Goodling Gets "Snitch Pass"

From Truthout

A House committee voted Wednesday to grant immunity to Monica Goodling, a key aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales during the firings of eight U.S. attorneys. She had refused to testify, invoking her Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.

The 32-6 vote by the House Judiciary Committee surpassed the two-thirds majority required to grant a witness immunity from prosecution. A separate vote to authorize a subpoena for Goodling passed by voice vote.

The House panel's action was one of several scheduled committee votes pertaining to subpoenas for Bush administration officials, among them Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, whom lawmakers want to question about the administration's now-discredited claim that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa - used in part to justify the war against Iraq.

But House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., postponed a vote on issuing a subpoena to former White House chief of staff Andrew Card on the same issue, saying White House Counsel Fred Fielding had made a compromise proposal worth pursuing.

Good(ling) Friday Resignation- A Conscience Decision?

The BBC reports:

A top US justice department official who refused to testify before Congress about her role in the sacking of eight federal prosecutors has resigned.

Monica Goodling, who was senior counsel to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, gave no reason for her abrupt decision.

Last month she rejected an interview request from a congressional committee investigating the sackings, invoking her right not to incriminate herself.

Mr Gonzales denies the sackings last year were politically motivated.

The Democratic Party, which now controls Congress, is pushing to expand an investigation into the firings, which affected almost one in 10 federal prosecutors.

Mr Gonzales - who heads the justice department - says the attorneys were fired because of their job performance and that politics played no role.

Gonzo Practices Nuance, Sampson Has Change of Heart

From Bloomberg

AG Alberto Gonzales stated "There obviously remains some confusion about my involvement in this" referring to the firing of 13 Assistant AG's. "At the end of the day, I know what I did. And I know that the motivations for the decisions I made were not based on improper reasons."

Sampson told the panel that the White House had a large role in the firings, not limited involvement as the Justice Department originally claimed.

One-time presidential counsel Harriet Miers joined Gonzales in approving them. And under questioning from Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Sampson said that looking back, he should not have advocated the firing of one prosecutor in particular, New Mexico's David Iglesias.

In his testimony, Sampson said that in retrospect he wouldn't have sacked Iglesias, who was added to the list of dismissed prosecutors after complaints from White House political adviser Karl Rove and New Mexico Republican Senator Pete Domenici. Sampson had called Iglesias a ``diverse up and comer'' and considered him for other administration jobs, e-mails released by the Justice Department show.

``It is imperative that you restore Mr. Iglesias's tarnished reputation by confirming that his performance as a U.S. attorney did not warrant dismissal,'' wrote Schumer, who is leading the Senate's investigation of the firings. ``I urge you to take this step immediately.''

Sampson and "De Lawyer"

From US News and World Report

When Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's former chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson, testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee this Thursday about the controversial firings of eight U.S. attorneys, he's unlikely to throw any big bombs at the Bush administration that are of the magnitude of a direct link between Bush's political advisor Karl Rove and the dismissals, a close associate of Sampson's tells U.S. News. But Sampson will set off some fireworks by contradicting a key assurance that Gonzales made to Congress and the American public last Tuesday that he was not in the loop during the long deliberations leading up to the firings.

Gonzo on the Ropes?

AG "You can call me Al" Gonzales had a rocky day yesterday.

Clearly AG the AG is a bit skittish. He cut short a press conference in Chicago yesterday because reporters were more interested in his conduct than his agenda.

Check out this column by Robyn Blumner: Gonzales and the invasion of your privacy

Prejudgery or Perjury? Aide Gone "Gonzo"

From AP via Forbes

A senior aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has decided against testifying before lawmakers about her role in the ousters of eight federal prosecutors, the latest flare-up in the controversy surrounding the Justice Department.

Monica Goodling's announcement that she would take the Fifth Amendment to avoid possibly incriminating herself came as the embattled attorney general cast himself as misunderstood in his conflicting accounts of his involvement in the firings.