Today, former DOJ White House Liaison, Monica Goodling, will testify in front of the HJC. After initially proclaiming through her lawyers that she would exercise her constitutional right against self-incrimination, she has been offered immunity. The details of the immunity offer are unknown, but it is hopeful this protection will entice her to be candid. See below the fold for pre-game analysis.
Today’s hearing will appear on CSpan3 at 10:15 a.m. EDT, and will be liveblogged here by donnamarie and others. See This link for the liveblog diary lineup.
UPDATE: Liveblog is here:
Goodling LiveBlog
We know Monica Goodling is behaving as if she is guilty of something. (For comprehensive coverage of Monica Goodling’s role in the DOJ scandals, see reporting at TPMMuckraker). I suspect she is concerned with more than the SINS discussed in her Regent U. Law classes.
Regardless of the implications of her preemptive “taking the 5th” maneuver, others have also shed light on guilty behavior. In his Congressional Testimony David Margolis outlined a tumultuous day at the DOJ.
On March 6, 2007, William Moschella Testified in front of the HJC. Unsatisfied with the inconsistent stories of DOJ officials and the recalcitrant DOJ response to congressional inquiry, John Conyers and Linda Sanchez of the HJC wrote a letter on March 8, 2007, requesting any and all documents pertinent to the US Attorney firing.
According to a Bloomberg article, Around 5 p.m. on the same day HJC requested documents, March 8, 2007:
Sampson dropped by to say he had information Margolis needed to know, one congressional aide said.
After Sampson left his office, Margolis testified that he went toward McNulty's office to inform his boss and stopped because Sampson had already gone into the room carrying the binder filled with White House e-mails, the aide said.
Clearly, this was not a happy day at the DOJ. With respect to Goodling on March 8, 2007, Margolis told investigators that later that night:
"She came down about 8:00 and she started by saying, "Has Kyle talked to you?" And I said, "Yeah, he came by earlier." And then she proceeded for the next, it seemed like forever but it was probably only about 30 or 45 minutes, to bawl her eyes out and say, "All I ever wanted to do was serve this President and this administration and this department," and then cry more, and more, and more, and more, and talk about -- talk about how she came to Washington, you know. Personal stuff...."
So in Monica’s quest to serve the president, administration and department, it seems she forgot about the American People.
.
.
What did she do that was so troubling?
ISSUE 1:
She was given the authority to hire and fire Junior Political Appointees at the DOJ.
According to Murray Waas:
The existence of the order suggests that a broad effort was under way by the White House to place politically and ideologically loyal appointees throughout the Justice Department, not just at the U.S.-attorney level.
It appears she applied political litmus tests with impunity:
Justice spokesman Dean Boyd confirmed Wednesday that the department's inspector general and Office of Professional Responsibility were investigating Goodling's role in hiring career attorneys — an unusual responsibility for her to take.
Goodling "may have taken prohibited considerations into account during such review," Boyd told the AP.
ISSUE 2:
With respect to the firing scandal, Goodling’s pre-firing role was chiefly to act as the conduit for Rove’s operation to install Tim Griffin as USA in Arkansas. Evaluation of her email traffic shows:
She sent 22 emails to WH personnel and 235 to DOJ personnel. Before the firing she sent 19 and 70 to WH and DOJ personnel, respectively and after the firing sent 3 and 165 to WH and DOJ personnel respectively. Thus before the firing 18% of her email pertaining to the firing was to the White House. 1.7% of her email following the firing was to the White House. These numbers reflect the following personnel:
Recipients of all of Monica Goodling’s Email
No other DOJ personnel sent anywhere near the volume or fraction of emails to White House recipients before or after the firing.
Thus, Monica Goodling devoted a substantial portion of her firing-related email to White House correspondence in the time period before 12/8/06, and the principal White House recipient was Scott Jennings. ~80% of her pre-firing email pertained to installing Tim Griffin as USA Arkansas.
ISSUE 3:
Goodling was the Number one recipient of Kyle Sampson’s emails. In the released documents, she is the recipient of 99 emails from Kyle Sampson, nearly 20% of all the emails he sent. Given Sampson’s professed role as “aggregator”, Goodling was likely providing a substantial portion of the information he was aggregating.
Other important issues:
She also met with a "sensitive" party interested in Domenici/Iglesias at the behest of Jennings/Rove, so she may have insight into why Rove co. was so focused on New Mexico....
She also was clearly involved in the scandal diffusion after the issue became big, digging up dirt ex post facto to help justify the firings. In particular she was in the loop looking for old Feinstein concerns with Lam, and child porn stats to deal with Charlton and Bogden.
.
.
In addition to the issues discussed above, I hope someone asks her about this fact:
About ½ of the emails she sent or received from Tim Griffin contain a redacted email address for Tim Griffin. Was this a GWB43 account or one of the other RNC accounts used by Rove’s operatives? If so, why was Griffin using this account while he was serving as AUSA in Arkansas?
.
.
Before we get too excited though:
Some facts suggest today’s hearing will not be all fireworks....
- She is holding back documents, indicating she may not be fully forthcoming. These documents are apparently complete and unredacted. I do not understand her privilege to withhold these documents in light of her subpoena and immunity.
- The hearing today is in the House not Senate Judiciary Committee. The Republicans will be out in force, and judging from Gonzales' last HJC appearance, even the Democrats might sacrifice time making points about non-firing issues.
Acknowledgement:
I owe a debt again to all of the Kos volunteers who helped put together the emails database, and the new, important technical work by ichi brown on incorporating ALL of the documents into text-searchable format. Documents Database