The latest in a series of extraordinary episodes emerged Thursday from Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz’s controversial lawsuit to be declared eligible run for attorney general – with the release of hours of videotape showing Bysiewicz under questioning from the state Republican Party’s attorney, admitting that she has rarely been in a courthouse and never tried a case.
Despite that significant concession during a three-day deposition, the camera showed Bysiewicz clearly determined to yield no ground on her overall claim: that she is qualified to serve as attorney general, no matter how little legal case work she has done, for the simple reason that she has been registered as an attorney and paid her annual lawyers’ fees for 24 years.
Bysiewicz remained composed, repeatedly asked for clarification of questions and made the GOP’s lawyer, Eliot Gersten, work for her answers. The drama in the proceeding came out of several flare-ups between Bysiewicz lawyer Wesley Horton and Gersten.
“I think this is getting to the border of harassment of the witness,” Horton broke in at one point during the first day of the proceeding, March 31.
Gersten fired back: “I’m telling you, stop it … because I think you’re harassing me and interrupting me, with all respect, so stop it.”
Bysiewicz and Gersten went back and forth doggedly, but calmly, as he picked away at her contention that she meets the state eligibility statute calling for the state attorney general to have accumulated 10 years’ “active practice” of law in Connecticut.
Bysiewicz has described her job of secretary of the state as, in effect, the chief of a public-service law firm – but Gersten tried to depict her as a figurehead who relies almost completely on other lawyers – either office subordinates, or several private lawyers who support her campaign and provide free advice – for legal research and written documents to which she puts her name.
Bysiewicz and Gersten went back and forth doggedly, but calmly, as he picked away at her contention that she meets the state eligibility statute calling for the state attorney general to have accumulated 10 years’ “active practice” of law in Connecticut.
Bysiewicz has described her job of secretary of the state as, in effect, the chief of a public-service law firm – but Gersten tried to depict her as a figurehead who relies almost completely on other lawyers – either office subordinates, or several private lawyers who support her campaign and provide free advice – for legal research and written documents to which she puts her name.