Word: clairs
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Replying to most, but not all of the charges against Richard Nixon, Presidential Counsel James St. Clair issued a 151-page brief last week that took the defense lawyer's classic position in a criminal case: his client is innocent until proved guilty, and the evidence presented in the Judiciary Committee hearings fails to constitute such proof. Beyond that, St. Clair claimed "a complete absence of any conclusive evidence demonstrating presidential wrongdoing sufficient to justify the grave action of impeachment...
...President's lawyer concentrated on Nixon's most vulnerable position: his denial of any participation in a scheme to conceal the origins of the wiretapping and burglary of Democratic National Headquarters. The St. Clair brief offered
...Clair, is what led Jeb Stuart Magruder, a key Nixon campaign aide, to go to the grand jury in one of the first moves to help crack the case. The President wanted Mitchell, too, to go before the grand jury, and Nixon instructed Ehrlichman to tell Mitchell that he should reveal all he knew about the burglary and to "let the chips fall where they...
...Clair's relatively slender volume of defense is overshadowed by the seven books of evidence (ranging from 271 to 687 pages). Part 1 of the Judiciary Committee document details the formation of the "sophisticated intelligence-gathering system" that eventually led to the Watergate break-in and bugging. A second volume deals with the initial attempt to limit the case to the seven original burglars and their accomplices, while keeping the scandal away from the White House. A third section of two volumes focuses on the hush-money payments to Hunt and the continued cover-up efforts. The three-volume...
...began the Dictabelt by saying that March 21 was "relatively uneventful." But he went on to recount his long conversation with Dean and made a possible damaging statement about one of the most crucial parts of the Watergate case, E. Howard Hunt's demand for money. Lawyer St. Clair has argued that, in his March 21 discussion of a payment to Hunt from campaign funds, Nixon meant only legal-support payments. But the President's Dictabelt indicates that this was not so. "Hunt," said the President, "needed a hundred and-thousand [sic] dollars...