The latest in a series of moments-we’ve-all-been-waiting-for in the purge scandal wrapped up yesterday afternoon, when former Justice Department official Monica Goodling testified before the House Judiciary Committee. Was the hearing informative? Did Goodling give up the goods? Did her testimony help or hurt Alberto Gonzales?
There’s quite a bit of new information here, so let’s break this up into areas of interest.
* Politicizing of Justice Department hiring practices — Goodling was surprisingly candid about applying partisan standards in employment practices at the DoJ.
“I may have gone too far in asking political questions of applicants for career positions,” the trembling young witness told the committee after securing immunity from prosecution for her testimony. “I may have taken inappropriate political considerations into account on some occasions.”
“Was that legal?” demanded Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.). Under the witness table, Goodling wrung her hands and rubbed her bracelet. She drew a deep breath. “I know I crossed the line,” she admitted. […]
How many job applicants did she block because of political leanings? “I wouldn’t be able to give you a number.” Did she ask aspiring civil servants whom they voted for? “I may have.” Did she screen applicants for career prosecutor jobs so that Republicans landed in those positions? “I think that I probably did.” How many times? “I don’t think that I could have done it more than 50 times, but I don’t know.” She further admitted that she “occasionally” researched career applicants’ political affiliations and checked their political donations.
Legally, this could all add up to a major Monica Problem for Goodling, who brought three high-priced lawyers with her to the hearing. “I intend to establish a legal defense fund at some point,” she told the committee.
What does this tell us? That the Justice Department routinely broke the law when it came to hiring employees, even for non-partisan career positions. Whether Goodling faces prosecution for having broken the law or not, this hardly reflects well on Gonzales. His Justice Department effectively operated as “a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican National Committee.”
* Gonzales’ “coaching” — On April 19, Gonzales testified, under oath, that he had not spoken with “witnesses” in this scandal about the events because it would have been inappropriate. He told the Senate Judiciary Committee, “I haven’t talked to witnesses because of the fact that I haven’t wanted to interfere with this investigation and department investigations.” Apparently, he was lying.
During a meeting in March before she resigned, Ms. Goodling said, Mr. Gonzales asked her questions that left her uncomfortable. She thought he might be trying to compare recollections, so their stories would be consistent if they were questioned about their actions, she said. “I just thought maybe we shouldn’t have that conversation,” she said.
What does this tell us? Gonzales now has another problem to worry about. As Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.) put it, “It’s very clear that the attorney general was not fully accurate in his testimony. It was an inappropriate conversation on the attorney general’s own terms.”
* More Gonzales lies — Gonzales said in March he never attended any meetings about firing U.S. Attorneys, and never played a role in the decision making. Goodling pointed to at least one instance in which the opposite was true.
[U]nder questioning by Republican Elton Gallegly, she reconstructed a disturbing scene from the now-famous November 27 meeting about the firings in the AG’s conference room. “Somebody said, ‘I think I know why people are on this [termination] list, except for [Nevada Attorney] Daniel Bogden,'” she recounted. Goodling was aware of a couple of concerns she’d heard with Bogden, so she voiced them. She and Sampson “looked at the attorney general and said, ‘What do you want to do [about Bogden]?’ I think he nodded and said, ‘OK.'”
[H]e nodded and said “OK”? The episode doesn’t exactly instill confidence in anybody at the meeting, least of all the über-passive Gonzales. Goodling’s testimony only reinforced the growing impression that nobody knew what anybody else was doing in Justice’s top ranks, or why — and that nobody really cared about what they didn’t know, either.
* What happens next — The NYT editorial page says it’s time to move up the ladder.
Ms. Goodling admitted to politicizing the Justice Department in ways that certainly seem illegal; she made clear that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales lied at a critical point in the investigation; and she gave Congress all the reason it needs to compel Karl Rove and Harriet Miers, the former White House counsel, to testify about what they know. […]
Ms. Goodling said she did not know how prosecutors were added to the list of those to be fired. Kyle Sampson, Mr. Gonzales’s former chief of staff, and the keeper of the list, has said the same thing. So have Mr. Gonzales and Mr. McNulty. They may think that if no one owns up, the scandal will go away. But since the list was by all accounts a joint Justice Department and White House effort, Congress has no choice but to question under oath the two people who are in the best position to shed light on the mystery: Mr. Rove and Ms. Miers.
Do we have the answers to the “core questions” about how and why the list of purged prosecutors was put together? Not yet, but Goodling, at a minimum, moved the ball forward.