Breaking:
AP-APNEWSALERT
(AP) - WASHINGTON _ A Justice Department aide involved in the prosecutor firings will refuse to answer questions at a Senate hearing, citing protection against self-incrimination, her lawyer says.
holy crap!
Is someone facing a perjury rap if they testify?
Linkage: http://hosted.ap.org/...
WOW!
What next?
Stay tuned ...
WASHINGTON (AP) - Monica Goodling, a Justice Department official involved in the firings of federal prosecutors, will refuse to answer questions at upcoming Senate hearings, citing Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination, her lawyer said Monday.
"The potential for legal jeopardy for Ms. Goodling from even her most truthful and accurate testimony under these circumstances is very real," said the lawyer, John Dowd.
Yup. sounds to me like Ms. Goodling fears a perjury rap, perhaps from previous testimony to Congress?
OK, here we go:
There have been questions about whether Goodling and others misinformed Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty about the firings just before he testified before the Senate committee in February.
Dowd said that a senior Justice Department official had told a member of the Senate committee that he was misled by Goodling and others before testifying.
The potential for taking the blame for the department's bungled response "is very real," Dowd said. "One need look no further than the recent circumstances and proceedings involving Lewis Libby," he said, a reference to the recent conviction of Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff in the CIA leak case.
Hmmm. OK, so she is being blamed for preparing inaccurate testimony.
And she doesn't want to be the Scooter Libby of this scandal.
Background on Ms Goodling:
That didn't quite happen. On Feb. 16, Justice official Monica Goodling wrote colleagues, referring to Margaret Chiara, the U.S. attorney in Grand Rapids, Mich.: ``Looks like someone is trying to out Chiara and it may break soon.'' Goodling added that Washington Post reporter Dan Eggen had called and ``said he was following up on a tip that a female U.S. attorney in the midwest was asked by Main Justice to step down from her post on December 7.''
Justice told Eggen--who was focusing on the wrong prosecutor--that he was off base, without disclosing that Chiara had been fired. Eggen reported her dismissal eight days later.
Washington Post Media Notes, March. 26
Hmmm, and I found this Washington Post correction:
WASHINGTON--A Washington Post article about the dismissal of the U.S. attorney in Little Rock incorrectly said that D. Kyle Sampson, then chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, wrote in a June 13, 2006, e-mail to Gonzales' senior counsel, Monica Goodling, that ``we are now executing this plan.'' In fact, Goodling wrote the e-mail to Sampson.
That was dated March 24.
We have execution ...
and this:
In the New Mexico case, two prominent Republican attorneys, Mickey Barnett and Patrick J. Rogers, met last June with Gonzales's senior counsel, Monica Goodling, to complain that Iglesias was inattentive to voter fraud. Goodling met with them after a colleague sent her a note saying, ``It is sensitive--perhaps you should do it,'' an internal e-mail exchange shows.
Washington Post March 18