Shocking Revelations about Hillary Clinton's Watergate Committee Job According to this Daniel Calabrese article, Hillary Clinton was fired from her job as a staff attorney for the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate investigations for, among other things, lying: Indeed it does.
Back in April 2008, Hillary Clintonâs presidential campaign site responded to Zeifmanâs claims by asserting: In a column circulating on the internet Jerry Zeifman alleges that Hillary was fired from her job on the House Judiciary Committee in the 1970s.
We rate the claim that Hillary Clinton was fired from her job as a staff attorney during the during the Watergate investigation False. Snopes, "Did Jerry Zeifman fire Hillary Clinton from the Watergate investigation?", Oct. 21, 2014
That year, an article by Dan Calabrese, founder of North Star Writers Group, claimed Zeifman was Clintonâs supervisor and had fired her. Clinton, who was making her first run for president that year, denied the allegation. Calabrese also quotes Zeifman as making the same statement that appears in the Facebook post.
Rather, he asserted that it was her supervisor, John Doar, who â with Chairman Rodinoâs assent â took possession of those files, writing that â Doar got Rodinoâs permission to place all of our Douglas impeachment files in his exclusive custody .â
Back in April 2008, Hillary Clintonâs presidential campaign site responded to Zeifmanâs claims by asserting:
Hillary was twenty-seven when the impeachment inquiry staff was disbanded. The next morning she took a train down to Little Rock, Arkansas. She moved in with Bill Clinton and they eventually married.
For example, he stated in a February 2008 article he wrote for Accuracy in Media that âMy 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.â
Labovitz said he has no knowledge of Hillary having taken any files, and defended her no-right-to-counsel memo on the grounds that, if she was assigned to write a memo arguing a point of view, she was merely following orders.
But nearly everything stated in this passage is wrong: Hillary Rodham didnât draft a legal brief that was âunethicalâ (save that it made a legal argument Zeifman didnât agree with), she didnât âconfiscateâ public documents, and she didnât do anything that she hadnât been directed to do by the man who was her and Zeifmanâs superior.
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 âs public files .
Hillary got a job working on the investigation at the behest of her former law professor, Burke Marshall, who was also Sen. Ted Kennedyâs 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 â one of only three people who earned that dubious distinction in Zeifmanâs 17-year career.
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 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.
How could a 27-year-old House staff member do all that? She couldnât do it by herself, but Zeifman said she was one of several individuals â including Marshall, special counsel John Doar and senior associate special counsel (and future Clinton White House Counsel) Bernard Nussbaum â who engaged in a seemingly implausible scheme to deny Richard Nixon the right to counsel during the investigatio
Zeifman says he had another staff member get him Hillaryâs phone records, which showed that she was calling Burke Marshall at least once a day, and often several times a day.
Chairman Rodino denied this, and said the reason Hillaryâs report was not given to committee members was that it contained no value. Itâs worth noting, of course, that the staff member who made this judgment was John Doar.
He says she could have argued that the Douglas case was an isolated example, and that other historical precedents could apply.
Doar, as the chief lawyer for the impeachment probe, actually hired Clinton, and she reported to him. Zeifman, who passed away in 2010, in his book appeared to be a frustrated bystander to many of Doar âs decisions. He had no control over her hiring â and would not have been in a position to fire her.
Zeifman was chief counsel of the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate inquiry that began in 1973. Hillary Clinton, who was Hillary Rodham at the time, had just graduated from Yale Law School as impeachment was considered against President Richard Nixon.
Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.). Zeifman also contends that the impeachment staff tried to ensure that illegal acts by Democratic presidents could not be raised as a defense by Nixon. Why a Republican like Doar would engage in such a conspiracy is not really explained.
Zeifmanâs specific beef with Clinton is rather obscure. It mostly concerns his dislike of a brief that she wrote under Doarâs direction to advance a position advocated by Rodino â which would have denied Nixon the right to counsel as the committee investigated whether to recommend impeachment. Zeifman also suspects her of discussing the probe with a former law professor at Yale (although he acknowledges that Doar received permission from Rodino to consult with the professor).
In neither of his books does Zeifman say he fired Clinton. But in 2008, a reporter named Dan Calabrese wrote an article that claimed that âwhen the investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation.â The article quoted Zeifman as saying: âShe was a liar. 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.â
The Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment against Nixon on July 27, 1974. The full House never held a vote because Nixon resigned Aug. 9, thus avoiding impeachment and a trial in the Senate.
In other words, Clinton was not fired.
According to this Daniel Calabrese article, Hillary Clinton was fired from her job as a staff attorney for the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate investigations for, among other things, lying:
Hillary got a job working on the investigation at the behest of her former law professor, Burke Marshall, who was also Sen. Ted Kennedyâs chief counsel in the Chappaquiddick affair.
Regardless, among Clinton's transgressions while on staff at the House Judiciary Committee were her apparent lying about not seeking to change House rules by assuring her boss she had no intention of doing so and then later being discovered that she was already advocating radical changes including a recommendation to deny President Nixon the right to counsel. Ziefman wrote on his own website:
In one written legal memorandum, she advocated denying President Nixon representation by counsel. In so doing she simply ignored the fact that in the committeeâs then most recent prior impeachment proceeding, the committee had afforded the right to counsel to Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. I had also informed Hillary that the Douglas impeachment files were available for public inspection in the committee offices. She later removed the Douglas files without my permission and carried them to the offices of the impeachment inquiry staff â where they were no longer accessible to the public.
When the investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation â one of only three people who earned that dubious distinction in Zeifmanâs 17-year career.
In an interview on the Neal Boortz Show in 2008, Jerry Zeifman altered his claim about Hillaryâs termination from the Watergate investigation, saying that he had terminated her and casting further doubt on his stories:
Jerry Zeifman said he supervised Hillary Rodham Clinton as she worked on the team that worked on the Watergate impeachment inquiry, and that during the investigation Hillary Clinton had ââŚengaged in a variety of self-serving, unethical practices in violation of House rules.â.
One such rumor gained ground because it came directly from Jerome âJerryâ Ziefman, former counsel to the House Judiciary Committee, and it has been amplified in various forms ever since.
In a 1999 interview, Zeifman said he did not have the power to fire Clinton, or else he would have: Zeifman does not have flattering memories of Rodhamâs work on the committee. âIf I had the power to fire her, I would have fired her,â he said.
One of Hillary Clintonâs first assignments as a corporate lawyer landed her far from her roots. She helped overturn a ballot measure that increased electric rates for businesses and lowered them for the poor.
Hillary Clinton with Bill Clinton and their daughter, Chelsea, in Little Rock, Ark., in September 1991. LITTLE ROCK, Ark. â. One of Hillary Clintonâs first assignments as a corporate lawyer landed her far from her roots. She helped overturn a ballot measure that increased electric rates for businesses and lowered them for the poor.