BREAKING: Monica "Keys To The Kingdom" Goodling - Granted Immunity

Breaking: Goodling granted immunity.

The House Judiciary Committee voted moments ago to grant immunity to Monica Goodling — former counsel to Alberto Gonzales and the Justice Department’s liaison to the White House — and issue a subpoena compelling her to testify. Yesterday, fired U.S. Attorney David Iglesias said he believes that Goodling holds the “keys to the kingdom” in terms of uncovering the roots of the U.S. Attorney purge:

I think Monica Goodling is holding the keys to the kingdom. I think if they get her to testify under oath with a transcript, and have her describe the process between the information flow between the White House counsel, White House and the Justice Department, I believe the picture becomes a lot clearer.

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/04/25/breaking-goodling-given-immunity/

Oh my, my oh my. This is getting more interesting by the moment.

Oh the Irony, another Monica

(I'm SO loving Congress these days)

:popcorn:

Going to be needing it for :popcorn:

spew 70+ "I don't recall" answers like our dear AG Gonzo? :eyes:

AFAIK, she'd then not only be subject to perjury charges and contempt of Congress charges, she could also lose the immunity and become prosecutable across the board.

My recollection of that is hazy, but I seem to recall that his testimony made prosecutions impossible.

In this case, the potential prosecutions will not be of Goodling but rather of higher ups, such as Gonzales. She is strictly a small fish.

This doctrinal tenet is variously called the "Yes, Jesus Loves Me Dispensation", or the "Jesus Loves Me More Than You Loophole."

I'm not so sure this is a good thing...:eyes:

:popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn:

Not sure especially since the "big announcement" that the WH is investigating itself via the OSC. It looks like the OSC thing is another tactic to stonewall everything and respond with "we will not comment on an on-going investigation". Perino needs a little help getting the press of her back and they threw her a raft with this one.

Why not? It's the "in" thing to do.

she'd be stupid to throw it away like that. If you have immunity, it's the time to admit every wrong yu ever did in your past because nothing you say can be held against you as evidence.

K%R

K&R!!

suffer a "totally unexpected suicide."

on how many times she doesnt recall.

Should be low since she has immunity but she is also a loyalist :(

could now come back with "I don't remember" for an issue that she previously pleaded the 5th for self-incrimination.

if Monica is given immunity, doesn't that mean she HAS to testify?

She could opt for going to jail, but it seems most likely that her attorneys determined this route would keep her from facing criminal charges that had the potential to land her in jail.

:shrug: She may just use the "I can't recall" Republican routine.

Usually, a grant of immunity gives immunity only to the crimes that you may have committed that you're asked to testify about. It does not grant immunity to perjury when you testify.

The thing about the "I can't remember" dance is that it replaces a provable lie with an unprovable lie - it's very hard to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you actually do remember something you claim you forgot.

:shrug:

She's granted immunity for anything she may reveal in her testimony. If she lies she can still be prosecuted for perjury.

It really doesn't even make sense without the not in there. :spank: I be big dummy....

Monica better watch out.....above all the crappers in the whitehouse, even above bush I would love to see this slithering snake in an orange jumpsuit....

Her immunity would be worthless at that point wouldn't it? My fear is that she will still wish to protect her buddies because she is a good extremist-soldier and has nowhere to go if she is thrown out into the cold. She is a hack with a worthless degree and will not be able to get a job without recommendations from other extemist-hacks. So does she go up and spill the beans or does she go up and say a few things but nothing that will lead the Senate anywhere in its efforts to figure out this mess?

So she probably won't. At least let's hope not!

Oh, I think this is so hilarious! Another Monica might take down the mighty GOP!!

Oh the sheer irony of it all! :rofl:

This is the Repigs Monica.

Hang on for the ride because it's going to be a bumpy one! This is going to be a MAJOR fight. KKKRove has got to be shakin' in his boots now!

When somebody is granted immunity, does that protect one from lying under oath as well? Or does it just cover participation in illegal activities the testimony is about?

because she will not be under threat of incriminating herself. She still must take the oath and thus not commit perjury, but that doesn't mean that she won't pull the "I don't recall" weasel.

I don't see anything so far indicating she has done that...

ergo: there is nothing to waive

if they were to question her on a subject that could incriminate her of a crime she has not been immunized against that would be another story

anywhere...

but granting her immunity is the end run around her preemptively pleading the fifth.

If she starts claiming that she doesn't remember anything, they will just revoke her immunity. I suspect that she is in too deep, and eventually she will be implicated by someone else. Now is her opportunity to avoid going to jail, but if she doesn't cooperate, she still has that very real risk. I think she is more concerned about avoiding jail time than protecting her masters. She is probably smart enough to know that any loyalty she shows now will not be reciprocated.

Right now, we don't know.

that those leading these hearings, do have prior knowledge of what Ms. Goodling will testify to. This immunity is not a pardon for all crimes, past, present and future. Just from the crimes that Ms. Goodling feels she may have committed, with regards to this case.

:patriot: :patriot: :patriot:

Occasionally, though rarely, things happen that make me think we might have a small, tiny, teeny chance to get our country back.

this mind-numbed RW REGENT UNIV LAW School grad will flip on her mentors??

i smell "I cant recall" at least 50 times.

i only wish it would happen.

No one else knew anything, Monica planned and executed
all of it, and tricked her superiors into going along...
This "immunity" could backfire if she shows up with
such a pack of well-written lies to tell.

that the cmtee was going to get a proffer from her atty outlining what her testimony would generally cover prior to any decision on whether to grant immunity. Does anyone know whether that was done or not?

So to speak... :)

She wanted immunity and now she has it. So she cannot invoke her 5th Amendment Privilege not to testify about any area which she has been granted immunity.

As far as invoking her 5th Amendment Privilege in the past, that has not happened. All her lawyer did was indicate she would invoke it in the future if called to testify under oath.

However, we now move on to the White House efforts to keep her from testifying on the basis that any such testimony is covered by the White House claim of 'Executive Privilege.'

The key information that is not being discussed is that there had to be an informal exchange of information from Goodlin and her attorney to the Committee granting immunity, known as a 'proffer' of what she might testify to if called. So we can assume that the content of the really damaging information is now in the hands of the Committee whether they can compel her to testify or not before the 'Executive Privilege' issue is decided by the Courts.

You cannot trust the AP to report the facts, without slipping in the 'spin' and omitting the most damning information to Repubs.

I can't recall..... I can't recall......I can't recall.......I can't recall...I can't recall..... I can't recall......I can't recall.......I can't recall....I can't recall..... I can't recall......I can't recall.......I can't recall...I can't recall..... I can't recall......I can't recall.......I can't recall

"Immunity? Great! I came up with the whole idea and did it without the knowledge of anyone in my chain of command."

I just do not think she would willingly take the fall for Bush/Rove/Cheney and go to prison.

If she were going to do that she would not have sought immunity and maintained her 5th Amendment Privilege.

How is she going to go to prison if she gets immunity?

Can you say Lewis SCOOTER Libby ??

he fell on the sword and was tossed aside like a cheap rug. This is a young lady with her whole life ahead of her. I don't think she was too thrilled with the idea of being labeled a "Bush Loyalist". Skippy can't give the protection that the old man can.

nt

willingly gone to prison as a scapegoat for this misadministration? I can't think of any right off the top of my head. That would make Scooter one of the not many......

but these scapegoats know they are up against the bush crime family, how many "I don't recalls" will she say??

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=746672&mesg_id=752472

and see at bottom re MZM at

http://oversight.house.gov/

Obstruction of justice my friends in order to conceal a domestic CIA funding of GOP leads Monica to moneylaundering connections, hence the John Dowd attorny Monica's handlers have retained for her. This does not benefit her, however; she'll never work in govt. again and her law license is toast. She could become a heroine (no pun intended, since heroin is the CIA's main off-the-books money source that Congress cannot seem to be able to get a clue letalone a handle on).

Alfred McCoy's classic The Politics of Heroin (CIA complicity in the global drug trade) is now online
http://www.drugtext.org/library/books/McCoy/default.htm

Dowd will be having a fit trying to keep this line of investigation out of the public"s view

have finished the intro and am getting into the main text now.

What I've read so far jives with everything I knew about this, although I didn't know all of what I'm reading, for sure. VERY interesting and quite discouraging in many ways.

What frustrates the most is that the ideal opportunity to eradicate the world heroin trade at the end of WWII was wasted.

With American consumer demand reduced to its lowest point in fifty years and the international syndicates in disarray, the U.S. government had a unique opportunity to eliminate heroin addiction as a major American social problem. However, instead of delivering the death blow to these criminal syndicates, the U.S. government-through the Central Intelligence Agency and its wartime predecessor, the OSS-created a situation that made it possible for the SicilianAmerican Mafia and the Corsican underworld to revive the international narcotics traffic.(6)

Seems that a lot of those "rumors" we've heard for some time about this may be quite true.

Of course, the CIA is not going to be happy about this entire story coming out, right? Wonder how that will play into the future....

I'm not a lawyer myself, but I've seen lots of lawyers in the punditry speculating on what this or that action of congress or a committee would cause to happen. But like Impeachment (congress's only real enforcement power) this is not a legal proceeding, it is a political process.

Unless and until we see some public expression of willingness of Goodling to respond this means very little. In fact, it's not really a "grant" of immunity, but rather a "foisting upon." If she did not seek it, there was no proffer. There is no judge to incarcerate her for defiance and congress has no real enforcement mechanism other than to charge her with contempt then refer for prosecution (yes, to Gonzo -- he'll get right on that).

It may well be just one more blind alley of the DemocRat's Maze the DC Dems put themselves in when they took impeachment off the table.

----

http://www.firedoglake.com/
This morning, the House Judiciary Committee voted to extend immunity to Monica Goodling, and to issue a subpoena to her requiring her testimony before the committee regarding the USAtty firings and here role therewith. From the AP via WaPo:
A House committee voted Wednesday to grant immunity to Monica Goodling, a key aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales during the firings of eight U.S. attorneys. She had refused to testify, invoking her Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.
The 32-6 vote by the House Judiciary Committee surpassed the 2/3 majority required to grant a witness immunity from prosecution. A separate vote to authorize a subpoena for Goodling passed by voice vote….
The votes instruct a House lawyer to seek an immunity grant from a federal court. The grant would not take effect unless Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., chooses to issue Goodling a subpoena compelling her to testify, Conyers said.

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/
It is likely to be weeks before the committee actually gets to interview Goodling. That's because the law requires that the Justice Department be allowed an opportunity to provide its views on immunity -- i.e. whether it might interfere with an existing or possible investigation. If the DoJ objects to giving Goodling immunity, then the committee would be forced to consider whether to defer or delay conferring immunity. And regardless of what the DoJ says, the local federal court has to approve giving Goodling immunity. All this is likely to take several weeks.

:eyes:

Has this ever happened before?

it. Maybe it is a first. Certainly it seems like a conflict of interest to say the least!

While it's fine to know what the regular procedure is -- particularly with a DOJ (ex)employee (and thanx), the point I was making is that none of this matters if Goodling's intent is to remain recalcitrant/defiant. Or worse, if she's been ordered to remain so for "national security reasons," which may also be true of her boss.

The bottom line is with impeachment "off the table" the congress is literally impotent to compel anyone in the "unitary executive" to do or say anything.

They're chasing a carrot at the end of a stick held by the regime.

---

Why are they treating this evil tart like a decent human being?

ANSWER: Because she's a young, blond, white woman.

Let the games begin...

John Poindexter and Oliver North were granted immunity to testify before Congress and later in the criminal prosecution the Court dismissed the charges because the same information that Poindexter and North testified about was the basis for the criminal charges.

I disagree on the story being circulated that the Committee has not had an opportunity to interview Goodlin except in the strictest of parsed terms. You can bet that her attorney has made a proffer informally for the Committee to decide to grant her immunity. There would be no reason to take that action otherwise.

OF course, appearances are important to each of these parties.

Usually the main factor that causes a defendant to seek immunity is the prosecution 'already has in its possession' sufficient information to proceed to prosecute the defendant, so it is a technique to trade what the prosecutors do not know in exchange for a more lenient sentence.

Goodlin already acknowledged her employment with the Government has ended for good, and she likely will be disciplined by the Bar if she testifies to criminal conduct on her part, so that part of her life is pretty much finished. The White House is not going to come to her rescue except as it benefits them.

So I see this as part and parcel of a 'deal' to help her avoid a conviction and sentence that includes prison.

My understanding was that, even though he had immunity (or because he had immunity) he testified that for the most part the whole Iran/Contra affair was his idea, and his idea alone, and he refused to testify against any of his co-conspirators.

Then, later, even though all his testimony was false, his convictions were thown out because of the limited immunity that he was given in return for his public testimony. Now why wouldn't this Monica Goodling person do the same thing? Ollie has his own tv show now.

He said it stopped with him so as to not implicate his boss - George HW Bush. Yes, I know, it was during the Reagan administration. But, there is little doubt now that Bush and the neo-cons were running a shadow foreign policy out of the WH basement. That was the final break between Reagan and Bush, and from what I have read, they were never close to begin with.

I just can't help but wonder; what safeguards are in place to ensure that she gives accurate testimony against her co-conspirators?

Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but I don't trust any of these guys too much any more. They won't get behind Dennis on impeaching the VP. What good are some of these guys, except for perpetuating the status quo?

That should be incentive enough to tell the truth. And with everyone protecting their own backs now, you can be sure that false testimony on her part would come back to haunt her.

Are you familiar with Oliver North? Do you know about what happened during Iran/Contra? Can you understand my concern? Doesn't it sound awfuly familiar to you?

First of all, Ollie was almost a household name by the time he testified, and he was a hero to the right for leading the charge on the Contras, which was also a popular cause for the right. Monica who? is not going to command that kind of star power no matter how well she performs - and she may not perform well at all. I suspect she is going to "sing like a canary" to save her own butt. And there is no popular cause. No one, except perhaps Bush, is going to go to the mat to defend Gonzales for the way he has handled the U.S. attorney situation or for anything else. Even Bush's defense was incredibly anemic, "He broke no laws." Bush has only hung with him this long because he knows he and Rove are implicated in political firings. And the Republicans, particularly conservative ones, have never liked Gonzales because they think he is a Bush crony who is in over his head now, was in over his head as the WH Counsel, and probably was in over his head on the Texas SC. He is a quota hire, pure and simple, and if Bush could have gotten away with it, he would have nominated Gonzales as the first Hispanic on the SCOTUS. This is a royal fuckup and Monica Goodling is no Oliver North who is going to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for Gonzales - or Bush. In fact, I predict that her testimony will finally force his resignation if he even lasts that long.

with the committee's legislative work.

What work? How do we know Gonzales DID any work or if anyone in his employ DID any work. He can't remember squat.

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/04/25/breaking-goodling-given-immunity
..breaking-goodling-given-immunity

<snip>
UPDATE II: TPM Muckraker reports that the dissenters “were Reps. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), Chris Cannon (R-UT), Randy Forbes (R-VA), Steve King (R-IA), Trent Franks (R-AZ), and Louie Gohmert (R-TX). Rep. Cannon claimed that the investigation was harming the Justice Department’s ability to conduct business, and Rep. Forbes called the committee’s investigation the ‘hearings to nowhere,’ saying that the investigation was interfering with the committee’s legislative work.”


Wonder what these LOVELY little dissenters are hiding? Anybody still have the old Abramhoff list of rethugs who took the money and ran? These guys on the list of junkets to Saipan?

James Sensenbrenner (R-WI)
Chris Cannon (R-UT)
Randy Forbes (R-VA)
Steve King (R-IA)
Trent Franks (R-AZ)
Louie Gohmert (R-TX)



edit to add space / ck spelling

the group that worked 3 days a week, if that, is now complaining?

Popcorn

"Answer every question truthfully and completely or your ass could wind up in jail. I am not kidding. This is deadly serious business. You have to look out for yourself and the best way you can do that is by TELLING THE TRUTH."

like Gonzo is going to prosecute her for perjury ?

yeah, gonzo will be a real hero.:eyes:

she will lie thru her teeth just like all other repukes.

Immunity deals go 'poof' if you lie under oath about anything. Part of the deal is that you testify truthfully about all matters. If you lie, your credibility is reduced to zero and you are of no use to the prosecution. In that event, you are stuck with all your incriminating statements and you may be fully prosecuted.

I have seen it happen --prosecution comes to court and asks that the plea arrangement be withdrawn.

It is ugly and prison usually follows.

And, while it's concerning to me that they'll find ways around all the "traps" any opponent might lay for them, I do have some hope (reasonable, I think) that with all the balls the top criminals in the White House are keeping in the air and fires they're trying to put out, they'll blow it at least once.

Then we get the "squealer" we need in order to lay out the story coherently -- and if we're lucky, fully.

I remember one of my temp bosses, a trial lawyer, advised his clients as ChimpH8R put it when dealing with immunity agreements. DUer Senator points out that this isn't court and Congress has "rules" instead and damn little in the way of tools for enforcement. That makes sense, unfortunately.

Yet I feel Bu$hCo must by now be finding themselves very hard-pressed to keep navigating the minefields materializing in quick succession right under their feet.

And isn't there the factor of resentment that is likely to be felt by some of the underlings at being put on the spot and at risk of criminal charges and prison sentences? Could even the mafia-like enforcement behavior of the GW regime provide for complete loyalty from every single person on their side, indefinitely?

What if Monica (or anyone else in her shoes) gets really pissed to be facing such an ordeal, maybe even resented being ordered to do illegal things in the first place but relented and did them, and now regrets it? What if she hates her boss(es) for letting her take the heat -- as it seems to me Sampson (or Libby for that matter) might well have done?

It has to be a very lonely feeling -- in spite of (fingers-crossed) promises made to you -- when you end up facing possible criminal charges, need immunity or to take the fifth, and your (former) bosses and colleagues basically exit stage left from your life! The entire structured existence Monica knew has collapsed in a very bad way for her. Now when she needs reassurances most, she is probably getting next to none, though someone may be relaying "advice" or even orders from "above."

I doubt she feels very secure at all that she can avoid prison, and NO ONE takes such a risk lightly -- with good reason.

Why remain loyal to someone who isn't remaining loyal to you? Why suffer disgrace and loss alone while the ones who got you into the hot water in the first place go sailing blithely on, forgetting all about you and the many things you did to help them?!

Might not at least one or two of the many minions in the "criminal box" decide that his or her best bet for a positive outcome personally is to actually cooperate fully and testify truthfully to all s/he knows?

Must feel mighty different to be on the "outside" -- and fearing life on that other "Inside" (of prison, I mean).

Once in there, you really ARE history! And oh so helpless....

Someone is going down, or going to jail... It's a house of dominos Gonzales, Card and Rove, Cheney, Bush

haven't been on line much today, so must have missed it.