Goodling Testifies, Says Next to Nothing

It wasn’t quite as juicy as I would have liked to be honest with you. She didn’t roll over on her old bosses, and only admitted to violating a statute designed to keep politics out of bureaucratic positions, a violation which she is protected from. She also indicated that she was not the one who the White House worked through, apparently, they only dealt with Alberto and Sampson …

Here are some highlights from the coverage.

CNN’s coverage emphasized Goodling’s lack of communication with the white house. The Washington Post’s coverage focused on Goodling’s politically bias hiring practices. Below is a series of quotes that sum up the important points from her day-long testimony.

• "I was not the primary White House contact for purposes of the development or approval of the U.S. attorney replacement plan."
• Referring to mastermind Karl Rove and Bush’s lawyer Harriet Miers she said,
• "And I'm certain that I never spoke to either of them about the hiring or firing of any U.S. attorney,"
• "I was responsible more for what happened after the plan was implemented rather than maybe the plan itself,"
• "I do acknowledge I may have gone too far in asking political questions of applicants for career positions, and I may have taken inappropriate political considerations into account on some occasions, and I regret those mistakes."
• "Although I'm prepared to tell the committee what I know about the eight replaced U.S. attorneys, the truth is that I do not know why Kevin Ryan, John McKay, Carol Lam, Paul Charlton, Daniel Bogden, David Iglesias and Margaret Chiara were asked to resign in December of 2006."
• She also testified that Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty lied to congress.
• "Despite my and others' best effort, the deputy's public testimony was incomplete or inaccurate in a number of respects, I believe the deputy was not fully candid about his knowledge of White House involvement in the replacement decision."
• Paul McNulty was the first Justice Department official to testify. He said the fired US Attorneys were let go for “performance reasons”.
• Obviously that’s been proven to be a sack of horseshit, the Justice Department’s internal review process found many of the fired attorneys rated excellent. In one example, shortly before Carol Lam was fired she had won a high-profile case against Republican Duke Cunningham for bribery.
• McNulty has been privately saying he was mislead by Goodling. Her testimony today refutes that position and casts McNulty and DOJ colleague William E. Moschella’s testimony in a criminal light.