A Big Nail In Hillary's Coffin? Or Not?

Jerry Zeifman, who has had it in for Hillary Clinton for years, claims that she was unethical and dishonest as a 27-year-old lawyer during the historic Watergate hearings and had to be fired. If his allegations gain traction, then she has a very big problem on her hands.

I first heard of the allegations proffered by Zeifman, who was chief counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the 11 weeks of televised hearing hearings that were to lead to Richard Nixon’s downfall, during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. But they never got traction back in the days of the infancy of the Internet as a news medium and have to be viewed with some suspicion coming as they do from a man who obviously has an ax to grind and is doing so in the midst of a hotly contested presidential campaign.

Long story short, Zeifman claims he fired Clinton for unethical behavior because she conspired to deny Nixon counsel during the hearings.

He writes at his website that:

"At my first meeting with her I told her that Judiciary Committee Chairman Peter Rodino, House Speaker Carl Albert, Majority Leader 'Tip' O’Neill, Parliamentarian Lou Deschler and I had previously all agreed that we should rely only on the then existing House Rules, and not advocate any changes. I also quoted Tip O'Neill's statement that: 'To try to change the rules now would be politically divisive. It would be like trying to change the traditional rules of baseball before a World Series.'

"Hillary assured me that she had not drafted, and would not advocate, any such rules changes. However, as documented in my personal diary, I soon learned that she had lied. She had already drafted changes, and continued to advocate them. In one written legal memorandum, she advocated denying President Nixon representation by counsel. In so doing she simply ignored the fact that in the committee's 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 — where they were no longer accessible to the public.

"Hillary had also made other ethical flawed procedural recommendations, arguing that the Judiciary Committee should: not hold any hearings with – or take depositions of — any live witnesses; not conduct any original investigation of Watergate, bribery, tax evasion, or any other possible impeachable offense of President Nixon; and should rely solely on documentary evidence compiled by other committees and by the Justice Departments special Watergate prosecutor."

It is well known that Clinton can be ruthless, a sometimes necessary if not entirely admirable quality for someone who wants to be president.

It also should be noted that Zeifman has a reputation as being a bit of a nutter, having tried to get Bill Clinton and William Cohen charged with war crimes for "unwarranted" military action in Kosovo.

But if his diary is an accurate reflection of what occurred during the superheated summer of 1973, then it seems clear that Clinton has engaged in a pattern of lying that long predates her trip to Bosnia.