Following White House liaison Monica Goodling, chief of staff Kyle Sampson, Acting Associate Attorney General William Mercer, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, and his chief of staff Michael Elston, Brad Schlozman has resigned.
Does he need more time with his family?
....hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
The Justice Department's former White House liaison denied Wednesday that she played a major role in the firings of U.S. attorneys last year and blamed Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty for misleading Congress about the dismissals.McNulty's explanation, on Feb. 6, "was incomplete or inaccurate in a number of respects," Monica Goodling told a packed House Judiciary Committee inquiry into the firings.
She added: "I believe the deputy was not fully candid."
Not that I think the man is innocent in the deal, but I'm a little suspicious about the truth of this all falling into McNulty's realm of responsibility. I think it's more likely that Goodling was calling the shots at Rove's behest. But that's the price McNulty pays for pissing 'em off. That's how they play the game.
Back in March, Bob Fertik blogged that Goodling didn't take the fifth for her own protection, but to protect Karl Rove, based on information from the McClatchy papers.
Goodling took a leading role in making sure that Tim Griffin, a protege of presidential adviser Karl Rove, replaced H.E. 'Bud' Cummins as the U.S. attorney in Arkansas. Documents released to Congress include communications between Goodling and Scott Jennings, Rove's deputy.Goodling must remain silent to protect Rove. That's why she has one of the most expensive lawyers in DC, according to the Wall Street Journal:
Well, that lawyer has had lots of time to prepare her for her testimony today. I suspect everybody's sweating bullets watching her.
[Goodling] said she never spoke to former White House counsel Harriet Miers or Karl Rove, President Bush's top political adviser, about the firings. But she admitted to have considered applicants for jobs as career prosecutors based on their political loyalties — a violation of federal law."I may have gone too far, and I may have taken inappropriate political considerations into account on some occasions," Goodling said. "And I regret those mistakes."
Rep. Bobby Scott (news, bio, voting record), D-Va., hammered Goodling on her decisions to hire prosecutors who favored Republicans.
"Do you believe they were illegal or legal?" Scott asked.
"I don't believe I intended to commit a crime," Goodling, a lawyer, answered.
"Did you break the law? Is it against the law to take those considerations into account?" Scott said.
"I believe I crossed the line, but I didn't mean to," she responded.
[Michael Elston,] chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty has told congressional investigators that phone calls he placed to four fired U.S. attorneys -- calls that three of the prosecutors say involved threats about testifying before Congress -- were made at McNulty's direction.
The story at TPM Muckraker says Gonzo's assistant McNulty balked at firing Bogden because, "he was concerned about Bogden, 50, getting a job outside government after 16 years at Justice and being able to care for his family." When someone in the meeting (including Sampson and Goodling) pointed out that Bogden wasn't married, McNulty withdrew his objection, and Bogden went down. Nothing improper here.Sampson couldn't say who had put Bogden on the list (even though he was the "keeper of the list") or why. He'd never looked at Bogden's performance, and neither did Alberto Gonzales. The only thing he can remember is that there was "a general feeling among senior staffers at the Justice Department that a 'stronger leader' could be put in Nevada." So [Bogden] was fired. And then the Justice Department told Congress that he'd been fired for "performance" reasons.All that remained, apparently, was to find out what those were.
....and hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
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