James P. Hoffa more than $750,000 in union assets had been used in Carey's 1996 reelection campaign. During the 1998 election Tom Leedham, then-director of the Teamsters Warehouse Division, campaigned against James P. Hoffa. Campaigning to unite the union, Hoffa won the election. After having lost narrowly in 1996 to Ron Carey, Hoffa's new role as president was considered by Teamster members as a chance to rebuild the union. Hoffa was re-elected in 2001, 2006, 2011 and 2016 to five-year terms. "The first big test of the Hoffa administration" was the ratification in June 1999, of a four-year contract covering 13,000 carhaul members
Jimmy Hoffa his younger brother Robert F. Kennedy as Attorney General. Robert Kennedy had been frustrated in earlier attempts to convict Hoffa, while working as counsel to the McClellan subcommittee. As Attorney General from 1961, Kennedy pursued the strongest attack on organized crime that the country had ever seen, and he carried on with a so-called "Get Hoffa" squad of prosecutors and investigators. In 1964, Hoffa was convicted in Chattanooga, Tennessee of attempted bribery of a grand juror, and was sentenced to eight years. This case resulted from an earlier matter, the Test Fleet case, the trial for which had been held