Labor secretary nominee Andrew Puzder began his career fighting the agency he may now lead on behalf of one of the most notorious mob lawyers in the country.

Today, Puzder is CEO of CKE Restaurants, which owns the burger chains Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s. But long before that, Puzder made his bones working at the St. Louis firm of Morris A. Shenker, the lead lawyer for Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa and the target of frequent investigations by the FBI, Nevada Gaming Commission and others.


“Shenker was part of the mob," recalls Denny Walsh, who wrote a 1970 Life magazine profile of Shenker and covered Shenker for years at the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. "He was their mouthpiece."

Puzder, whose confirmation hearing is scheduled for Feb. 7, is facing opposition from liberal groups and lawmakers who don’t like his treatment of workers at CKE. He’s also drawn headlines because his former wife accused him of domestic violence, charges that she later recanted. But so far the chapter of Puzder’s life in which he represented Shenker against union pensioners — pensioners whom Puzder, as labor secretary, would have the duty to protect — has received little attention.

An online bio on Puzder’s personal website says only that he "talked his way into his first job at a small law firm in St. Louis," without mentioning his mentor by name. But a 2012 profile in the Washington University Law School's alumni magazine paraphrased Puzder describing his work for Shenker, in 1978-84, as "among his greatest challenges and achievements." E. Michael Murphy, another young law associate at the firm, and now president and chief legal officer at CKE, looks back fondly on Shenker as a father figure to Puzder and himself.

“He would take us under his wing," Murphy said. "He would take the time even though he was extremely busy to give us his thoughts on things.”

Puzder’s duties were limited to legal representation. He was never implicated in any organized crime activity, and by all accounts he served Shenker successfully, navigating multiple lawsuits and investigations. But Puzder's relationship with Shenker wasn't at arm's length either. Shenker, in addition to being Puzder's client, was Puzder's employer.

Through a spokesman, Puzder declined comment on his work for Shenker.

Shenker "represented some of the leading racketeers in St. Louis," according to a 1972 book by the late Walter Sheridan, a former investigator with the Senate rackets committee. When Puzder joined his firm, Shenker was best known as former lawyer to Hoffa, who had disappeared in 1975, the victim of a presumed mob hit.

Through Hoffa, Shenker gained access to the Teamsters' Central States Pension Fund, which under Hoffa became a steady source of unsecured loans to Mafia figures. Midwifing more than $100 million in Central States loans made Shenker a rich man.

Shenker had given up practicing law when Puzder worked for him. But Shenker hadn't given up his extensive ties to organized crime. With $15 million borrowed from Central States, Shenker had acquired a majority stake in the financially troubled Dunes Hotel in Las Vegas, becoming its chairman. In that capacity, Shenker borrowed about $24 million from a pension fund for culinary workers, creating serious financial and legal difficulties for himself.

Puzder was tasked with helping Shenker sort these out. But before Puzder was done, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), then chairman of the Senate Labor Committee, would excoriate Shenker — and the Labor Department's leniency in dealing with Shenker — in two days of public hearings in 1982.

Hatch sits today on that same committee (now renamed Health, Education, Labor and Pensions), which Puzder will appear before next week. Hatch’s office didn't respond to POLITICO's request for comment, but in a December statement Hatch called Puzder a “great pick for the modern American workforce" and said Puzder “understands from firsthand experience how government overreach can hurt American workers, hamper economic growth and stifle innovation.” Puzder contributed $1,000 to Hatch's campaign fund in 2016, according to Federal Election Commission records. (Hatch comes up for reelection next year.)

The Labor Department filed suit against Shenker in March 1977. Shenker's culinary workers loan, DOL said, violated the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, a law enacted in 1974 in no small part because of scandals surrounding the questionable use of union pension funds. DOL alleged that Shenker's culinary loans were illegal under ERISA because the funds’ contributors worked in Shenker's hotel.

Behind these green-eyeshade details was a mob hit. One month earlier, Al Bramlet, president of the culinary workers' Las Vegas local and a pension trustee, had been murdered . Moments before he was killed, Bramlet had arranged a $10,000 loan from the Dunes (not through Shenker) to Benny Binion, operator of a rival hotel-casino. Bramlet’s estate became a defendant in the suit.

The DOL lawsuit dragged on for years, and in 1980 Puzder was assigned to defend Shenker, along with Murphy. They were both around 30, and this was a career-making opportunity. “It was a big case," Murphy said, "and everyone had lawyers. ... And at the other side of the table was Andy and me.”

"I can’t imagine they had a bigger lawsuit than that beforehand," recalls David Going, who Puzder hired to work on the case as a third-year law student. "I mean, they took it and they ran with it and they did a great job."

Hatch thought so too, and he wasn't pleased. By 1982 the debt on Shenker’s loans from the culinary workers had ballooned to $45.2 million. Hatch accused DOL of “blatantly coddling” Shenker, who declined to testify before the Labor Committee due to his deteriorating health. According to documents from the hearing record, Puzder had requested a meeting with DOL to discuss a settlement in 1981. Shenker proposed $21 million; DOL countered with $29 million, a sum Shenker rejected. Hatch called DOL’s counteroffer “substantially inadequate.”

“The 30,000 workers covered by this fund have been cheated, both by Morris Shenker and the Labor Department,” Hatch said in his opening statement at the 1982 hearing. “We are not talking about highly paid workers. The members of this union are people who make beds, wash dishes, tend bar and the like. Many work at or around minimum wage level.”

The following year, a jury ordered Shenker to pay $34 million to the pension fund. A district court in Nevada subsequently issued a decision that backed that judgment and concluded Shenker and the pension fund trustees had knowingly violated their duties under ERISA. Shenker declared bankruptcy in 1984, and a decade later the Dunes, under new ownership, was demolished to make way for the Bellagio Hotel.

“It was a great learning experience," Murphy said. "I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything I’ve done in the practice of law."

Puzder also worked on Shenker's lawsuit, filed in 1976, against the trustees of the Central States pension board. Shenker alleged that the trustees had breached their contract to lend one of his companies, M&R Investment Co., $40 million. The contract had been signed shortly after ERISA took effect, and the trustees rescinded it when they learned it would violate the new law. The Labor Department intervened on the side of the trustees, and the case was dismissed by the U.S. District Court in Nevada. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal in 1982, with Judge Procter Ralph Hug Jr. writing that the appeal was “without merit.”

Remarkably, Shenker avoided indictment until the final year of his life. In 1989 — five years after Puzder left Shenker's employ — a grand jury accused Shenker of engaging in a conspiracy to hide hundreds of thousands of dollars from creditors and the IRS. By then Shenker was too sick to stand trial. When he died the IRS estimated Shenker owed it $55 million.

Puzder moved on, but the connections he made working for Shenker in St. Louis, and defending him in Nevada, stayed strong.

After his stint with Shenker, Puzder practiced with the Stolar Partnership, where he worked with the late attorney Charles A. Seigel . Seigel’s son, Charles “Chip” Seigel III, is now executive vice president and general counsel at Puzder’s CKE Restaurants.

The senior Seigel had earlier defended Sen. Edward Long (D-Mo.) in a Justice Department lawsuit that involved Shenker. Long was accused of receiving $48,000 from Shenker — it was later found to be more like $160,000 — to run interference for Hoffa on a Senate subcommittee that oversaw FBI wiretapping. Long claimed these were "referral fees," but that was hard to square with his telling Life magazine that he hadn't been active as an attorney since the mid-1950s. Long escaped punishment, but he lost a primary bid the following year to Thomas Eagleton.

Later, at CKE, Puzder would bring on Ed Pasquale to be an accountant for Carl's Jr. founder Carl Karcher. Pasquale had worked at the Dunes Hotel; in a 2009 interview with the Center for Oral and Public History at Cal State Fullerton, Puzder said the two worked together to "get Morris Shenker out of trouble."

Puzder is largely credited with saving Carl's Jr. and making the company profitable again when he took over as CEO. He got his toehold as lawyer to Karcher when Karcher's finances were going haywire. For Puzder, it all had a certain deja vu.

“[Shenker] had similar problems,” Puzder said in the 2009 interview. “He was overcommitted, lot of real estate loans, owned 40 percent of a public company." But "in that case," Puzder clarified, Shenker "owned the Dunes Hotel, not … Carl’s Jr. restaurants."