DOJ Official Brings Storm by Taking the Fifth in Gonzales Flap (MOnica Goodling)

[Demeter]

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1175245444489

DOJ Official Brings Storm by Taking the Fifth in Gonzales Flap
T.R. Goldman and Emma Schwartz
Legal Times
April 2, 2007




Her pre-emptive move (Congress has yet to issue a subpoena) immediately raised questions, innuendo and gossip: Was she trying to avoid incriminating herself in a crime (and if so, what crime?), or, as her attorneys claimed, was she merely afraid that in the "perilous" partisan environment, even an innocent witness could end up in trouble? ...."She could easily have cut a deal, I'm sure," says Michael Barrett, a solo practitioner who worked for Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., on the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee throughout the 1980s. "Congress doesn't want to make it look like they're beating up on some young person, particularly a woman. They have to be sensitive to the public perception of what they're doing. Instead, she's going to go down in flames."

"I don't know what she thinks she's getting out of it," he adds. "She's certainly not doing Gonzales any good, if that's her intention. Right now, Gonzales is on the run, and her claiming the Fifth makes it look like the committee's onto something."

In one sense, taking the Fifth is simply a conservative legal strategy, one that trades the inevitable media firestorm and likely job dismissal for a real chance of avoiding prosecution.

"Its value is grossly underestimated by nonlawyers," says Michele Roberts, a partner at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, the same firm where Goodling's attorneys, John Dowd and Jeffrey King, work. (She says she has not discussed the case with them.) "There's a beauty in knowing 'I can't be prosecuted for something I didn't say'; there's some solace knowing 'they aren't going to hang me up to dry based on something I said that they thought was false.'"

For someone like Goodling, criminal defense attorneys say, potential charges could include perjury, making false statements to Congress, or even aiding and abetting the preparation of false testimony -- something her lawyers say a senior Justice official has put into play by alleging that Goodling "did not inform him of certain pertinent facts" before making his report to the Senate.

There's also a whole category of obstruction of justice charges, if, for example, a U.S. Attorney was removed just as he was preparing a public-corruption indictment.

And, notes defense attorney Jensen Barber, there's a bit of the unknown: "God knows what a prosecutor could think up. You could clearly have some sort of fraud."

Whether or not it was her lawyers' intention, the spotlight has dropped solidly on Goodling as much as anyone, bringing into question her background in Republican politics, her role in the firings of the eight U.S. Attorneys, and the part she played in the subsequent crazy quilt of explanations.

As White House liaison, Goodling was part of a small cadre of senior Justice officials responsible for vetting U.S. Attorneys, a position that became far more significant after the 2006 reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act, which gave Justice authority to install interim U.S. Attorneys without congressional approval. She played a central role in the appointment of her one-time boss J. Timothy Griffin, who replaced ousted U.S. Attorney H.E. "Bud" Cummins III in Arkansas. Beyond that, she wielded significant power in determining which U.S. Attorneys would go -- or stay.


(Latest events in hearings...)
BORN FOR THE JOB.... (Exhaustive biography)

[EVDebs]

1. Her attny John Dowd is a moneylaundering expert

his 'written works' from the law firm's weblink:

""Written Works
"U.S. Laundering, Forfeiture Laws Now Reach All Points on Globe," September 2002

"When Agents Serve Search Warrant, Businesses Must Know Rules of Game (Part 2 of 2),," Money Laundering Alert, June 2001

"When Laundering Charges Surface, Battles Commence on Many Fronts (Part 1 of 2)," Money Laundering Alert, May 2001 ""


...and what's going on behind this US Attny's scandal is the obstructionofjustice on the upcoming CIA/GOP funding scandal that is the basis of the Carol Lam investigation, cut short by Bushco

""It's all part of a growing ongoing investigation into corruption in defense and intelligence contracts, which already has sent former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham to prison and, legal sources say, may threaten others in Congress and the CIA. ""

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12634250/

The media is ignoring the obvious and running interference for Bushco, Operation Mockingbird/OperationCHAOS-style domestically. When it becomes common knowledge what is behind it all-- the $, trillions of it-- the public will never vote R again and never forgive or forget.

BTW, here's Monica at a DC Regent alumni picnic
http://www.regent.edu/alumni/chapters/washington_dc/DCPicnicPhotos.htm

As for Brad Berenson, Sampson's attny, he's an expert on the NSA eavesdropping and Patriot Act, which 'enabled' Bush to do what he tried to get away with, fire US attorneys,

Legal loophole emerges in NSA spy program
http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-6073600.html

Berenson's WH background it seems to me makes HIM an ideal candidate for a congressional supoena also. And don't all these freshly scrubbed obedient faces just make you gag ? A real Milgram Experiment, huh ?

[Demeter]

2. What's Most Amazing Is the Brilliance and Incompetence Combined

and the saddest part is the fallacy of "building a perpetual GOP majority".

Majorities cannot be built that depend on a few wolves holding sheep in submission and exploiting them. The sheep in this country are thinly civilized, at best. It doesn't take much to incite an insurrection among people with a history and storyline of sacrifice and death for liberty. Even the religiously drugged can be ignited.

The US mythos of equality, no matter how hard the Religious Right and the GOP try, keeps springing up. The whole concept of "Undeserving poor" is belied by those who escape poverty and tell their tales, by those trapped in poverty who tell their tales, and those observing poverty, who tell those tales. Ronald Reagan's welfare queen isn't dead, but she wears Prada and gets huge tax breaks off daddy's estate.