Zeifman: Hillary Unethical, Dishonest
Although I’ve thus far preferred her to Barack Obama, Hillary’s Clinton’s bald-faced lie about facing sniper fire in Bosnia was very early the last straw for me. Now Ed Morrissey writes about an even more disturbing episode at the beginning of her career. If true, this Watergate-era scandal should put an end to Hillary’s political career.
Dan Calabrese’s new column on Hillary Clinton’s past may bring the curtain down on her political future. Calabrese interviewed Jerry Zeifman, the man who served as chief counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate hearings, has tried to tell the story of his former staffer’s behavior during those proceedings for years. Zeifman claims he fired Hillary for unethical behavior and that she conspired to deny Richard Nixon counsel during the hearings
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.”
Writing about Hillary’s faux tears before the New Hampshire primary, Zeifman also said:
My own reaction was of regret that, when I terminated her employment on the Nixon
impeachment staff, I had not reported her unethical practices to the appropriate bar
associations.
Wow. Damning words, if I’ve ever heard them.
I can’t say as I’ve ever heard of Jerry Zeifman, which makes me wonder exactly how hard he tried to tell his story during the 30+ years that have passed since the alleged incident occurred. Surely Rush Limbaugh, et al, would have picked at this story like buzzards swarming over still-twitching road kill during the last few torturous years of the first Clinton presidency.
Here’s a lengthy but interesting excerpt from Zeifman’s February article for Accuracy in Media:
Only a few far-left Democrats supported Hillary’s recommendations. A majority of the committee agreed to allow President Nixon to be represented by counsel and to hold hearings with live witnesses. Hillary then advocated that the official rules of the House be amended to deny members of the committee the right to question witnesses. This recommendation was voted down by the full House. The committee also rejected her proposal that we leave the drafting of the articles of impeachment to her and her fellow impeachment-inquiry staffers.
It was not until two months after Nixon’s resignation that I first learned of still another questionable role of Hillary. On Sept. 26, 1974, Rep. Charles Wiggins, a Republican member of the committee, wrote to ask Chairman Rodino to look into "a troubling set of events." That spring, Wiggins and other committee members had asked "that research should be undertaken so as to furnish a standard against which to test the alleged abusive conduct of Richard Nixon." And, while "no such staff study was made available to the members at any time for their use," Wiggins had just learned that such a study had been conducted-at committee expense-by a team of professors who completed and filed their reports with the impeachment-inquiry staff well in advance of our public hearings.
The report was kept secret from members of Congress. But after the impeachment-inquiry staff was disbanded, it was published commercially and sold in book stores. Wiggins wrote: "I am especially troubled by the possibility that information deemed essential by some of the members in their discharge of their responsibilities may have been intentionally suppressed by the staff during the course our investigation." He was also concerned that staff members may have unlawfully received royalties from the book’s publisher.
I still believe that Hillary Clinton would be a better president than Barack Obama if not for the baggage of her marriage to Bill Clinton and her own questionable past. However, both of these are huge negatives that have become increasingly hard to overlook, even in a person who is merely a fallback candidate for the presidency.
It’s ironic that Hillary’s bid for the White House would be tripped up because of her lies and manipulations during an election in which all she had to do in order to waltz triumphantly back into the Oval Office was to step up to the microphone and play it straight with the American people. But the Clintons outsmarted themselves by playing politics, triangulating public opinion, and constantly re-inventing Hillary, seemingly after every new poll. That mistake has probably cost Hillary the dream of her lifetime, the further irony of which is that she doesn’t seem to have deserved it anyway.
And pick your Hillary response of the day
A) Deny
B) Vigorously Deny
C) Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
D) "And That’s what happened"
E) (did we do Vast Right Wing Conspiracy yet?)
F) :: sniff :: :: near misty :: I’m just trying to carry on
G) It’s the Vast Right wing Conspiracy!
H) Blame a rogue member of Bill’s Staff.
I) Vast Right Wing Conspiracy!
J) I’m human, we all make mistakes. - although that may surprise some.
K) Vast Right Wing Conspiracy and the way the GOP left the Country.
Bill keeps saying she’s been exonerated, but she?s never been exonerated about the cattle futures windfalls, since there was never full disclosure.
And she?s never been exonerated about having her so-called health care task force operate in secret in direct violation of the law. In fact, that was confirmed.
Of course, she?s never been exonerated about any of the Castle Grande lies and overbillings - or how the missing Rose Law billing records just happened to show up near her office, conveniently, right after the statute of limitations expired.
Although Bill claimed she was, she?s never been exonerated for her role in the Whitewater development?but hey, that was only a simple resort scam designed to fleece seniors.
She?s never been exonerated about her role in the disgraceful Travel Office scandal, where nonpartisan career government employees all lost their jobs to make room for her friends, nor for trying to cover it up with a fraudulent IRS audit and criminal charges against Billy Dale - charges which took a jury only minutes to laugh out of court.
And of course, the Vince Foster suicide, which had her people rummaging through his office while his body was still warm tampering with evidence while the Secret Service cooled its heels outside the door.
How about the FBI files on her political opponents, which were illegally obtained by her chosen aide, Craig Livingstone? How much of that information did she copy? How much does she still have and plan to use? Exonerated? I don?t think so.
As I recall, one of the deputy independent counsels during Whitewater even prepared a draft indictment of her for perjury, which Janet Reno quashed. That?s not exoneration either.
And the Hsu campaign donation "bundling," which hasn’t really been seriously investigated. Her husband was disbarred for perjury, but so far she hasn’t had to undergo Grand Jury proceedings for dozens of serious felonious charges.
I think the Tuzla thing might have been the "tipping point" Dems like to talk about. If that’s the case, the Watergate firing, if true, would grease the skids on her political coffin already well on its way to subsoil status.
I would like it to be true and made public, but until there is actual evidence to that effect, the above is pure hearsay, no more credible than the swift boat folks. However, if Clinton actually did make such a proposal and it was voted on, that must be easily verifiable. Don’t virtually all meetings keep minutes? Wouldn’t that show up? There were a lot of people in those commitees, they could be contacted. Again, if true this is daming, but I wonder about it since like you said, it’s been around for a while and no one seems to have jumped on it, despite there being other times in Clinton’s career where there were people very interested in tearing her down.
I agree with Claudia, mostly. I think it has to be added that there’s nothing wrong with suggesting no council as a tactic (personally, I find it hilarious that right wing blogs, who believe that suspects of terrorism should not receive council, have no protection against torture, and so on, cry foul about her suggestion) in a legal case. That’s what she did.
The carrying off of documents is the real problem… if true.
You really don’t see a difference between denying certain legal protections to terrorists vs. denying counsel to the POTUS in a political crime? Putting aside whether or not one agrees with the former, I don’t see how one could even compare the two.
You are aware that she has a history of this, with the Rose Law firm billing records? Or do you think it’s actually plausible that those records were just misplaced, coincidentally, for the exact time period that it took for the statute of limitations to run out?I do agree with you and Claudia, though, that we need more information on her role in the Nixon impeachment before drawing conclusions; obviously the guy who is now coming forward could have political motivations to do so at this time, and he could be overstating things or giving misleading information.
Claudia,
You are right, this is Swift Boating. Someone who was there with no obvious partisan ties is refuting the the lies that a presidential candidate is spinning.
FWIW. The man relating this story is a life long Democrat and her supervisor at the time. The real question is why didn’t this come out sooner? Why didn’t he refer Hillary to the bar for her actions? If you are looking for the real partisan motivation look there.
http://www.northstarwriters.com/dc163.htm
Michael, the word is "counsel" and in my blog I go on at length about her purloining the documents from public view. And mention the Rose Law Firm documents.Zeifman has been saying this or other versions of Clintonian chicanery for at least twelve years. Even Saul Bellow of all people praises his 1996 published diatribes [for being too far to the RIGHT] against the Clintons. HRClinton’s record clearly has too many unexplained and "unexonorated" low crimes and misdemeanours to be able to waltz unscrutinized to the Dem nomination.
It is indeed swift-boating as long as there is no solid evidence. Being a democrat is not evidence of no political motivation, because currently she’s running against another democrat. Look, I’m an Obama supporter, but I have standards. I’m certainly willing to believe that Clinton, with her past history, would be capable of a thing like this, and certainly think the matter merits looking into, and if true, it should be publicized widely however publicizing it before the evidence is even partially in strikes me as smearing.
You have got to be kidding. You think it would be okay if Clinton tried this ?
Swiftboating - where over 200 honorable soldiers who served in the same capacity and in many cases with Kerry, expose him as a serial exagerator or outright liar. Out of the 25 or so charges, two are disputed, the rest proven or agreed to by Kerry, and that is just the half that happened in Vietnam - the rest of the charges - the Winter Soldier fraud, the false testimony in front of Congress, the medals flap are all well documented.
DaveinBoca, thanks for the list - I was going to do a little research and do the same thing. How can ANY politician survive all of this? Who knows, but she and Bill somehow do, so I never count her out, but being a good president? Please, she has no values. She has never led, never managed, can’t even manage a campaign.
My favorite Kerry memory - it was seared, seared into his memory how Nixon ordered him into Cambodia on Christmas Eve of ‘68. Nixon was not president Christmas Eve of ‘68, and he was not near Cambodia. I’m sorry, lies like that just show zero character.
Since both Accuracy in Media & Accuracy in Academia are Hillary Clinton creatures, it’s a wonder Mr. Zeifman ever got his account of firing Hillary Clinton into the light of day. His story is important though. Not only does it go to character, it goes to a lifelong pattern of lying and obfuscation on the part of Hillary Clinton. This is what we must know; before electing a person to a position of trust; and it is this awareness, to which every white-collar criminal must fine-tune his or her antenna. The things I did hear about Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham during the Watergate Investigation proved wholly consistent. They were in fact true. Word of mouth may travel only so far, but today we have new technologies. Lest anyone doubt Mr. Zeifman’s veracity regarding Hillary Clinton: http://theseedsof9-11.com