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1974: Hillary lost Judiciary Committee job after trying to block Nixon impeachment.
By Jerry Zeifman (about the author) Page 2 of 2 page(s)
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 .
Only a few far left Democrats supported Hillary's recommendations. A majority of the committee agreed to allow President Nixon to be represented by counsel and to hold hearings with live witnesses. Hillary then advocated that the official rules of the House be amended to deny members of the committee the right to question witnesses. This recommendation was voted down by the full House. The committee also rejected her proposal that we leave the drafting of the articles of impeachment to her and her fellow impeachment inquiry staffers.
It was not until two months after Nixon's resignation that I first learned of still another questionable role of Hillary. On Sept. 26, 1974, Rep. Charles Wiggins, a Republican member of the committee, wrote to ask Chairman Rodino to look into "a troubling set of events."- That spring, Wiggins and other committee members had asked "that research should be undertaken so as to furnish a standard against which to test the alleged abusive conduct of Richard Nixon." And, while "no such staff study was made available to the members at any time for their use," Wiggins had just learned that such a study had been conducted - at committee expense - by a team of professors who completed and filed their reports with the impeachment- inquiry staff well in advance of our public hearings.
The report was kept secret from members of Congress. But after the impeachment- inquiry staff was disbanded, it was published commercially and sold in book stores. Wiggins wrote: "I am especially troubled by the possibility that information deemed essential by some of the members in their discharge of their responsibilities may have been intentionally suppressed by the staff during the course our investigation." He was also concerned that staff members may have unlawfully received royalties from the book's publisher.
On Oct. 3, Rodino wrote back: "Hillary Rodham of the impeachment-inquiry staff coordinated the work. The staff did not think the manuscript was useful in its present form." No effort was ever made to ascertain whether or not Hillary or any other person on the committee staff received royalties.
Two decades later Bill Clinton became President. As was later to be described in the Wall Street Journal by Henry Ruth -- the lead Watergate courtroom prosecutor-- "The Clintons corrupted the soul of the Democratic Party."-
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