PubliusInfinitum
Rookie
- Aug 18, 2008
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- #101
Monica Goodling: 'I Know I Crossed the Line' | Mother Jones
All indications are that it was Goodling's fealty to president and party over her loyalty to the department itself that proved her undoing.
Yesterday, dressed in a dark suit and flanked by four lawyers, Goodling, who asked for and received immunity in exchange for her testimony, appeared nervous though composed as she took her place in front of a full session of John Conyers' powerful committee. One of three senior Justice Department officials who has been forced to resign in the wake of the U.S. Attorney firings, Goodling is a 1999 graduate of Pat Robertson's evangelical law school and a party loyalist who once did opposition research for the Republican National Committee. She rose quickly through the ranks of the Justice Department, becoming senior counsel to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as well as the agency's liaison to the White House. Granted the authority to hire and fire a range of Justice Department officials, political appointees as well as career staffers, she often questioned candidates on their ideology and once stalled the hiring of an applicant for a nonpolitical position deeming him too "liberal." "I know I took political considerations into account on some occasions," she told Congress yesterday. "I know I crossed the line."
And the problem is what?