Goodling Testimony - Much Ado About Nothing?

The much anticipated congressional testimony of Monica Goodling, former DOJ liason to the White House, regarding the firing of 7 U.S. Attorneys appears to be more of whimper than a bang:

The Justice Department’s former White House liaison denied Wednesday that she played a major role in the firings of U.S. attorneys last year and blamed Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty for misleading Congress about the dismissals.

McNulty’s explanation, on Feb. 6, “was incomplete or inaccurate in a number of respects,” Monica Goodling told a packed House Judiciary Committee inquiry into the firings.

She added: “I believe the deputy was not fully candid.”

I won’t pretend to know what her testimony means for McNulty, but as for the purposes of the hearing, and as it relates to charges hurled at Alberto Gonzales and other administration officials, Goodling pretty well backs up what was said all along:

Goodling told the House committee that she and others at the Justice Department fully briefed McNulty, who is resigning later this year, about the circumstances before his Feb. 6 testimony in front of a Senate panel. Goodling also said Kyle Sampson, who resigned in March as chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, compiled the list of prosecutors who were purged last year.

She said she never spoke to former White House counsel Harriet Miers or Karl Rove, President Bush’s top political adviser, about the firings.

Depending on what the full transcript provides, it appears to me that Goodling’s testimony does two things: (1) it makes clear that this investigation is little more than political theater, and (2) it conclusively puts the nail in Gonzales’ coffin, by evincing his complete lack of management and oversight of the DOJ.

In addition, if those making decisions about who would be fired were not even consulting with the Administration, much less the AG himself, then the charges that the White House was attempting to influence elections and specific investigations of cronies (which were pretty weak to begin with) would seem to be without much support. It doesn’t make much sense to claim that Karl Rove and his evil minions were behind such devious machinations if they didn’t have anything to do with the process.

Kyle Sampson and Mike McNulty, on the other hand, may have something to worry about (see also here for why the Bush Administration is not entirely off the hook regarding USA Iglesias). I would hope that, in the very least, what started as congressional kabuki would result in delivering just desserts to those who transgressed the trust placed in them. If either of them sought to fire U.S Attorney’s for such a calculated reason as retribution for failing to indict political opponents, then they deserve to be punished.

Also, Goodling’s testimony revealed another interesting tidbit:

But she admitted to have considered applicants for jobs as career prosecutors based on their political loyalties - a violation of federal law.

“I may have gone too far, and I may have taken inappropriate political considerations into account on some occasions,” Goodling said. “And I regret those mistakes.”

I’ll wager that she is not the first person to weigh political loyalties in the calculus of hiring career DOJ officials, and she certainly won’t be the last. That, after all, is the nature of the beast. When politicians and their agents are charged with a task, it is nigh on impossible to expect that political considerations won’t enter the decision-making process. Nevertheless, it is refreshing to see it out there in the open, even if nothing can really be done about it. In the very least, it may indicate to some people that government is not objective and disinterested, no matter how much you may wish it to be.

As for the main purpose of the investigation, claiming another administration scalp, Goodling’s testimony does not appear to help, and may in fact hurt any further witch-hunting.

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6 Responses to “Goodling Testimony - Much Ado About Nothing?”

  1. on 25 May 2007 at 8:10 pm glasnost

    Monica Gooding broke the law. Blacklisting Democrats for career hiring positions at the DOJ is illegal. It’s not par for the course or anything like it. It’s bananna-republic behavior, and you’re blowing it off. If you’d like to demonstrate specific examples of Democratic politicians blacklisting Republicans at the DoJ, please do so. We’ll wait.

    It’s a heinous abuse of power. You are programmed to laugh it off, but it’s not funny. All by itself, it’s worth Alberto Gonzales’ head.

  2. on 25 May 2007 at 8:12 pm glasnost

    How, exactly, is it political theater when the first DOJ official has confessed on stage to illegal behavior? Are you kidding? How do you even try to square that? Is catching criminals theater? Shall we dissolve the DoJ entirely?

  3. on 25 May 2007 at 8:26 pm MichaelW

    Monica Gooding broke the law. Blacklisting Democrats for career hiring positions at the DOJ is illegal. It’s not par for the course or anything like it. It’s bananna-republic behavior, and you’re blowing it off. If you’d like to demonstrate specific examples of Democratic politicians blacklisting Republicans at the DoJ, please do so. We’ll wait.

    Who said she didn’t break the law? And how do you know it’s not “par for the course”? I’ve been in around the D.C. area for almost a decade and I can assure that know people who claim to have been hired and “passed over” because of political affiliations. It’s not okay, but it does happen. As I pointed out in the post:

    When politicians and their agents are charged with a task, it is nigh on impossible to expect that political considerations won’t enter the decision-making process.

    Again, I don’t mean to excuse it (and in fact I specifically called attention to it), but to pretend like this was the first time or that is somehow endemic in this particular administration is to be naive at best.

    It’s a heinous abuse of power. You are programmed to laugh it off, but it’s not funny. All by itself, it’s worth Alberto Gonzales’ head.

    Huh? How did I “laugh it off” and who the hell is programming me? Moreover, you assume that Gonzales had something to do with it when, in fact, it was Goodling making that decision (not Gonzales). It does not have anything to do with him other than throwing more evidence on the pile showing him to be completely devoid of any management ability.

    How, exactly, is it political theater when the first DOJ official has confessed on stage to illegal behavior? Are you kidding? How do you even try to square that? Is catching criminals theater? Shall we dissolve the DoJ entirely?

    Goodling’s hiring decisions were not the purpose of this investigation. The firing of 7 USA’s is, and Goodling’s testimony does not support the charge that those firing were for political gain. That Goodling testified to committing illegal behavior is a bonus, although a Pyrrhic victory since she was granted immunity. If you had read my post more clearly, you would also have noticed this:

    Kyle Sampson and Mike McNulty, on the other hand, may have something to worry about (see also here for why the Bush Administration is not entirely off the hook regarding USA Iglesias). I would hope that, in the very least, what started as congressional kabuki would result in delivering just desserts to those who transgressed the trust placed in them. If either of them sought to fire U.S Attorney’s for such a calculated reason as retribution for failing to indict political opponents, then they deserve to be punished.

    If there were illegal or unethical acts committed I want the transgressors punished. Period. Accordingly, I’m not entirely clear as to what your problem is with my post.

  4. on 26 May 2007 at 2:31 pm Lance

    Come on Glasnost. Are you playing the wee naif? Michael (in a rare moment;^)) is being way to deferential to your point. It not only happens, it is the norm. If Congress wants to start doing something about it now, they can try. Let us all be clear, though, all appointments are made with such considerations and always have been, this is a new standard we are holding this administration to. Why in the world do you think the Clinton Administration got rid of all the US Attorneys when they took office for the first time? To appoint people they wanted in office.

    Anyway, like most overwrought complaints against this administration, even when valid they consist of holding the administration to standards never demanded before they arrived in office. Nothing wrong with that, we have a right to improve things. We should be honest though and admit that it isn’t politics, bureaucrats and politicians who have changed, it is us.

    Off to play with my kids (and Michael, I wil hit the Liberty Bar for drinks. I have been there many times.)

  5. on 26 May 2007 at 11:00 pm glasnost

    Accordingly, I’m not entirely clear as to what your problem is with my post.

    Well, to muse on this without malice, it seems destined that I read your posts, get angry about them, and then you respond, attempting to demonstrate that we basically agree and that I’m reading things into your post that aren’t there. I suppose there could be some degree of coincidental truth in this, based on the way that people ‘read into’ commentary and react to what they feel to be implicit messages. In a general sense, I think your responses to me take a given set of material and present it in a neutral light, whereas your original posts do not.

    Goodling’s hiring decisions were not the purpose of this investigation. The firing of 7 USA’s is, and Goodling’s testimony does not support the charge that those firing were for political gain. That Goodling testified to committing illegal behavior is a bonus, although a Pyrrhic victory since she was granted immunity.

    I see your point, although I don’t agree with your interpretation of the relevance of Gooding’s testimony to the USA’s firing’s, I do admit that it’s not as much of a smoking gun as much as, say, a confession and a fingering of Gonzales would be. But my point is, nevertheless, that it’s neither accurate or fair to describe the very same hearing that obtains confessions of criminal behavior as ‘political theater’. I think that remains a valid point. The public would not have had Monica Gooding confess to blackballing Democrats, had not the hearing occured. Putting criminal behavior in the public eye sounds like the classic desired outcome of hearings.

    As for blowing it off, your own quote here:

    When politicians and their agents are charged with a task, it is nigh on impossible to expect that political considerations won’t enter the decision-making process.

    Maybe you can make a case to the contrary, but to me, this constitutes “blowing it off”. When it’s impossible not to expect that someone not do this, but no remedy is suggested, that the implicit message is that the behavior is not important. Furthermore, Monica Gooding is not supposed to be in charge of hiring of career attorneys as a White House Liason to begin with. DOJ career attorneys are not political positions. They are law-enforcement positions. When the mistake of putting her in charge is made, it is incumbent on her to refrain from making decisions based on politics. This goes for Lance as well, “how this is done in Washington is an overgeneralization. This isn’t a think tank, it isn’t a campaign, and it isn’t even being favorable to a friend, or putting ‘our kind of guy’ in as a political appointee. Political considerations are supposed to stop at political appointees. I don’t think systematically weeding out anyone with liberal connections at DOJ is normal, I don’t think it’s par for the course. I think it’s a substantial shifting of the goalposts, and a scary one. I welcome a serious attempt at changing my mind, but I have yet to see one.

    As for the ‘programming’ remark, it’s hard to come up with lanugage to suggest that someone is temprementally or positionally predisposed to be less than objective when revisiting an issue they’ve already decided on - a problem very common in the blogosphere, and something I’m not above falling victim to in my own writing. I hear a lot of “political theater” talk in the right blogosphere, and i think it’s self-serving and unmerited. That’s why I tend to assume bias when I see it again, or something that looks like it.

    As far as,

    Kyle Sampson and Mike McNulty, on the other hand, may have something to worry about (see also here for why the Bush Administration is not entirely off the hook regarding USA Iglesias). I would hope that, in the very least, what started as congressional kabuki would result in delivering just desserts to those who transgressed the trust placed in them. If either of them sought to fire U.S Attorney’s for such a calculated reason as retribution for failing to indict political opponents, then they deserve to be punished.

    You’re right. I didn’t see it. It’s an appropriate paragraph. I may tend to skim to my detriment, but on the other hand, there’s another reference to ‘congressional kabuki’. I don’t feel that claim has merit, and I furthermore feel like that by putting stuff like that in there, you give the average reader the impression that the hearings are a joke - and logically, if the hearings are a joke, it’s easy to infer that the accusations are baseless and undeserved.

    It’s not just Iglesias, either. TPM has documented Iglesias-like improper contacts regarding Republican political operatives and elections in four, I believe, of the nine attorneys to date. Just read Patterico’s post yesterday and learn about Ex-Honorable Stephen Biskupic.

    With a lot of circumstantial evidence piling up, whether or not the accusations are ever proved to the satisfaction of a court of law, there’s a long way to go between failing to achieve court-level proof of guilt, and deriding hearing as baseless or as “kabuki”.

  6. on 26 May 2007 at 11:05 pm glasnost

    Like a lot of perceived grievances, most of what I dispute on your posts are easily to get angry about without trying to understand, or easy to try and understand without getting angry about. I’m sort of sequentially milking the best of both worlds, I suppose. Both reactions are just my natural ones.

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