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U.S. Atty Probers Demand Goodling Any Way They Can
House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., sent a letter today asking Monica Goodling, the Justice Department’s liaison to the White House, to appear in a closed-door interview to discuss what she knows about whether politics improperly played a role in the firing of eight U.S. attorneys.
Goodling, through her attorney, John M. Dowd, informed the House and Senate Judiciary committees last week that she would invoke her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself by testifying in the probe.
“We are concerned that several of the asserted grounds for refusing to testify do not satisfy the well-established bases for a proper invocation of the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination,” wrote Conyers and Rep. Linda Sanchez, who leads the subcommittee investigating the firings.
“In addition, of course, the Fifth Amendment privilege, under long-standing Supreme Court precedents, does not provide a reason to fail to appear to testify; the privilege must be invoked by the witness on a question-by-question basis,” the lawmakers wrote.
Interviewing Goodling in public could “obviate the need to subpoena” her, forcing her to appear at a public hearing.
Such a proceeding, they wrote, would give people a chance to see and hear the specific questions to which Ms. Goodling is asserting the Fifth Amendment privilege and allow lawmakers and the public to draw inferences from her invocation of it.
Dowd defended his client’s decision not to testify.
“Threats of public humiliation for exercising her Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights are not well taken and are frowned upon by the courts,” Dowd said in a statement. “In a free country, every citizen should have the liberty to exercise their rights without threats or coercion.”
But Conyers and Sanchez dispute that. In their letter, they say that Goodling’s assertions are not “a valid basis for invoking the privilege against self-incrimination.”
Their letter states: “The fact that a few senators and members of the House have expressed publicly their doubts about the credibility of the attorney general and the deputy attorney general in their representations to Congress about the U.S. attorneys’ termination does not in any way excuse your client from answering questions honestly and to the best of her ability.”
“Of course, we expect (as we are sure you do) your client to tell the truth in any interview or testimony. The alleged concern that she may be prosecuted for perjury by the Department of Justice for fully truthful testimony is not only an unjustified basis for invoking the privilege and without reasonable foundation in this case, but also so far as we know an unwarranted aspersion against her employer.”
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