Hillary's supervisor, Impeachment Inquiry Special Counsel 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 “…engaged in a variety of self-serving, unethical practices in violation of House rules.”
Specifically, Jerry Zeifman said Hillary Rodham Clinton and others wanted Richard Nixon to remain in office so Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy would have a better chance of being elected president. Zeifman said a young lawyer who shared an office with Clinton came to him in August of 1974 to apologize that he and Clinton had lied to him. The lawyer, John Labovitz, is quoted as saying that he was dismayed with “…her erroneous legal opinions and efforts to deny Nixon representation by counsel — as well as an unwillingness to investigate Nixon.”
Jerry Zeifman also said that Hillary Rodham Clinton regularly consulted with Ted Kennedy’s chief political strategist, which was a violation of House rules. Zeifman said in addition to helping Ted Kennedy win the presidency, Democrats also didn’t want Nixon to face an impeachment trial because they feared he might bring up abuses of office by President John Kennedy as part of his defense.
But while Jerry Zeifman has been consistent in his criticism of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s work on the Watergate investigation, circumstances surrounding her termination are less clear. In a 1999 interview with the Scripps Howard News Service, Zeifman said he didn’t have the power to fire Clinton, or else he would have:
“Zeifman does not have flattering memories of Rodham’s work on the committee. ‘If I had the power to fire her, I would have fired her,’ he said.
Zeifman said Rodham sparked a bitter battle among Democrats by recommending the Judiciary Committee deny Nixon’s lawyers the right to attend the closed-door meetings.
‘Can you imagine that? This was a committee of lawyers and members of the bar, and she was saying the committee should deny the president representation,’ he said.
After a lengthy behind-the-scenes debate, Zeifman said the committee decided Nixon’s lawyers could attend.”
In an interview on the Neal Boortz Show in 2008, Jerry Zeifman altered his claim about Hillary’s termination from the Watergate investigation:
“Well, let me put it this way: I terminated her, along with some other staff members who were — were no longer needed, and advised her that I would not — could not — recommend her for any further positions.”
When pressed, Zeifman said he couldn’t recommend Hillary Rodham Clinton for future positions, “Because of her unethical conduct.” Despite that, however, Clinton was terminated because she was “no longer needed” — not because she had lied, according to Zeifman’s own account.
But in a 2008 column Zeifman wrote, “My own reaction was of regret, when I terminated her employment on the Nixon impeachment staff, I had not reported her unethical practices to the appropriate bar associations.”
In 2008, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign replied to Zeifman’s claims directly by saying, “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. This is false. Hillary was not fired.” That website has since been taken offline.
