Artur Davis:
Based on the parts I've seen, the best questioner in the Monica Goodling procedings so far has been Artur Davis, a former AUSA. He's good. One other comitttee member gave up her time to Davis, which is a smart move. Very interesting testimony from Goodling right now, actually, although it's hard to put all the pieces together watching it on the fly.
UPDATE: This is the testimony I had in mind. According to Goodling, she talked to Gonzales about getting a transfer because of the scandal. At one point, Gonzales started telling her his recollection of what happened, and then he asked her if she had "any reaction" to his recollection. According to Goodling, she felt uncomfortable with the question because she figured their conversation would become public at some point, so she just didn't say anything.
UPDATE: This is the testimony I had in mind. According to Goodling, she talked to Gonzales about getting a transfer because of the scandal. At one point, Gonzales started telling her his recollection of what happened, and then he asked her if she had "any reaction" to his recollection. According to Goodling, she felt uncomfortable with the question because she figured their conversation would become public at some point, so she just didn't say anything.
Goodling has admitted that the GW Bush Administration's Department of Justice, the Department charged with ensuring that Administration complied with the law, placed politics wholesale above their obvious legal responsibilities in making hiring/firing decisions based upon party affiliation and political purity.
McNulty has testified that the GW Bush Administration elected to reject the opinions of the U.S. Attorney on the legality of the domestic spying operations and went so far as to attempt to obtain the backdated signature of Ashcroft when he was non-compis and temporarily not acting as A.G.
Conclusion: The GW Administration has rejected the rule of law.
I think this conclusion is clearly evident from myriad pieces of evidence. Frankly, I don't know how any truely ethical attorney (or true American) can defend this Administration given what we now know.
Holy sh*t Goodling just said Gonzales testified inaccurately under oath about whether he saw the firing list.
Please cite the transcript wherein Gooding "admitted" what you claimed she admitted.
Link me a transcript and I'll be happy to oblige.
Did it heat up for you yet?
1. She called McNulty a liar. (Referring to his Feb. 6 testimony: “I think in some ways he simply didn’t communicate all that he knew. And I’m certainly not saying that he did it deliberately.” And referring to information he had on the USAs who were fired: "“The allegation is false,” . . . “I did not withhold information from the deputy. To the contrary, I worked diligently to compile and provide the deputy with dozens of pages of statistics and other information that I thought he was likely to need, based on the questions that were being asked at that time.”
2. She testified: "I do acknowledge that 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" (That, as I understand, is improper. See Vieth v. Jubelirer, 541 U.S. 267, 324 (2004)(Stevens, J., dissenting) ("Thus, unless party affiliation is an appropriate requirement for the position in question, government officials may not base a decision to hire, promote, transfer, recall, discharge, or retaliate against an employee, or to terminate a contract, on the individual’s partisan affiliation or speech." (citing Board of Comm’rs, Wabaunsee Cty. v. Umbehr, 518 U.S. 668, 674—
675 (1996); O’Hare Truck Service, Inc. v. City of Northlake, 518 U.S. 712, 716—717 (1996); Rutan v. Republican Party of Ill., 497 U.S. 62, 64—65 (1990); Branti v. Finkel, 445 U.S. 507, 519—520 (1980); Elrod, 427 U.S., at 355—363))
3. She implicated the WH (at least indirectly) (and again hung McNulty out) ("“I believe the deputy was not fully candid about his knowledge of White House involvement in the replacement decision.")
You are the one who claimed that Gooding "admitted" certain things. Thus the burden is on your to support your claim with evidence. All I saw from your post were inferences you supposedly drew from Gooding's testimony. People often draw false inferences, and nothing in your prior posts gives you any sort of credibility. So until you can identify specific statements Gooding man, no one will consider your conclusions proper.
You certainly aren't going to have any personal credibility if you ask for citations from a transcript and then disavow that is what you asked for. If you wanted something else, why not ask for it in the first instance?
If you saw her testimony then you know that she admitted to making personel decisions based upon the improper consideration of political party affiliation. She further admitted this crossed the line into illegality. And, in fact, she took the fifth as a result.
Her admission of this wrongdoing is not one that reflects only on her as she was no isolated supervisor making a single hiring decision for improper reason. Instead, she was tasked with implementing DOJ hiring policy. Do you know her biography?
She received her J.D. in 1999 from Regent University Law School, and then worked as an opposition researcher for the Republican National Committee during the 2000 presidential campaign. If she ever practiced as an attorney after law school, I am unware of it.
Insead, she joined the DOJ press office after the election. She subsequently moved to the department's executive office, a strange leap to make from the press office in and of itself, which is responsible for personnel management and evaluation, later becoming deputy director of the executive office. After less than a year, she joined the attorney general’s office, working as the the White House liaison but, despite this change in position or perhaps because of it, retained some of her executive office authority over personnel matters. Her authority over hiring expanded significantly in March 2006, when Gonzales delegated her and Sampson the power to appoint or dismiss all department political appointees besides United States attorneys.
Great questions. The answer appears to be that they were "just Republican party operatives" and they didn't know the difference.
Goodling was asking prospective immigration judges whether they were Republicans. Listening to the testimony, it appears that when someone called her on it, the DOJ instituted a hiring freeze on immigration judges.
Meanwhile, I've read that disproportionately large numbers of graduates from nth tier Regent's Law School were hired into the DOJ over applicants from better institutions. These people are not political appointees, presumably they were hired to ensure a far right influence in the DOJ long after GW is gone.
With these admissions, it will be interesting to see what civil suits result.
These are sad times for many former AUSAs.
Mike, to you and others like you that continue to insist on some epistemically impossible proof that events "happened," we collectively stipulate that every time we say that "X happened," what we mean is that "it is statistically very unlikely that X did not happen...."
only to be corrected by goodling herself saying that she did in fact have major involvements in the firing.
From what I saw, Goodling's testimony further eroded the credibility of Gonzo and hurt McNulty. Goodling said she and Gonzo discussed the events in question in March, and Gonzo testified that he had intentionally not discussed these events with Sampson and other fact witnesses, because he knew he might be one. Goodling said Gonzo told her in the March meeting that he was going to have to testify, so he knew he was a witness.
It appears that Davis made up his mind that Goodling was a credible, sympathetic witness, and the best use of her was to use her to score points against others. I didn't watch the hearings much, though, so maybe I missed the part where people went after her for using a political litmus test in her hiring decisions.
AG AG and Goodling appear to think the answer is "no." But they've been wrong before.
Mr. Attorney General:
is suggesting to a witness what she should say to Congress a federal crime?
How about helping to "shape" the witness' recollection, is that illegal?
How about sharing with the witness another witness' recollection of event, with the purpose of influencing the first witness' testimony recollection of the same event?
Did you meet with Ms. Goodling on March __ 2007?
During this meeting, did you share with her your recollection about the process about how the US Attorneys came to be replaced? about the reasons why some US Attorneys were asked to resign? about who was involved in the process?
(bring out AG's testimony to House; ask about his specific statements saying that he didn't discuss the events with Sampson and other "fact witnesses").
Anyway, the list goes on. I think Davis could have a lot of fun with AGAG.
5 U.S.C. § 2302(b)(1)(e) with respect to civil service employees of the DOJ who are covered by Title 5 of the U.S. code. And the relevant text: "Any employee who has authority to take, direct others to take, recommend, or approve any personnel action, shall not, with respect to such authority- discriminate for or against any employee or applicant for employment . . . on the basis of marital status or political affiliation, as prohibited under any law, rule, or regulation" See, e.g., Edwards v. Weinberger, 688 F. Supp. 203, 204 (E.D. Va. 1987) ("Th[is] provision[] prohibit[s] discrimination on the basis of . . . political affiliation.").
She probably also violated 5 U.S.C. § 2302(b)(1)(e) by "grant[ing] . . . preference or advantage not authorized by law, rule, or regulation to any employee or applicant for employment (including defining the scope or manner of competition or the requirements for any position) for the purpose of improving or injuring the prospects of any particular person for employment."
And as for the purpose of the Civil Service Reform Act, see Wild v. United States Dep't of Housing &Urban Dev., 692 F.2d 1129, 1132-33 (7th Cir. 1982) (" The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 was the culmination of a long effort to make the federal civil service more efficient and businesslike, and less political, . . . more, that is, like the work forces of (enlightened) private employers.") (Posner, J.) (citation to Senate report omitted).
It is telling about the administration when they are incapable of even abiding by the Civil Service Act. It's one thing to debate the merits of the President's Article II powers, it's quite another when you refuse to apply blackletter law. Some ethics these folks have.
Can you (Orin) suggest why she still thinks she might have been subject to criminal punishment?
All this is called "witness prep." Lawyers do it all the time. If we didn't, our witnesses wouldn't be prepared to answer the questions when they were asked in the courtroom.
As for "shaping" recollection, it really isn't very difficult if you pretend you're "investigating." Like most civil lawyers, I don't get into this much, but such techniques (like using "show ups" to identify defendants) seem to be pretty common among police. Pretty much every lawyer I know tries to get favorable witnesses to go over their stories several times, so that they will be positive in their recollection.
BTW, I always neutralize the question "did you talk about it with ____" by first saying that the most important thing is for a witness to tell the truth, so that an effort to make it look like tampering will be blunted at best.
But Gonzalez was not acting as Goodling's lawyer; he was discussing with her a situation in which both of them are potential witnesses. According to her testimony, he explained to her his recollection of the situation and asked her to respond. he said "Let me tell you what I can remember" about the firings, and laid out "his general recollection."
If you as a lawyer were to have two potential witnesses meet in order for one of them to "prepare" the other via this type of discussion, you'd be way out of line.
I'm an experienced civil lawyer and could not imagine having another witness suggest facts for a witness to testify to. That's not "preparing" a witness to answer questions. Preparing a witness involves understanding what the witness believes the facts to be (by asking the witness this, not be telling her), and ensuring that the testimony is tailored in the way that is most helpful to the case, given the facts recalled by the witness.
If there is no pending criminal investigation, can you "obstruct" or "witness tamper"? What if there was no underlying crime at all?
Witness tampering under federal law includes witnesses before Congress. See 18 USC 1512 (the witness tampering provision) and 18 USC 1515(a)(1)(B) (defining "official proceedings" as including proceedings in Congress).
Similarly, 18 USC 1505 makes it a crime to obstruct inquiries by Houses or Committees of Congress.
Of course, as the previous "Capitol Briefing" entry points out, by waiting until Davis' turn to bring up this line of questioning, thanks to their numerical advantage on the committee the other Democrats were able to keep giving time to Davis to continue with this line of questioning without interruption by the Republicans.
Do you think most proponents of civil-service protections are genuinely concerned about eliminating patronage and establishing a merit-based system? Are there certain protections that may detract from a merit-based system? Are civil service protections separate from collectively bargained, public employee union protections?
Do you think most proponents of civil-service protections are genuinely concerned about eliminating patronage and establishing a merit-based system? Are there certain protections that may detract from a merit-based system? Are civil service protections separate from collectively bargained, public employee union protections?
First, yes, proponents of civil service protections (which, I would add, go back over a century in U.S. government) are genuinely concerned about eliminating patronage. It was absolutely routine in the first part of the 20th century, in state and local governments that didn't have such protections, for, say, a new sherrif or drain commissioner or whoever to come in, fire janitors, secretaries, etc., in his department, and put in their own (often incompetent) friends, relatives, political supporters, etc. That's why civil service rules were put in.
And civil service rules are still needed to prevent that sort of thing. The Bush admin. has openly and explicitly aimed at putting political loyalty over basic competence, from Iraq reconstruction projects, to the DoJ, to FEMA, etc., etc.
To answer your third question second, civil service protections are distinct from rules that are collectively bargained by unions and management. Civil service protections apply to folks whether they are in union bargaining units or not. There can be overlapping concepts (civil service rules generally provide for "just cause" discharge, and union contracts almost always provide for just cause discharge as well), but they are two different types of rights, from different sources, often covering different subjects.
As to your second question, are there any parts of any civil service system that might detract from a merit system? Probably, yes: there are hundreds and maybe even thousands of sets of civil service rules (given that such rules govern state, city and other local government employees), and of course each set of rules has a number of provisions. Some of them are probably not good rules, in my opinion and maybe in yours too.
But to return to the point at hand, let's not pretend the Bush admin. is trying to figure out how to increase the role of "merit" in the federal civil service. The Bush admin. is following recommendations from the Heritage Foundation which explicitly say that loyalty should be prized above merit. "Brownie" at FEMA was the most high-profile result of this approach, but that wasn't unique and it wasn't even really an accident.
Oh, and the Bush admin. is engaging in an incredible time- and resource-wasting effort to take away pre-existing rights to collectively bargain from unions in, most notably, the DHS and DoD. That's a somewhat different story, although it's also part of the "ideology over competence" strategy.