Hillary's Deception is Nothing New

There have been many published reports about Hillary Clinton's "difficulties with the truth."

Lest anyone think these stories are simply for the sake of political campaigning, we have secured permission to reprint the following article, originally published by North Star Writers Group editor Dan Calabrese. We hope you find the information it contains to be as deplorable as we do.

As a young lawyer in 1974, one year after graduating from Yale Law School, Hillary Rodham landed a plum assignment to the impeachment inquiry staff advising the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate scandal. She helped research procedures of impeachment and the historical grounds and standards for impeachment. The committee's work culminated in the resignation of President Richard Nixon in August 1974.

But Hillary's work established a pattern of lies and deceit in order to manipulate the situation to her liking, or that of her patron (in this case the Kennedys), a pattern that continues to this day. She was fired for writing a brief that not only ignored the truth, but actively attempted to hide it. Had her brief actually been submitted to a judge, it likely would have gotten her disbarred as a gross violation of an attorney's ethical duty of candor in all dealings with the court.

Is this the kind of person America wants in the White House? Someone the American people know they can count on to manipulate every situation to her advantage, regardless of the enormity of the lies involved or the certainty that she will be exposed? I certainly hope the answer to that question is NO.

The American people need a President with the utmost integrity. I doubt that phrase has ever found itself in the same sentence with the name Hillary Clinton.

Former Clinton adviser Dick Morris has been increasingly vocal during this campaign about Mrs. Clinton's inability to tell the truth.

Now, for Mr. Calabrese:

Hillary Clinton Fired For Lies, Unethical Behavior
by Watergate-Era Judiciary Chief of Staff

Dan Calabrese
North Star Writers Group

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.

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."

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. [Anyone reminded of the Rose Law Firm billing records here?]

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.

In 2008, the American Bar Association celebrated 100 years of professional responsibility, or ethics. The original "Canons of Professional Ethics" were written in 1908. In 1969 (around the same time Hillary started law school at Yale), they were replaced with the "Model Rules of Professional Responsibility," and today's ethical rules for attorneys in the US are called "Model Rules of Professional Conduct," adopted in 1983. These "Model Rules" are developed by the American Bar Association, and then adopted by the individual States for their own Bar Associations.

The Rules consist of both Ethical Canons or Ethical Considerations (EC) which govern the conduct of attorneys, and Disciplinary Rules (DR), a violation of which will result in discipline of the attorney involved, up to and including disbarment.

One of those rules is that an attorney has a duty of candor in all dealings with the court. If there is a case in direct opposition to his or her position, the attorney must bring it to the attention of the court, and argue either that it is incorrect law and should be changed, or that it is narrowly construed to the facts of that particular case and should not be applied to the present case.

The following quotes were taken from the "Model Rules of Professional Responsibility," which would have been in effect in 1974:

"DR 1-102 Misconduct.

(A) A lawyer shall not:

. . .

(4) Engage in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation.

(5) Engage in conduct that is prejudicial to the administration of justice.

. . .

DR 7-102 Representing a Client Within the Bounds of the Law.

(A) In his representation of a client, a lawyer shall not:

. . .

(2) Knowingly advance a claim or defense that is unwarranted under existing law, except that he may advance such claim or defense if it can be supported by good faith argument for an extension, modification, or reversal of existing law.

(3) Conceal or knowingly fail to disclose that which he is required by law to reveal.

. . .

(5) Knowingly make a false statement of law or fact."

Seems to us that Hillary Rodham violated all of the disciplinary rules cited above, which is what gave rise to Zeifman's opinion that her actions were so egregious that she would have been disbarred had her brief actually been submitted to a judge.

And she's been ignoring, misrepresenting and hiding the truth ever since. We lawyers would call her staff's failure to check facts before giving information to her a "reckless disregard for the truth." And that culture comes from the top down.

It has been reported that part of the reason for Hillary's decision to marry Bill Clinton and move back to Arkansas with him was that she passed the Arkansas Bar Exam but failed to pass the DC Bar Exam. And she bragged that she was dating someone who would be President one day.

In his followup article, linked above, Calabrese concludes:

"A final note about all this: I wrote my first column on this subject because, in the aftermath of Hillary being caught in her Bosnia fib, I came in contact with Jerry Zeifman and found his story compelling. Zeifman has been trying to tell his story for many years, and the mainstream media have ignored him. I thought it deserved an airing as a demonstration of how early in her career Hillary began engaging in self-serving, disingenuous conduct.

Disingenuously arguing a position? Vanishing documents? Selling out members of her own party to advance a personal agenda? Classic Hillary.

Neither my first column on the subject nor this one were designed to show that Hillary is dishonest. I don’t really think that’s in dispute. Rather, they were designed to show that she has been this way for a very long time – a fact worth considering for anyone contemplating voting for her for president of the United States.

By the way, there’s something else that started a long time ago.

"She would go around saying, 'I'm dating a person who will some day be president,'" Polk said. ". . . And because of that comment she made, I watched Bill Clinton's political efforts as governor of Arkansas, and I never counted him out because she had made that forecast."

Bill knew what he wanted a long time ago. Clearly, so did Hillary, and her tactics for trying to achieve it were established even in those early days.

Vote wisely."

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