The Justice Department Clown Show

Monica Goodling's testimony today, as House Judiciary Chair John Conyers notes, was extremely revelatory on a number of different levels. We now know why she was so keen to receive immunity, because within the first five minutes she admitted that she broke the law by taking political considerations into account while hiring career DoJ officials. She even gave an example of when she blocked the hiring of an assistant US Attorney in DC because he was "too liberal." She used the weasel phrase "I don't believe that I intended to commit a crime," what Tbogg calls the Paris Hilton defense, but Bobby Scott (D-VA) eventually worked the truth out of her.



So we have a hiring manager at the Department of Justice basing her hiring and firing on whether or not an applicant was sufficiently Republican. For good measure, that hiring manager had no experience doing any hiring of any kind, except when she was STUDENT BODY PRESIDENT (yes, she actually said that in testimony).

Goodling also tossed Paul McNulty and Kyle Sampson under the bus, claiming McNulty was inaccurate in statements to Congress and that Sampson knows who put the names on the target list (and she all but came out and said the White House was heavily involved in that). But most damaged by her testimony was the famous Abu G. This sequence with Artur Davis shows that Gonzales lied to Congress on several occasions:

Mr. Davis: Ms. Goodling, General Gonzales testified that he never saw the US Attorneys list, the list of terminated US Attorneys. Is that accurate to your knowledge, Ms. Goodling?

Ms. Goodling: I believe he did see a list.

Mr. Davis: So if General Gonzales testified that he didn’t see the list, you believe that would be inaccurate testimony on his part, don’t you?

Ms. Goodling: Um, I believe he saw the list.

Mr. Davis: So therefore you believe it would be inaccurate testimony?

Ms. Goodling: Yes

Mr. Davis: If General Gonzales testified that he had never been briefed about the list, do you believe that would be accurate or inaccurate testimony?

Ms. Goodling: I believe it would be inaccurate.

Mr. Davis: Are there any other inaccuracies in the testimony that General Gonzales gave the Senate that you are able to share with us?

Ms. Goodling: I don’t know that I saw all of it.

Mr. Davis: Let me help you a little bit with on other one. The Attorney General testified that he was not involved with any discussions of the U.S. Attorney firings. Do you believe that to be accurate or inaccurate?

Ms. Goodling: He was certainly at the November 27th meeting.

Mr. Davis: So you believe that to be another piece of inaccurate testimony, don’t you, Ms. Goodling?

Ms. Goodling: Yes.

But the absolute most damaging bit in the testimony, previously unrevealed, is that Al Gonzales brought Goodling into a meeting in March, when the US Attorneys scandal had already gone public and after Goodling's testimony was requested, and essentially coached her on what her recollections should be. This is classic witness tampering and obstruction of justice.

Describing it as an “uncomfortable” conversation, Goodling claimed that in a personal meeting with Gonzales, he “laid out for me his general recollection…of some of the process…regarding the replacement of the U.S. attorneys.” After he had “laid out a little bit of it,” Gonzales asked Goodling if she “had any reaction to his iteration.” She then added:

I remember thinking at that point that this was something that we were all going to have to talk about, and I didn’t know that it was — I just — I didn’t know that it was maybe appropriate for us to talk about that at that point.

Rep. Arthur Davis (D-AL) asked her if she felt the Attorney General was trying to “shape your recollection,” to which she replied “no.” But Goodling acknowledged she was “uncomfortable” with the conversation.

This is WHY she quit the department, she said. And Rep. Davis was tipped off to talking about this aspect of the case by Goodling's own lawyer, who wanted him to ask those questions. Just last week Gonzales was saying that he was barring himself from talking with other fact witnesses about the case because he didn't want it to seem like he was getting everyone's story straight. This guy is the most brazen liar I've seen since... OK, since the President, I guess, but Abu G's almost worse.

Gonzales and the Justice Department went to the extraordinary step of responding directly to the testimony:

Brian J. Roehrkasse, a Justice Department spokesman, said in a statement that Mr. Gonzales “has never attempted to influence or shape the testimony or public statements of any witness in this matter, including Ms. Goodling. The statements made by the attorney general during this meeting were intended only to comfort her in a very difficult period.“

I'm sure it was comforting for Goodling to hear her superior tell her "This is what you're going to remember, capiche?"

The clown show at the Justice Department just rolls on and on. These were a group of ideologically rigid thugs that used their positions of power to attack Democrats, shield Republicans and suppress the vote, and they would do absolutely anything to keep this information a secret. Hell, Gonzales was interfering in Congressional investigations even AFTER they had the goods on him. Unbelievable.

UPDATE: Leahy:

“It is curious that yet another senior Justice Department official claims to have limited involvement in compiling the list that led to the firings of several well-performing federal prosecutors. What we have heard today seems to reinforce the mounting evidence that the White House was pulling the strings on this project to target certain prosecutors in different parts of the country.

“It is deeply troubling that the crisis of leadership at the Department allowed the White House to wield undue political influence over key law enforcement decisions and policies. It is unacceptable that a senior Justice Department official was allowed to screen career employees for political loyalty, and it confirms our worst fears about the unprecedented and improper reach of politics into the Department’s professional ranks.