Meg Whitman and the perils of employing illegal help: six memorable cases

6. Kimba Wood

If the No. 1 person on this list was the first act of the Clinton-era “Nannygate,” then Kimba Wood was the second. Ms. Wood, a federal judge, was the front-runner for the Clinton administration attorney general spot after the prior candidate (see No. 1) withdrew. But Wood was forced to publicly remove herself from consideration after the White House discovered that she had also employed an illegal immigrant to look after her child.

Wood had hired the woman, an immigrant from Trinidad, in March 1986 – several months before the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 made the employment of illegal workers illegal. In addition, Wood paid Social Security taxes for her sitter. Politically speaking, these distinctions with the previous case did not matter – a Gallup poll found that 65 percent of respondents thought she should not be attorney general.

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