Gonzales aide gets immunity & subpoena

[Katana]

A House committee Wednesday voted 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 under the Fifth Amendment.

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.

Link

Hmm. Should make for some interesting testimony.

 

[bozothedeathmachine]

Hmm. Should make for some interesting testimony.

That's if her pleading the 5th was sincere. If she used the 5th as a convenient ruse to cover her bosses behind more than her own, then now has a choice to make.

Seeing how it will play out, whether she testifies or not, will indeed be interesting.

 

[Katana]

That's if her pleading the 5th was sincere. If she used the 5th as a convenient ruse to cover her bosses behind more than her own, then now has a choice to make.

Seeing how it will play out, whether she testifies or not, will indeed be interesting.

With a subpoena, does she have the option not to testify?

 

[corplinx]

It seems the strategy here is keep the issue going and going until he resigns. I'm not sure what you need immunity from here.

 

[hgc]

It seems the strategy here is keep the issue going and going until he resigns. I'm not sure what you need immunity from here.

The Gonzales resignation is not the end game here, but just a milestone on the road to exposing the politicization of federal prosecutions for the purpose of influencing elections. Perhaps that's why the Bush is resisting so much on the Gonzales departure, thinking that if he can hold up the train at this station, it won't advance.

 

[Darth Rotor]

Link

Hmm. Should make for some interesting testimony.

The T-shirt for this latest move seems to me:

"Send Gonzo to Gitmo"

Shave his head, tell the guards there his name is Gemayal, and hold him incommunicado for a few months. When he asks what he is being charged with, the reply the first 22 times is to be:

"I don't recall."

DR

 

[pgwenthold]

It seems the strategy here is keep the issue going and going until he resigns. I'm not sure what you need immunity from here.

I don't either, but she is the one who invoked the 5th.

 

[ponderingturtle]

That's if her pleading the 5th was sincere. If she used the 5th as a convenient ruse to cover her bosses behind more than her own, then now has a choice to make.

Seeing how it will play out, whether she testifies or not, will indeed be interesting.

But the point is that she can not plead the 5th anymore. She has to answer the questions.

 

[Unabogie]

HGC is right, this isn't about Gonzales. There's a new article in the Wall Street Journal about Rep. Rick Renzi, who has just resigned two of his committee spots after being interviewed by the FBI:

Last night, the AP reported that when the local press revealed that Rep. Rick Renzi's (R-AZ) was under investigation just weeks before the election, his top aide called U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton's aide to ask about it. Charlton was one of the U.S. attorneys who was fired little more than a month later. And even though Charlton's aide had reported the contact to the Justice Department (as the rules dictate), that report was not among the thousands of pages the Justice Department turned over to congressional investigators.

So the WSJ says:

Investigators pursuing the Renzi case had been seeking clearance from senior Justice Department officials on search warrants, subpoenas and other legal tools for a year before the election, people close to the case said....


...the investigation clearly moved slowly: Federal agents opened the case no later than June 2005, yet key witnesses didn't get subpoenas until early this year, those close to the case said. The first publicly known search -- a raid of a Renzi family business by the Federal Bureau of Investigation -- was carried out just last week....

So you have yet another USA fired after coming too close to a Republican criminal, and this time, after the improper contact was reported, DOJ withheld that info from congress, which is obstruction.

Does anyone really think this is ok, legal, and not a big deal? Does anyone think Alberto Gonzales is running this show, and not Bush and Rove?

The documents show that Charlton was fired and the reasons for that firing were shifting as the scandal broke. There is no other interpretation other than Bush and Rove ordered a USA to be fired to save a Republican who was breaking the law.

 

[corplinx]

The documents show that Charlton was fired and the reasons for that firing were shifting as the scandal broke.

The simplest explanation is, he wouldn't do what the president wanted and was canned since he serves at the president's request.

The conspiracy theory that he was fired on Dec 7 to try to influence a previous election is amusing.

You can read more about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_K._Charlton_(attorney)

He was a productive and exceptional attorney but forgot who his boss was is the simple explanation.

 

[corplinx]

The firings of Carol Lam and David Iglesias are the ones you should spotlight as they seem the most substanceless.

Lumping "The Gonzalez 8" together seems pretty woo though since you had dead weight like Kevin Ryan that got trimmed.

 

[billydkid]

Link

Hmm. Should make for some interesting testimony.

I have never been clear about this - can you plead the 5th once you've been given immunity? Seems to me some people take immunity to mean immunity from having to tell the truth and not just immunity from prosecution.

 

[ponderingturtle]

The simplest explanation is, he wouldn't do what the president wanted and was canned since he serves at the president's request.

The conspiracy theory that he was fired on Dec 7 to try to influence a previous election is amusing.

You can read more about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_K._Charlton_(attorney)

He was a productive and exceptional attorney but forgot who his boss was is the simple explanation.

Exactly he throught his job was to enforce the law and not do what the president wants.

 

[ponderingturtle]

I have never been clear about this - can you plead the 5th once you've been given immunity? Seems to me some people take immunity to mean immunity from having to tell the truth and not just immunity from prosecution.

No you can't. I remember hearing about someone being in jail in the white water invistigation for exactly this reason. She had immunity and still refused to testify.

Also this is why those journalists where held in jail for not naming sources.

 

[corplinx]

Exactly he throught his job was to enforce the law and not do what the president wants.

You couldn't be further off the mark actually. This meme has a lot of steam so I don't see it dieing though. You aren't the only person who thinks this though so don't feel bad.

Try reading up on the matter.

 

[Darth Rotor]

Also this is why those journalists where held in jail for not naming sources.

Don't think so. Pleading the Fifth is not the same legal matter as protecting sources when one is a journalist.

DR

 

[Katana]

I have never been clear about this - can you plead the 5th once you've been given immunity? Seems to me some people take immunity to mean immunity from having to tell the truth and not just immunity from prosecution.

I thought that immunity essentially nullified taking the 5th the intent of which is to protect you from being forced to make statements that could be used against you as part of a criminal prosecution.

 

[Regnad Kcin]

Alberto is Texas toast.

 

[Unabogie]

The simplest explanation is, he wouldn't do what the president wanted and was canned since he serves at the president's request.

The conspiracy theory that he was fired on Dec 7 to try to influence a previous election is amusing.

You can read more about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_K._Charlton_(attorney)

He was a productive and exceptional attorney but forgot who his boss was is the simple explanation.

No, the simplest explanation is found by looking at the timeline.

1. Charlton attempts to investigate Renzi's land deal.
2. DOJ stonewalls for 18 months.
3. Someone at DOJ leaks to the press that Renzi is under investigation. Renzi breaks the congressional ethics rules and contacts the USA directly to ask about the investigation
4. USA reports that contact to DOJ
5. USA is fired
6. Reasons for firing shift from "obscenity charges" to "death penalty case". All reasons are created after the fact and there are cross-outs on the documents, showing revisions.
7. DOJ neglects to include this reported contact in documents supplied to congress.

Certainly the fact that these excuses for his firing weren't on any documents until after the scandal broke are significant data points, are they not? In fact, after he was fired, he wrote an email asking DOJ what he should tell the press as to why he was fired, and DOJ didn't respond?

Even Lindsay Graham understood that Charlton was fired and the reasons for that firing were made up.

Funny that you buy their excuse but the Judiciary Committee does not.

By the way, did you know that Debra Yang, the USA from Los Angeles, who was investigating Jerry Lewis (R), was on the list to be fired? But she was not fired, and instead "resigned" and took a job at the very firm defending Lewis for a hefty 1.5 million dollar signing fee?

 

[Darth Rotor]

\So you have yet another USA fired after coming too close to a Republican criminal, and this time, after the improper contact was reported, DOJ withheld that info from congress, which is obstruction.

That's how this looks, from the public info available as of now.

The documents show that Charlton was fired and the reasons for that firing were shifting as the scandal broke. There is no other interpretation other than Bush and Rove ordered a USA to be fired to save a Republican who was breaking the law.

Really? Do you have all of the facts? That interpretation, or rather your conclusion leaping, is one possible explanation, and I'd go so far as to call it plausible, and even probable.

When you can show that Renzi was in fact breaking the law, you can raise that to most likely.

"Only possible" from this data is a CT style, blinders on approach, and hardly worthy of a Skeptic. Dylan Avery much?

Yes, I am nitpicking.

As far as betting money goes, your take on this seems to be the way to bet.

DR