About Jeff Robbins

Jeff Robbins

Jeff Robbins

Jeff Robbins' latest book, "Notes From the Brink: A Collection of Columns about Policy at Home and Abroad," is available now on AmazonBarnes & NobleApple Books and Google Play.

Robbins, a nationally recognized First Amendment lawyer and civil litigator, served as chief counsel for the Democratic senators on the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and as deputy chief counsel for the Democratic senators on the United States Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. In 1999 and 2000, he served as a United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva, Switzerland.

Between 1987 and 1990, he was an assistant United States attorney for the District of Massachusetts, where he focused on civil fraud cases and money laundering investigations. There he was tapped to be the district’s first chief of the Asset Forfeiture Unit. He was also twice appointed as a special assistant attorney general in Massachusetts, representing the secretary of the commonwealth.

He has written widely on politics, foreign policy and national security matters for the Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, The Times of Israel and the New York Observer. He is a visiting professor of the practice of political science at Brown University, where he teaches courses on congressional investigations and political journalism. He has received awards for public service from the United States Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the General Services Administration. From 2012 to 2014, he was chairman of the Anti-Defamation League’s New England board of directors, and from 2001 through 2004, he was president of the World Affairs Council of Boston.

He lives in Massachusetts with his wife, Joanne. They have two children, two golden retrievers and four cats.

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Happening Here: Trump-Ordered Indictments Put Us in Tyrant Territory Oct 14, 2025

In 1940, then U.S. Attorney General Robert Jackson gathered the nation's federal prosecutors in the Justice Department's Great Hall to remind them of the solemn role their morality and disregard of politics in decision-making played in protecting Ame... Read More

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Slaughter at Sunrise: They Came Only to Dance Oct 07, 2025

"Sunrise at the festival is the greatest moment," recalls one survivor of the Nova Music Festival that drew 4,000 young people to a spot in southern Israel about three miles from Gaza's border the first weekend of October 2023. "People just came to d... Read More

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Dream Weaver: Camp for Inner-City Kids Highlights a Great Man's Legacy Sep 30, 2025

"What I've tried to do," Boston mega-philanthropist Jack Connors told an obituary writer interviewing him as he lay dying of pancreatic cancer, "is to make sure that the folks whose net worth is $10 get a break, too." For decades, the son of a workin... Read More

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Shut Up or Else: Trump Warns Americans They'd Better Be Quiet Sep 23, 2025

If Donald Trump hoped to make Americans feel nostalgic about Richard Nixon, he's succeeded. Those were the days of relatively modest abuse of presidential power, comparatively speaking, which Nixon at least felt constrained to engage in discreetly. T... Read More