Gonzales Aide WON'T Answer Questions About Prosecutor Firings (Goodling)

[babylonsister]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aYXEgusB_EyI&refer=us

Gonzales Aide Won't Answer Questions About Prosecutor Firings

By James Rowley

March 26 (Bloomberg) -- Monica Goodling, a counsel to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales who helped coordinate the dismissals of eight U.S. attorneys, will invoke her constitutional right not to answer Senate questions about the firings, her lawyer said.

Goodling, one of four Justice Department officials the agency said could be interviewed by the Senate Judiciary Committee, will invoke her Fifth Amendment privilege not to answer the panel's questions, John M. Dowd, her lawyer, said in a statement. Dowd said the committee had requested her testimony under oath.

``The hostile and questionable environment in the present congressional proceedings is at best ambiguous; more accurately the environment can be described as legally perilous for Ms. Goodling,'' Dowd said in a letter to Senator Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who chairs the panel. Dowd cited statements by senators accusing the Justice Department of misleading Congress.

The Judiciary Committee is investigating whether the firings were carried out for improper political purposes, such as interfering with criminal investigations.

Goodling, 33, has served as a Justice Department spokeswoman and as an aide to Gonzales, where she functioned as a liaison with the White House.

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[BOSSHOG]

1. Put her on the stand and make her plead on the record

Lets give the conservative flag waving bastards in this country a reason not to want a show trial.

[babylonsister]

2. She's the one who was put on 'indefinite personal leave' over the weekend.

She must know where the bodies are buried.

[BOSSHOG]

3. Someone mentioned on NPR at noon

that her whereabouts were unknown. If she were thinking straight she'd know she would be safer in Waxman's hands then in roves.

[Iwasthere]

7. Bet she doesn't come back

[Old and In the Way]

4. "On the grounds that it might incriminate her"

Lets not forget what the 5th protects.

But make her take the oath and say that over and over and over agin.

[samq79]

5. So basically, she believes she is guilty of something...

so she doesn't want to chance it

What happened to, "we believe that there was no wrongdoing."

if there is 5th amendment protection, there is something incriminating. Sorry Bush, but you're going to have to come up with another talking point for this. Your old one doesn't hold up.

[samq79]

6. So basically, she believes she is guilty of something...

so she doesn't want to chance it

What happened to, "we believe that there was no wrongdoing."

if there is 5th amendment protection, there is something incriminating. Sorry Bush, but you're going to have to come up with another talking point for this. Your old one doesn't hold up.

[Jack Rabbit]

8. Hmmmmm . . .

Let's see.

The prosecutors serve at the pleasure of the prsident, therefore (the right wing morons assure us) no crime could possibly have been committed by firing them. Bush didn't need a reason to fire them, after all.

Okay, no crime was committed. And Ms. Goodling is going to invoke the Fifth Amendment and protect herself from self-incrimination, but there can be no incrimination because there was no crime and . . . oh, well.

[babylonsister]

9. Convoluted, right? She won't talk about the crimes that weren't committed. nt

[ljm2002]

11. Pleading the Fifth...

...can't be used just because you do not want to answer a question. In particular, it protects you against being compelled to incriminate yourself. Yourself -- not someone else. So if some testimony would just protect some other member of the Bush cabal, that would not be a legitimate reason to take the Fifth.

Of course no one ever accused this bunch of behaving legitimately.

In any case: Congress might want to consider granting her immunity... could be fun.

[gratuitous]

10. If she's done nothing wrong, she has nothing to worry about, right?

And we all know that the good Christian lawyers churned out by Regent University are only the straightest, truest, bluest, arrows in the quiver, right? Why would a good Christian do anything except to let her "yes" be "yes" and her "no" be "no"?

(Edited to change the name of her University.)