March 16 (UPI) — Former White House counsel to President Bill Clinton, Bernard Nussbaum died from heart disease at his Manhattan home, his family announced. He was 84.
His son Frank Nussbaum said he died Sunday, The Washington Post reported.
Nussbaum was born March 23, 1937, in Lower Manhattan to Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe.
The New York corporate lawyer was also picked to help lead the investigation into President Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal, reviewing secretly recorded White House tapes in the process.
It was during the Nixon investigation that he first met future first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was assisting him. That relationship endured and Nussbaum spent 14 months with the Clinton administration, getting named to the post following Bill Clinton’s 1992 election.
He is widely credited with advising the former president with his nomination of Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a justice for the Supreme Court and Janet Reno as the first female attorney general.
Nussbaum resigned as White House counsel, receiving criticism for his handling of certain investigations, including the Whitewater land deal in Arkansas.
He was also accused of, but not charged with, interfering in the investigation into the death of deputy White House counsel Vincent Foster Jr., who was found dead from a gunshot wound in July 1993.
His sometimes-abrasive personality often put him at odds in Washington.
“This is not a person who believes in the Washington maxim of don’t let your true feelings show, be super-conscious of every conversation you have,” Ron Klain, former White House counsel and President Joe Biden’s current chief of staff, told The Washington Post in 1993.
“In a city of bland characters, Bernie Nussbaum is not a bland character. He’s lox and bagels in a turkey-on-wheat-bread town.”
