CONCORD - Attempting to get past an embarrassing episode at a critical juncture of the legislative session, House Speaker William O'Brien Tuesday named a two-term Nashua Republican as the new House majority leader.

Rep. Peter Silva of Nashua “has shown tremendous ability to pull diverse elements of the Republican caucus together over a short period of time,” O'Brien said. He said Silva will also bring “continuity to the office.”

O'Brien also named House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Steve Stepanek, R-Amherst, to succeed Silva as the deputy majority leader.

The moves came at a somber State House in the aftermath of the resignation of D.J. Bettencourt, R-Salem, both as a majority leader and a representative following his admission that he lied about the amount of work he did as an intern in the law office of another state representative.

Rep. J. Brandon Giuda, RChichester, who has his own law firm, said he agreed to take on Bettencourt, a third-year student at the University of New Hampshire School of law, for a spring semester internship that Bettencourt had told him he needed to graduate.

Giuda said Bettencourt appeared at his office only for one day and did about one hour of legal work. Giuda said he later discovered Bettencourt had submitted 11 weeks of detailed reports about the supposed internship to the law school for credits.

Bettencourt, while resigning Sunday, admitted he “misrepresented work as work I performed for attorney Giuda.”

Bettencourt had used his Facebook page to announce his graduation from the law school on May 19, writing, “Sincere thanks to my friends, classmates and family who helped me soldier through it.”

But a law school spokesman said Tuesday, “While Mr. Bettencourt participated in the law school's annual graduation ceremony earlier this month, he has not yet completed the requirements of the Juris Doctorate degree.” While declining to comment on Bettencourt's case, the law school said it has “an internal, confidential administrative process for addressing alleged violations of the student conduct code. UNH School of Law follows its internal academic policies and procedures whenever it addresses any student academic or conduct-related matter.”

O'Brien 'disappointed'

O'Brien said at a news conference in his office on the third floor of the State House he first learned Bettencourt had falsified his reports early last Friday morning at a meeting with Giuda and Bettencourt.

“It was the first I learned of the issue, the first I learned of the internship, quite frankly,” he said.

O'Brien said that he “wasn't going to perform the role of fact-finder,” because, he said, “it would be entirely inappropriate.” But he said the three agreed Bettencourt would announce his resignation effective June 6 “for personal reasons.”

He said he advised Bettencourt “that the time had come, once we close out the session, to concentrate on addressing this issue, and in doing so he should resign his position.”

But Bettencourt said in his initial announcement that he would be resigning in order to take a position with the New Hampshire Legal Rights Foundation, with which O'Brien is affiliated, and to get married. Giuda was not satisfied that the reasons Bettencourt gave in the statement were the reasons the three had agreed he would give.

O'Brien said the Bettencourt statement also did not meet his expectations.

Giuda then went public that Bettencourt had falsified the reports. Bettencourt then admitted misrepresenting his internship and stepped down immediately.

O'Brien did not say Tuesday whether he would have gone public if Giuda had not. He said he did not know enough about the details of the situation between Bettencourt and Giuda and, he said, Bettencourt and Giuda disagreed on some details.

Overall, said O'Brien, he and “my colleagues” are “disappointed” with the 28-year-old lawmaker, who appeared to be rising star in Republican politics.

“It was unexpected,” the speaker said of the weekend developments. “It was shocking.”

Job canceled

The Legal Rights Foundation, which O'Brien co-founded with other conservative attorneys in 2008 to perform legal work to “preserve and enhance liberties grounded in the United States and New Hampshire constitutions and civil rights laws,” announced Tuesday its board decided during the weekend to cancel its “contemplated relationship” with Bettencourt.

“We don't know the full story yet,” board Chairman Timothy Condon said in a statement. “However, it appears that the allegations are serious enough that we feel it's necessary to sever our emerging relationship with Mr. Bettencourt for the good of the organization.”

O'Brien insisted that the work of the House and his caucus will go on unfettered.

“I really feel fortunate that we will have such quality leadership available to our caucus without missing a beat,” he said.

He said Silva and Stepanek have been “at the forefront of a number of great efforts.

“We're into an intensive period for the House of Representatives and for the completion of the agenda that we've had these past two years,” O'Brien said.

Silva likened the House GOP caucus to a family, saying that when families face adversity, “they get tougher.”

Mood at State House

This week is perhaps the most critical of the legislative session. It's the time of committees of conference meetings, when negotiators from the House and Senate try to hammer our their differences on important bills.

The deadline for completing committee of conference work is Thursday. The pressure is on. But on Tuesday there was an under-current of talk about the weekend developments.

“It's tragic,” said House Majority Whip Shawn Jasper, RHudson, said of Bettencourt. “I just hope he gets his life squared away.”

Jasper said the developments reminded him of the fate of another Republican. Vincent Palumbo was a 33-yearold House majority leader in line to become Speaker of the House when he resigned in 1989 in the midst of legal issues surrounding his personal finances and claims about a post-graduate degree.

Palumbo was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison for tax evasion in 2007. In 1991, he was sentenced to 15 months for bank fraud and not filing tax returns from 1986 to 1988.

While political opponents of Bettencourt and O'Brien tried to score points on the Bettencourt scandal, veteran Democratic state Sen. Lou D'Allesandro of Manchester chose not to level criticism during a brief interview and said he expected lawmakers to stay focused on the business at hand.

Sen. Chuck Morse, who, like Bettencourt, is a Republican from Salem, agreed, calling the situation a personal tragedy that he did not believe would have any effect on the outcome of the session.