while in Los Angeles campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, Kennedy was shot. He died early the next day at age 42.
In 1964, Jimmy Hoffa was convicted of jury tampering and fraud. As attorney general, Kennedy also supported the civil rights movement for African Americans.
On June 17, 1950, Robert Kennedy married Ethel Skakel of Greenwich, Connecticut. The couple had 11 children: Kathleen, Joseph II, Robert Jr., David, Courtney, Michael, Kerry, Christopher, Max, Douglas and Rory, who was born six months after her father’s death. The family lived at an estate called Hickory Hill in McLean, Virginia.
Robert Francis Kennedy was born on November 20, 1925, in Brookline, Massachusetts, the seventh of nine children of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., a wealthy financier, and Rose Kennedy, the daughter of a Boston politician. Kennedy spent his childhood between his family’s homes in New York; Hyannis Port, Massachusetts; Palm Beach, Florida; and London, ...
During the Kennedy administration, the federal government carried out its last pre- Furman federal execution (of Victor Feguer in Iowa, 1963), and Kennedy, as attorney general, represented the government in this case.
Kennedy was said to be the gentlest and shyest of the family, as well as the least articulate orally. By the time he was a young boy, his grandmother, Josie Fitzgerald, worried he would become a "sissy". His mother had a similar concern, as he was the "smallest and thinnest", but soon afterward, the family discovered "there was no fear of that". Family friend Lem Billings met Kennedy when he was eight years old and would later reflect that he loved him, adding that Kennedy "was the nicest little boy I ever met". Billings also said Kennedy was barely noticed "in the early days, but that's because he didn't bother anybody". Luella Hennessey, who became the nurse for the Kennedy children when Kennedy was 12, called him "the most thoughtful and considerate" of his siblings.
Tired but still intense in the last days before his Oregon defeat, Robert Kennedy speaks from the platform of a campaign train.
The bill forbade "mail order sale of guns to the very young, those with criminal records and the insane," according to The Oregonian ' s report. S.1592 and subsequent bills, and the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, paved the way for the eventual passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968.
Kennedy, November 25, 1963. At the time that President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963, RFK was at home with aides from the Justice Department. J.
Concurrently, Kennedy served as the president's personal representative in Operation Mongoose, the post-Bay of Pigs covert operations program established in November 1961 by the president. Mongoose was meant to incite a revolution within Cuba that would result in the downfall of Castro, not Castro's assassination.
He was relentless in his pursuit of Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa, due to Hoffa's known corruption in financial and electoral matters, both personally and organizationally, creating a so-called "Get Hoffa" squad of prosecutors and investigators. The enmity between the two men was intense, with accusations of a personal vendetta—what Hoffa called a "blood feud"—exchanged between them. On July 7, 1961, after Hoffa was reelected to the Teamsters presidency, RFK told reporters the government's case against Hoffa had not been changed by what he called "a small group of teamsters" supporting him. The following year, it was leaked that Hoffa had claimed to a Teamster local that Kennedy had been "bodily" removed from his office, the statement being confirmed by a Teamster press agent and Hoffa saying Kennedy had only been ejected. On March 4, 1964, Hoffa was convicted in Chattanooga, Tennessee, of attempted bribery of a grand juror during his 1962 conspiracy trial in Nashville, Tennessee, and sentenced to eight years in prison and a $10,000 fine. After learning of Hoffa's conviction by telephone, Kennedy issued congratulatory messages to the three prosecutors. While on bail during his appeal, Hoffa was convicted in a second trial held in Chicago, on July 26, 1964, on one count of conspiracy and three counts of mail and wire fraud for improper use of the Teamsters' pension fund, and sentenced to five years in prison. Hoffa spent the next three years unsuccessfully appealing his 1964 convictions, and began serving his aggregate prison sentence of 13 years (eight years for bribery, five years for fraud) on March 7, 1967, at the Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary in Pennsylvania.
Kennedy made his brother Robert F. Kennedy the U.S. Attorney General in 1961, so it has been nicknamed the “Bobby Kennedy Law.” (JFK’s brother-in-law Sergeant Shriver also ran the Peace Corps.) The Nation blasted the appointment as “the greatest example of nepotism this land has ever seen,” while Newsweek called it a “travesty of justice.” Irresponsible, said a New York Times editorial: “It is simply not good enough to name a bright young political manager, no matter how bright or how young or how personally loyal, to a major post in government.” The President would shrug off criticism by joking, “I can’t see that it’s wrong to give him a little legal experience before he goes out to practice law.”
When Kushner was spotted taking a walk with President Barack Obama’s Chief of Staff Denis McDonough on Thursday—the same day that Trump and Obama met for the first time—the sighting quickly led to rumors that Kushner wants a job in the White House.
Code Title 3 gives Trump some leeway in tapping people — and possibly family members — to “serve at the pleasure of the president” on the White House staff, because the anti-nepotism law applies to federal agencies and not the White House. Others say Kushner could serve in the White House if he is not paid.
But the Act’s sponsor, Rep. Neal Smith (D-Iowa), later denied that argument in an interview with the Des Moines Register. Smith claimed that his goal was to crack down on nepotism at “smaller post offices” and Congress, because when he arrived on Capitol hill in the early ’60s, “there were 50 members who had their wives on the payrolls,” as he told the newspaper.
But in March 1993, a federal appeals court ruled that she was a “de facto” federal official on her own merit, arguing that there was “a longstanding tradition of public service by First Ladies…who have acted (albeit in the background) as advisers and personal representatives of their husbands.”
But JFK had grown to rely on Bobby— the brother who, years earlier, he had dismissed as “kind of a nasty, brutal, humorless little fellow,” “moody, taciturn, brusque, and combative”—as his campaign manager, right hand and principal sounding board.
Shortly after naming his brother attorney general, Jack Kennedy told family friends, in jest, that he “just wanted to give him a little legal practice before he becomes a lawyer.”. Bobby was mortified. “Jack,” he complained “you shouldn’t have said that about me.”. “Bobby, you don’t understand,” JFK explained.
The anti-nepotism law was a rider to a bill that established salary rates for postal workers and other government employees.
In the coming years, even at the height of his power, LBJ feared that his one-time tormenter would tack to the left and challenge him for the presidency in 1968. He worried that the Kennedys might seek to launch a dynasty that lasted into the 1970s and beyond: first Jack, then Bobby, then younger brother Teddy.
According to a bystander, RFK “agreed to the accuracy of all this.”. It was the ultimate turn of the knife. When, on November 22, 1963, fate reversed their fortunes, Johnson tried at first and of necessity to be gracious to the man who was now his attorney general.
Richard Goodwin , a Kennedy aide who later served as chief speechwriter in Johnson’s White House, observed that “Bobby symbolized everything Johnson hated. He became the symbol of all the things Johnson wasn’t … with these characteristics of wealth and power and ease and Eastern elegance; with Johnson always looking at himself as the guy they thought was illiterate, rude, crude. They laughed at him behind his back. I think he felt all of that.”
During his tenure as Senate majority leader, LBJ had sized up RFK (who was then a lowly committee aide ) as a “snot nose,” though he acknowledged that he was “bright.”.