I have previously expressed my opinion that the Watergate matter was a coup d ‘etat against Nixon conducted by Mark Felt, the acting head of the FBI at the time. More information has recently come to light about the nature of the coup.
The piece is written by Geoff Shephard, a member of the Nixon legal team at the time who has come upon old records sealed for 40 years.
The new documents suggest that defendants in the Watergate cover-up trial, held before Judge John Sirica, received anything but a fair trial. Indeed, they suggest prosecutorial and judicial misconduct so serious –- secret meetings, secret documents, secret collusion — that their disclosure at the time either would have prevented Sirica from presiding over the trial or would have resulted in the reversal of the convictions and the cases being remanded for new trials.
Of course, among the aggressive young Democrat partisans in the prosecuting team was a young Hillary Clinton who was eventually fired from the committee staff for violations of ethical standards, such as they were.
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.”
None of this is a surprise but the new information is interesting.