The Washington Post’s Richard Cohen devoted his column today to defending Monica Goodling’s decision to plead the Fifth and refuse to talk to lawmakers about her role in the prosecutor purge scandal. His reasoning is so odd, I initially thought he might have been kidding.
The standard question about Goodling is: What is she hiding? After all, until her resignation last week, Goodling was the senior counselor to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and his liaison to the White House. She was at the center of the White House’s purge of non-party party people (a pseudo-Stalinist term coined for this occasion) and so she must be hiding something. Maybe.
More likely, Goodling’s problem is probably not what she’s done but what she might do. If she testifies before Congress, swears to tell the truth and all of that, she will produce a record — a transcript — that can be used against her. If a subsequent witness later on has a different memory of what transpired, then the bloodcurdling cry of “special prosecutor” will once again be heard in the land.
I’m afraid this is rather incoherent. By Cohen’s logic, no one should ever testify before any congressional committee, because at some point in the future, it’s possible that someone else might contradict him or her. (As an aside, Cohen’s point isn’t even Goodling’s excuse for taking the Fifth; she’s claimed the privilege under the argument that Dems might be mean to her.)
Cohen seems to be missing both the forest and the trees. If Goodling testifies and lies to lawmakers, she might get caught. I suppose that’s true. But here’s a novel idea: why shouldn’t Goodling testify and, you know, not lie?
The point of Cohen’s piece seems to be a drawn-out complaint about special prosecutors in general, but as publius explained, Cohen’s wildly off-base on this point, too: “The key flaw of course with Cohen’s argument is that Goodling’s testimony has nothing to do with special prosecutors. The issue is whether she (as a DOJ official) has a valid reason to refuse to provide testimony before Congress, the branch responsible for DOJ oversight. Maybe special prosecutors are good, maybe they’re bad. But that’s completely beside the point here. What Cohen and others don’t seem to realize is that there’s a very easy way to avoid getting in trouble for offering false testimony — tell the truth.”
Cohen concludes:
In the end, though, some thought has to be given to why Monica Goodling feels obligated to take the Fifth rather than merely telling Congress what happened in the AG’s office. She’s no criminal — but what could happen to her surely is.
What does this mean? Cohen’s convinced that Goodling hasn’t done anything wrong — based on what, he doesn’t say — but it’s “criminal” for lawmakers to ask her questions? She was integrally involved with an unprecedented purge of U.S. Attorneys, a decision apparently driven by a corrupt process, and as Cohen sees it, lawmakers investigating the controversy shouldn’t even be able to ask what she did?
Like I said, incoherent.
Post Script: I’d be remiss if I neglected to mention that in the midst of his anti-special-prosecutor rant, Cohen recycled one of the more tired far-right talking points.
No lawyer is going to be thrilled about letting a client testify in today’s political environment. Remember, please, that I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby was not convicted of the crime that the special prosecutor was appointed to find — who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame — but of lying to a grand jury. In fact, the compulsively compulsive Patrick Fitzgerald not only knew early on who the leaker was but also that no law had been violated. No matter. Fitzgerald valiantly persisted, jailing Judith Miller of the New York Times for refusing to reveal her sources and, in the end, nailing Libby. It was a magnificent victory, proving once again that there is nothing more dangerous to the republic than a special prosecutor with money to spend.
Are we still dealing with the “underlying crime” nonsense? First, perjury and obstruction are crimes. Second, maybe Fitzgerald might have been better able to investigate the criminality of the White House leak had Libby not lied and obstructed justice?
Cohen seems to have just phoned this whole column in. Sometimes, it’s better to take a day off than to publish tripe.