Leonard Garment' replaced John Dean as the President's counsel on April 30, 1973. He had been a partner in Nixon's law firm from 1949 until 1969 as head of the litigation section. His main 1968 campaign function was to help Nixon develop an acceptable image and to protect him from the scrutiny of the press.
Herbert Warren Kalmbach (October 19, 1921 – September 15, 2017) was an American attorney and banker. He served as the personal attorney to United States President Richard Nixon (1968–1973). He became embroiled in the Watergate scandal due to his fundraising activities in the early 1970s, some of which supported undercover operatives directed by senior White …
Mar 12, 2001 · James D. St. Clair, the Boston lawyer who represented President Richard M. Nixon in the Watergate scandal, died on Saturday at a nursing home in Westwood, Mass. He was 80.
Apr 25, 2019 · Wed, Apr 24th, 2019 by Jason Easley Lawyer Who Represented Nixon Says Trump’s Retaliation Could Land Him In Prison For Ten Years The lawyer who represented Richard Nixon after he left the White...
John Dean | |
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In office July 9, 1970 – April 30, 1973 | |
President | Richard Nixon |
Preceded by | Charles Colson |
Succeeded by | Leonard Garment |
Meets Nixon, political fundraiser. Kalmbach was introduced to Richard Nixon, then vice-president, by H. R. Haldeman in the 1950s. He raised money for Richard Nixon's candidacy in the 1960 United States presidential election and again in 1968 United States presidential election .
Herbert W. Kalmbach. Herbert Warren Kalmbach (October 19, 1921 – September 15, 2017) was an American attorney and banker. He served as the personal attorney to United States President Richard Nixon (1968–1973). He became embroiled in the Watergate scandal due to his fundraising activities in the early 1970s, some of which supported undercover ...
Kalmbach was also the Deputy Finance Chairman for the Committee to Re-elect the President. In this capacity he was eventually implicated in a fund-raising scandal involving re-election campaign contributions by Associated Milk Producers, Inc. (AMPI) and two other major dairy-farm cooperatives in connection with Nixon's support of an increase in price supports for milk in 1971. Testimony by AMPI general manager George L. Mehrens in 1973 identified Kalmbach as a major solicitor of these contributions; articles on Charles Colson 's involvement in the AMPI scandal indicated that $2 million in contributions had been expected, but that the actual donations were nearer to $400,000, of which some $197,500 had been given by AMPI.
Kalmbach handled a secret $500,000 fund to finance the sabotage and espionage operations of Donald Segretti.
Kalmbach declined Nixon's offer to appoint him Under Secretary of Commerce, choosing instead to remain in California and build up his law practice. He instead became the president's private lawyer. His law firm prospered during this period; it employed two lawyers in 1968, 14 in 1970, and 24 by 1973. The presidential connection drew United Airlines, Dart Industries, Marriott Corporation, and MCA Inc. as clients. During this period Kalmbach founded the Bank of Newport, in Newport Beach, California. The firm performed routine legal chores for the President.
Nixon used the poll results to shape policy and campaign strategy and manipulate popular opinion . On December 21, 1971, Kalmbach set up a Delaware shell corporation with private funding, to hide Administration sponsorship of polls.
Kalmbach pleaded guilty on February 25, 1974 on one count of violation of the Federal Corrupt Practices Act and on one count of promising federal employment as a reward for political activity and support of a candidate.
As Mr. Nixon's chief defense lawyer, Mr. St. Clair tried to discredit the testimony of the president's principal accuser, John W. Dean III. While acknowledging that Mr. Nixon had made politically damaging statements in tape-recorded conversations with White House aides, Mr. St. Clair insisted that the president had not committed any crimes.
James D. St. Clair, the Boston lawyer who represented President Richard M. Nixon in the Watergate scandal, died on Saturday at a nursing home in Westwood, Mass. He was 80.
In a unanimous decision 16 days later, the court methodically demolished Mr. St. Clair's arguments and unanimously ordered President Nixon to surrender 64 White House tape recordings needed by the special prosecutor for the trial of the president's top aides. One of the tapes included evidence linking Mr. Nixon to a conspiracy to obstruct justice. He resigned from office on Aug. 9, 1974.
Mr. St. Clair represented the Rev. William Sloane Coffin in 1968, when Mr. Coffin, then chaplain of Yale University, was accused of conspiring to counsel young men on how to evade the draft.
Nixon that the tapes would have to be surrendered and Nixon resigned.
St. Clair gained recognition in 1954 as chief assistant to Joseph Welch, counsel for the Army during Senate hearings led by Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy (R-Wis.) on Communist infiltration in the armed services. St. Clair was a protege of Welch.
James D. St. Clair, who epitomized the stately Boston lawyer through a half-century career that was best remembered for his year as President Richard M. Nixon 's Watergate lawyer, has died, his wife, Asenath Nestle St. Clair, reported. He was 80.
Mr. St. Clair' s reputation for providing dispassionate advice, while bringing an air of white-thatched integrity into the courtroom, led Nixon to choose him as his lead counsel in January 1974.
Mr. St. Clair's definition of the impeachment powers were not tested in court. Nixon resigned on Aug. 8.
In 1976, bodyguards accompanied Mr. St. Clair to and from Roxbury District Court as he led the defense of Randolph Lewis, a black man who had been charged with severely beating a white man, Richard Poleet, who later died.
In 1968, he defended the Rev. William Sloane Coffin Jr. , the Yale chaplain who was brought to trial for advising young men to avoid the draft.
In the early 1960s, Mr. St. Clair represented the documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman when Titicut Follies, Wiseman's expose of conditions at Bridgewater State Hospital, was banned in Massachusetts.
The Kutak commission recommended that lawyers representing an organization be allowed to disclose confidential information concerning officers or employees who are violating the law.
After Watergate, schools began to make legal ethics a required class. Bar examinations added an extra section on ethics. And nearly all states started requiring lawyers to attend annual continuing legal education programs focused on ethics and professional conduct.
But in the winter of 1971, Krogh refused to approve additional wiretaps sought by Liddy and the Plumbers. Eventually Krogh was re assigned to the post of undersecretary of Transportation. Krogh and Dean admit they were too young, too naive, too willing to do anything for their president.
Watergate clearly—and perhaps permanently—undermined public trust and confidence in government and its leaders. But the scandal also spurred a significant decline in public opinion of lawyers from which the profession has never fully recovered.
Dean tried to persuade Ehrlichman and Attorney General Richard Kleindienst that they needed to hire a criminal defense attorney to help them navigate their decision-making.
THE EARLIEST BREAK-IN. Watergate actually was the culmination of a chain of events that began months before the failed break-in at the Democratic Party offices. In March 1971, presidential assistant Charles Colson helped create a $250,000 fund for “intelligence gathering” of Democratic Party leaders.
The FBI called Dean the “master manipulator of the Watergate cover-up.”. When it came to names and dates, meetings and roles, Dean was the man in the middle. He knew it all. Ehrlichman put Krogh in charge of the Plumbers in 1971.
Instead, he returned to California and was admitted to the California bar in 1937. He began practicing in Whittier with the law firm Wingert and Bewley, working on commercial litigation for local petroleum companies and other corporate matters, as well as on wills. In later years, Nixon proudly said he was the only modern president to have previously worked as a practicing attorney. Nixon was reluctant to work on divorce cases, disliking frank sexual talk from women. In 1938, he opened up his own branch of Wingert and Bewley in La Habra, California, and became a full partner in the firm the following year.
A member of the Republican Party, Nixon previously served as the 36th vice president from 1953 to 1961, having risen to national prominence as a representative and senator from California.
In a three-way race between Nixon, Humphrey, and American Independent Party candidate former Alabama Governor George Wallace, Nixon defeated Humphrey by nearly 500,000 votes (seven-tenths of a percentage point), with 301 electoral votes to 191 for Humphrey and 46 for Wallace.
When Nixon took office, about 300 American soldiers were dying each week in Vietnam, and the war was broadly unpopular in the United States, with ongoing violent protests against the war. The Johnson administration had agreed to suspend bombing in exchange for negotiations without preconditions, but this agreement never fully took force. According to Walter Isaacson, soon after taking office, Nixon had concluded that the Vietnam War could not be won and he was determined to end the war quickly. He sought some arrangement that would permit American forces to withdraw while leaving South Vietnam secure against attack.
Richard attended East Whittier Elementary School, where he was president of his eighth-grade class. His parents believed that attending Whittier High School had caused Richard's older brother, Harold, to live a dissolute lifestyle before he fell ill of tuberculosis (he died of it in 1933), so they sent Richard to the larger Fullerton Union High School. He had to ride a school bus for an hour each way during his freshman year and received excellent grades. Later, he lived with an aunt in Fullerton during the week. He played junior varsity football, and seldom missed a practice, though he was rarely used in games. He had greater success as a debater, winning a number of championships and taking his only formal tutelage in public speaking from Fullerton's Head of English, H. Lynn Sheller. Nixon later remembered Sheller's words, "Remember, speaking is conversation...don't shout at people. Talk to them. Converse with them." Nixon said he tried to use a conversational tone as much as possible.
Nixon had four brothers: Harold (1909–1933), Donald (1914–1987), Arthur (1918–1925), and Edward (1930–2019). Four of the five Nixon boys were named after kings who had ruled in medieval or legendary Britain; Richard, for example, was named after Richard the Lionheart.
In light of his loss of political support and the near-certainty that he would be impeached and removed from office , Nixon resigned the presidency on August 9, 1974, after addressing the nation on television the previous evening. The resignation speech was delivered from the Oval Office and was carried live on radio and television. Nixon said he was resigning for the good of the country and asked the nation to support the new president, Gerald Ford. Nixon went on to review the accomplishments of his presidency, especially in foreign policy. He defended his record as president, quoting from Theodore Roosevelt 's 1910 speech Citizenship in a Republic :
Mr. Nixon is a nationally recognized lecturer, commentator and author on executive compensation and employee benefits issues . He is listed in Chambers USA: America's Leading Business Lawyers as one of the nation’s top attorneys (Employee Benefits & Compensation) and is recognized in The Best Lawyers in America. Mr. Nixon is a member of the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) and the Executive Leadership Council (ELC). In 2021, he was elected to serve as Vice President of National Association of Public Pension Attorneys (“NAPPA”).
Mr. Nixon is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School and holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.