As she occasionally does Blue Girl emailed me to suggest that I might want to read an article in The Gavel about the letter Chairman Conyers and Representative Sanchez sent to Monica Goodling's lawyer challenging her claimed right not to testify or at least give an interview. She thought I might want to post it. I told Blue Girl I had read the letter but given the absurdity of Monica's legal claim I didn't have much more than snark on the subject.
For those who haven't been following the story, Monica Goodling is the liaison between Alberto Gonzales and Karl Rove's political shop. Her lawyers have sent letters to both the house and senate saying that she won't testify because the Representatives and Senators are Democrat meanies and are obviously trying to set a perjury trap. If they try to talk to her she will plead the 5th Amendment. Na,na,na,na. Her legal position, as Conyers and Sanchez point out, also employing a level of snark, is hopeless. You can't blow off a congressional investigation the way Goodling claims she can. If people could the House and Senate would have a hard time requiring people to appear.
I have proposed that Monica is scared of testifying because she knows that if she answers truthfully she is going to establish that the Department of Justice has become little more than muscle for Rove's political shop.
Others have suggested that Monica loves the Republican party more than she loves America or, more charitably, she can't tell the difference. To her Congress in the hands of the Democrats is just as bad as Congress in the hands of the Taliban. Conyers, Leahy, Sanchez are all evildoers. No one should ever treat with evil, and as her beloved King George has announced no one should ever talk to the evildoers.
Anyway there are a couple of additional points to be made on this subject. First, there is the recently announced internal Justice Department investigation. As noted in TPM
Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington Law School who’s handled a number of high-profile clients in his career, said that Goodling, having invoked the Fifth with regard to Congress’ investigation, is in a bind.Then there is the question of why the Senate and House seem to be treating her with kid gloves. Maybe they are afraid to look like they are beating up on a young "Christian" woman, or maybe they are flummoxed by the audacity of her action, or maybe they just haven't figured out that they are a co-equal branch of government entitled to respect. I can assure you that none of Conyers or Leahy's predecessors would be handling her with such deference. They would have scheduled hearings and held her in contempt if she didn't answer the subpoena. Once upon a time they talked about Congressional Lions.
“It’s a very clever question, because if she does not invoke the Fifth [for the internal Justice Department investigation], then she obviously has a fundamental contradiction in her legal position. She would basically be saying that despite having a high-ranking position in the Justice Department, she will not cooperate with a coequal branch… Congress has oversight responsibiilty over the Justice Department, over Monica Goodling. It would be an obvious contradiction with her job description.”
Maybe that’s why this has never happened before. “I believe she might be the first sitting Justice Department official in history to invoke the Fifth.” Normally, he said, “the price of invoking the Fifth in this context would have been to end her career in government service.”
I hope Monica has an excellent Easter vacation. When they come back she might have to confront Congressmen and Senators who roar.
