On the April 2 edition of his nationally syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh asserted that Jerome “Jerry” Zeifman, House Judiciary Committee counsel during Watergate, was “the guy who fired” Sen. Hillary Clinton when she worked on the committee. Limbaugh made these claims while apparently reading from a March 31 article by conservative writer Dan Calabrese, which asserts: “When the investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation.” Calabrese cites Zeifman as his source. But Zeifman's reported claim is undermined by his own previous reported acknowledgement that he -- Zeifman -- did not fire Clinton and did not have the power to do so. Limbaugh also touted other unsubstantiated claims by Zeifman about Clinton's work on the Watergate committee.

Contrary to what Calabrese now writes, Zeifman was quoted in a November 4, 1998, Scripps Howard News Service article, published in The Sacramento Bee, as saying, “If I had the power to fire her, I would have fired her.”

“The Fact Hub” of Clinton's HillaryHub.com states, “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.”

On April 2, Zeifman was asked in an interview with nationally syndicated radio host Neal Boortz, “You fired her [Clinton], didn't you?” Zeifman responded, “Let me put it this way, I terminated her along with other staff members who we no longer needed. And I said that I could not recommend her for any further positions.”

In a February 5 Accuracy in Media column, Zeifman expressed “regret that, when I terminated her employment on the Nixon impeachment staff, I had not reported her unethical practices to the appropriate bar associations.”

From the April 2 edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Rush Limbaugh Show:

LIMBAUGH: The name Jerry Zeifman ring a bell? It ought -- Jerry Zeifman -- yes, during the Clinton impeachment. Jerry Zeifman was a head honcho during the Nixon Watergate period hearings. He was the guy who hired Hillary Clinton on that committee. He's also the guy who fired her.

He supervised her when she worked on the Watergate investigation. He says, Hillary's history of lies and unethical behavior goes back farther, goes much deeper than anybody realized. Now, Jerry Zeifman, a lifelong Democrat, supervised the work of Hillary Rodham Clinton -- or Hillary Rodham -- on the committee. He fired her from the committee staff, refused to give her a letter of recommendation. She was only one of three people who earned that distinction in Zeifman's 17-year career.

Why? In an interview last week, Zeifman said, “Because she was a liar. 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.”

“The actions of Hillary and her cohorts went directly against the judgment of top Democrats up to and including the majority leader at the time, Tip O'Neill, that Nixon clearly had the right to counsel.” She tried to see to it Nixon didn't get a lawyer in all of this.

Zeifman says that Hillary “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 that Hillary wrote a fraudulent legal brief, and confiscated public documents to hide her deception.”

Now, this comes from -- this is Dan Calabrese at NorthStarWriters.com. Hillary removed -- and William O. Douglas had been brought up and they -- he was granted -- when he was on the Supreme Court, he was granted the right to a lawyer. I mean, it's fundamental in our judicial system. “So Hillary removed all the Douglas files to the offices where she was located, which at that time were secured and inaccessible to the public.” This from Zeifman.

“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.”

She just stole the documents, then wrote a fraudulent brief, and she tried to hide the evidence. “The brief was so fraudulent and ridiculous Zeifman believes Hillary would have been disbarred if she had submitted it to a judge.” So I don't know if this is going to get wide play but if it does, it could finish her off. Well, really only they can finish themselves off, and they're in the process of doing it.

From the April 2 edition of Cox Radio Syndication's The Neal Boortz Show:

BOORTZ: As I understand it now, Hillary Clinton, when she was counsel on the Judiciary Committee, knew -- because you told her -- that there was precedent for the person being investigated -- in this case Richard Nixon -- to be represented by counsel during the investigation. You told her that there were documents in the public file of the committee that illustrated this fact that he was entitled to counsel. Did she then remove those documents from the public file?

ZEIFMAN: Yes, she removed them. And she brought them to her office, which was in another building and it was secured; it was not accessible to the public.

BOORTZ: Did she do that to keep other people from seeing those documents?

ZEIFMAN: Oh, well. I assume so, yeah.

BOORTZ: Yeah. Now, Richard Nixon resigned, and do you think that his resignation, before you proceeded with the investigation, do you think that might have saved Hillary Clinton's legal career?

ZEIFMAN: Uh --

BOORTZ: Because the judge never saw her memorandum that she prepared?

ZEIFMAN: No. No, I can't speculate about that. I -- my point, however, let me put it this way.

BOORTZ: OK.

ZEIFMAN: At that time, to be very frank, I really had a kind of compassion for Hillary. She was a pleasant enough young lady, and she certainly treated me with respect and courtesy. And in retrospect, she was corrupted, and I think that was a tragedy.

BOORTZ: You fired her, didn't you?

ZEIFMAN: Well, let me put it this way. I terminated her, along with some other staff members who were -- we no longer needed, and advised her that I would not -- could not recommend her for any further positions.

BOORTZ: Why not?

ZEIFMAN: Because of her unethical conduct.

BOORTZ: Now, to get this on the record, you are now, were then, and you are a lifelong Democrat, are you not?

ZEIFMAN: Yes, very much so.

BOORTZ: How do you feel about her candidacy for president of the United States right now?

ZEIFMAN: Well, I think that for any intellectually honest Democrat, her -- it would be a moral imperative to vote against her.

BOORTZ: Because of her lack of ethics when she was working for you?

ZEIFMAN: Well, no. Frankly, I had hoped when she eventually became first lady, I had hoped that we had taught her a lesson. And I had voted for Bill Clinton, knowing that he was advocating a two-for-one presidency. But after two -- [coughs] excuse me --

BOORTZ: That happens to me all the time, too. And I'm on the radio, so --

ZEIFMAN: [coughs] There I go again.

BOORTZ: Yeah.

ZEIFMAN: And I don't even smoke. Now, what happened was that I voted for Bill Clinton out of loyalty to the Democratic Party. And -- but within a short time, I became very disenchanted with the Clinton administration because of its corruption and deceit.