We are trying to get to the front page

And the Washington Post is only too happy to oblige.  The resignation of Monica Goodling yesterday, provides another event around which Democrats and the Washington Post can stage endless accusations and innuendo that there is something nefarious going on in Washington with the dismissal of those eight U.S. attorneys.

"We are trying to get to the truth," Leahy, Schumer and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) wrote in a letter to Gonzales yesterday. "Documents should be provided without restrictions on disclosure so that they may be used to question witnesses -- including yourself -- on any issue that is an important part of our inquiry."

Gonzales' ex-chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson, testified that Gonzales had been regularly briefed on the progress to replace eight U.S. attorneys who were felt to be not on board with President Bush's judicial philosophy.  Senate Judiciary Committee members say this contradicts Gonzales' testimony in which he claimed to have no role in the firings.  The Post words it this way.

Seven prosecutors were dismissed in December and another was removed earlier as part of a plan set in motion by the White House to replace U.S. attorneys viewed as insufficiently loyal to President Bush or his policies. Gonzales has sought to minimize his role in the firings, but recently released documents and testimony show he was regularly briefed on the effort.

However, "regularly briefed" according to Mr. Sampson means roughly five times over a two year period.

The two men talked about the dismissal plans over a two-year period, Mr. Sampson said, beginning in early 2005 when Mr. Gonzales was still the White House counsel. Mr. Sampson said he had briefed his boss at least five times before December 2006, when seven of the eight prosecutors were ousted.

Do five briefings over a two year period constitute active participation?  Possibly.  However, since Gonzales was responsible for signing off on the firings, not only would you have to assume he would be briefed on them, it would be absurd to think he wouldn't.  Yet Democrats would like to interpret his claim of non-involvement in the dismissals to be a claim that he was totally unaware of what was going on, and thus a contradiction.

According to the Post, acting Assistant Attorney General Richard A. Hertling wrote that Gonzales and McNulty have "taken steps to ensure that no actual or apparent conflict of interest would arise" in connection with the dismissals, and Sampson testified that none of the eight U.S. attorneys were dismissed because of investigations that they were either pursuing or not pursuing.

When Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., asked if he was "prepared to swear under oath that no U.S. attorney was asked to resign because the U.S. attorney was pursuing an investigation ... or failing to undertake a prosecution,'' Sampson answered yes. Later, in response to questioning from Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., Sampson was even more explicit that "no U.S. attorney was asked to resign for the purpose of influencing a particular case for a political reason.''

Do committee Democrats choose not to believe either of them?  Which of it do they choose to believe, what exactly are they after?  Leigh Ferrara writing in Mother Jones article offers this clue.

At this point, Gonzales' fate seems uncertain. If he did in fact make misleading statements about his role in the controversy, he did so in front of the press. Yet, Gonzales is not completely in the clear. Should Congress determine that he was intentionally lying, it remains a remote possibility that he could be charged for obstructing a congressional investigation. When I called the Senate Judiciary Committee to inquire whether it might consider taking action of this kind, a spokesperson said she was unaware of an effort to do so. She did, however, bring up the case of J. Steven Griles, the former Interior Department official and Abramoff lackey, who recently pled guilty for doing just that.

Committee Democrats have set a perjury trap Monica Goodling does well to avoid.  And by postponing Gonazales' testimony from April 12th until the 17th, they've given themselves and the Post five more days in which to plaster this story on the nation's front pages.  Let's see how many they can get in between now and then.

Comments

[Vigilante]

Resigned or not, Americans deserve to see Goodling get her day in court -er- Senate. Let's see if she can set a record for the number of references to the 5th Amendment.