Watergate-Era Judiciary Chief of Staff: Hillary Clinton Fired For Lies, Unethical Behavior
by Dan Calabrese
(NorthStar) As Hillary Clinton came under increasing scrutiny for her story about facing sniper fire in Bosnia, one question that arose was whether she has engaged in a pattern of lying.
The now-retired general counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee, who supervised Hillary when she worked on the Watergate investigation, says Hillary’s history of lies and unethical behavior goes back farther – and goes much deeper – than anyone realizes.
Hillary’s history of lies and unethical behavior goes back farther – and goes much deeper – than anyone realizes.
Jerry Zeifman, a lifelong Democrat, supervised the work of 27-year-old Hillary Rodham on the committee. Hillary got a job working on the investigation at the behest of her former law professor, Burke Marshall, who was also Sen. Ted Kennedy’s chief counsel in the Chappaquiddick affair. When the investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation – one of only three people who earned that dubious distinction in Zeifman’s 17-year career.
Why?
“Because she was a liar,” Zeifman said in an interview last week. “She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.”
She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.
How could a 27-year-old House staff member do all that? She couldn’t do it by herself, but Zeifman said she was one of several individuals – including Marshall, special counsel John Doar and senior associate special counsel (and future Clinton White House Counsel) Bernard Nussbaum – who engaged in a seemingly implausible scheme to deny Richard Nixon the right to counsel during the investigation.
Why would they want to do that? Because, according to Zeifman, they feared putting Watergate break-in mastermind E. Howard Hunt on the stand to be cross-examined by counsel to the president. Hunt, Zeifman said, had the goods on nefarious activities in the Kennedy Administration that would have made Watergate look like a day at the beach – including Kennedy’s purported complicity in the attempted assassination of Fidel Castro.
The actions of Hillary and her cohorts went directly against the judgment of top Democrats, up to and including then-House Majority Leader Tip O’Neill, that Nixon clearly had the right to counsel. Zeifman says that Hillary, along with Marshall, Nussbaum and Doar, was determined to gain enough votes on the Judiciary Committee to change House rules and deny counsel to Nixon. And in order to pull this off, Zeifman says Hillary wrote a fraudulent legal brief, and confiscated public documents to hide her deception.
Hillary wrote a fraudulent legal brief, and confiscated public documents to hide her deception
The brief involved precedent for representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding. When Hillary endeavored to write a legal brief arguing there is no right to representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding, Zeifman says, he told Hillary about the case of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who faced an impeachment attempt in 1970.
“As soon as the impeachment resolutions were introduced by (then-House Minority Leader Gerald) Ford, and they were referred to the House Judiciary Committee, the first thing Douglas did was hire himself a lawyer,” Zeifman said.
The Judiciary Committee allowed Douglas to keep counsel, thus establishing the precedent. Zeifman says he told Hillary that all the documents establishing this fact were in the Judiciary Committee’s public files. So what did Hillary do?
“Hillary then removed all the Douglas files to the offices where she was located, which at that time was secured and inaccessible to the public,” Zeifman said. Hillary then proceeded to write a legal brief arguing there was no precedent for the right to representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding – as if the Douglas case had never occurred.
The brief was so fraudulent and ridiculous, Zeifman believes Hillary would have been disbarred if she had submitted it to a judge.
Zeifman says that if Hillary, Marshall, Nussbaum and Doar had succeeded, members of the House Judiciary Committee would have also been denied the right to cross-examine witnesses, and denied the opportunity to even participate in the drafting of articles of impeachment against Nixon.
Of course, Nixon’s resignation rendered the entire issue moot, ending Hillary’s career on the Judiciary Committee staff in a most undistinguished manner. Zeifman says he was urged by top committee members to keep a diary of everything that was happening. He did so, and still has the diary if anyone wants to check the veracity of his story. Certainly, he could not have known in 1974 that diary entries about a young lawyer named Hillary Rodham would be of interest to anyone 34 years later.
But they show that the pattern of lies, deceit, fabrications and unethical behavior was established long ago – long before the Bosnia lie, and indeed, even before cattle futures, Travelgate and Whitewater – for the woman who is still asking us to make her president of the United States.
For the second time in recent days, Sen. Hillary Clinton has had to drop
a story from her stump speech after being challenged on its accuracy.
For the past month, the New York senator liked to tell the tale of a
pregnant woman who was denied health care from an Ohio hospital because
she did not have $100 the hospital demanded to treat her. After being
turned away, the woman was brought back to the hospital days later with
severe complications. She had to be rushed to another facility for
advanced treatment, but it was too late. Both the woman and the baby
died, Clinton told her audiences.
For Clinton, the story was an example of how everyone should have
universal healthcare. It is a powerful tale and always drew gasps from
the audience.
The hospital, which was never named in Clinton’s speeches, objected this
weekend, saying it wasn’t true and demanded that Clinton stop telling it.
The O’Bleness Memorial Hospital in Athens, Ohio, told the New York Times
that the woman was insured and was never denied treatment.
The Clinton campaign told ABC News today that the candidate heard the
story from a deputy sheriff and had no reason to doubt the story.
“If the hospital claims it didn’t happen that way, we certainly respect
that and she won’t repeat the story,” said Clinton spokeswoman Mo
Elleithee.
“Candidates are told stories by people all the time, and it’s common for
candidates to retell those stories,” Elleithee said. “It’s not always
possible to fully vet them, but we try. For example, medical records are
confidential. In this case, we tried but weren’t able to fully vet the
story.”
Elleithee said the point of the story is that the country has a health
care problem. “That’s a point very few people will dispute,” she said.
The senator’s credibility came under fire last week when she tried to
burnish her credentials as a veteran of international hot spots and
described dodging sniper fire upon arrival in Bosnia in 1996 when she
was traveling as a First Lady.
She admitted she “misspoke” when a video emerged showing her getting off
the helicopter and being greeted by a girl with flowers. Clinton later
tried to make fun of the misstep by telling Jay Leno during an
appearance earlier this week that she almost was late because she was
pinned down by sniper fire at the Burbank airport.
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