The Odd Behavior of Professor Kmiec

Ed Whelan notes that the Dean of Pepperdine has inflated his resume:

I was surprised to see this description in his byline: “Douglas W. Kmiec served as head of and principal deputy in the Office of Legal Counsel from 1985 to 1989.”

In fact, Kmiec headed OLC, first as acting AAG, then as the appointed AAG, for a total of about eight months—from (as best I can tell) roughly August 1988 to April 1989—at the end of the Reagan administration (after Chuck Cooper and most of his deputies had left the office) and the beginning of the Bush 41 administration (until President Bush was able to replace him).

Kmiec never served as “principal deputy” in OLC. The formal designation of “principal deputy” appears not even to have existed when Kmiec was at OLC, and folks who were in OLC at the time tell me that Kmiec was never regarded as the lead deputy. (The only contenders for that role were Sam Alito, who left OLC in March 1987, and Mike Carvin, who left OLC in August 1988.)

Kmiec’s website bio is even more extravagant, as it asserts that Kmiec was the AAG heading OLC from 1985 to 1989: “Kmiec served Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush during 1985-89 as constitutional legal counsel (Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice).”

Has Prof. Kmiec gone nuts? Perhaps not. The liberal media seems to accept his claims at face value, so their falsity seems to not have hurt him.