Monica Wept
Goodling Shed Tears Before Revelations About Firings
Her resistance to testifying may be the shortest verse in this affair.
A former U.S. Justice Department official and central figure in the firing of eight U.S. attorneys tearfully told a colleague two months ago her government career probably was over as the matter was about to erupt into a political storm, according to closed-door congressional testimony.
Monica Goodling, at the time an aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, sobbed for 45 minutes in the office of career Justice Department official David Margolis on March 8 as she related her fears that she would have to quit, according to congressional aides briefed on Margolis’s private testimony to House and Senate investigators. The aides spoke on condition of anonymity.
Margolis’s description of the emotional scene in his office sheds new light on divisions that were developing in the Justice Department’s Washington headquarters as the Democratic-controlled Congress was demanding documents that might show White House involvement in the dismissals.
Goodling, 33, who was Gonzales’s White House liaison, resigned April 6 and has invoked her Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination to refuse to answer lawmakers’ questions about her role in the firings. Her lawyers cited accusations by Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty that Goodling and others had misled him about the firings as a basis for refusing to testify.
Compelled Testimony
The House Judiciary Committee has voted to compel her testimony by granting limited immunity from prosecution. Goodling may have signaled in a letter yesterday — sent by her lawyers to the Justice Department — that she is eager to tell Congress her side of the story.
I say to bring her before the Sanhedrin!
A good reason for taking the Fifth
Goodling granted immunity
“Nothing Illegal” - Can we put a stake in that?
Float like a butterfly; lie like a rug
Will Goodling sing?