Month: March 2007

by hilzoy

As everyone undoubtedly knows, Monica Goodling has decided to take the fifth rather than testify before Congress:

“Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales’s senior counselor yesterday refused to testify in the Senate about her involvement in the firings of eight U.S. attorneys, invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Monica M. Goodling, who has taken an indefinite leave of absence, said in a sworn affidavit to the Senate Judiciary Committee that she will “decline to answer any and all questions” about the firings because she faces “a perilous environment in which to testify.” (…)

Goodling contended in her affidavit yesterday that Leahy and other lawmakers, including Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Linda T. Sanchez (D-Calif.), had already “drawn conclusions” about the prosecutors’ firings.

Dowd said the “hostile and questionable environment in the present Congressional proceedings is at best ambiguous; more accurately, the environment can be described as legally perilous for Ms. Goodling.””

The full letter from Ms. Goodling’s lawyer, with her affidavit, is here (pdf). As lots of people have pointed out, the Fifth Amendment says that no person “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself”; and this means that while Goodling clearly has the right to take the fifth if she believes that her testimony might incriminate her, it does not mean that that she can decline to testify just because she thinks her questioners might be biassed or mean. I like Sandy Levinson’s way of making this point:

“What is the precise nature of the ostensible “constitutional right” that she is invoking on the advice of counsel? Can we now explain to the IRS that we are not sending in our tax return this year because, given Al Capone and other examples, we just don’t trust the IRS to play fair with people it views as public enemies (and, in the age of the Bush-Cheney Administration, that could be a very broad category indeed)? If not, why not? Or is there some special principal–call it the “non-oversight one”–that applies especially to Congress? And, by the way, does it apply only to officials of the Executive Branch, or can any private citizen invoke the “I really don’t like you people and therefore I’m taking the 5th” defense? It would, of course, be entirely different if she were forthrightly willing to say “I’m not sure that everything I did was really legal and therefore I’m going to be prudent and refuse to talk about any of it,” which is certainly an inference one can draw from most persons’ invocation of the Fifth Amendment. “

Dan Froomkin also makes a good point about Goodling’s lawyer’s letter:

“And he cites “numerous examples of witnesses who gave testimony before Congress and then faced criminal investigations and even indictments for perjury, false statements, or obstruction of congressional proceedings, including United States v. Poindexter, United States v. North, United States v. Safavian, and United States v. Weissman. . . .

“[T]he potential for legal jeopardy for Ms. Goodling from even her most truthful and accurate testimony under these circumstances is very real. One need look no further than the recent circumstances and proceedings involving Scooter Libby.”

But here’s one thing all those people had in common: They lied.”

Christy at Firedoglake has some interesting background on Goodling’s lawyer, which leads her to conclude that “Ms. Goodling either has a nice cash stash, that someone else is footing her legal bills, or that Mr. Dowd is an old family friend, because a man with this background does not come cheaply to the negotiation table”. Here’s a decent profile of Ms. Goodling, and here’s an article about the law school she has her degree from. (It was founded by Pat Robertson.)

So what, I asked myself, can I bring to the table, now that everyone else has said such illuminating and insightful things? Well: I thought of one admittedly tiny thing.

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by hilzoy

Josh Marshall has another very interesting story up tonight. It concerns Mitchell Wade, a defense contractor who pled guilty to bribing Duke Cunningham about a year ago. To set the scene, recall this timeline:

1993: Mitchell Wade incorporates MZM Inc.

1993-2001: MZM reports no revenue from any government contract, or, for that matter, from anywhere else.

November 2001: MZM begins buying things for Duke Cunningham:

“In November 2001, a company check for $12,000 paid for three nightstands, a leaded-glass cabinet, an antique washstand and four armoires.

In December 2001, a $50,000 company check was sent to a mortgage banker, who in turn made out a check to Cunningham for the same amount. In January 2002, the company’s American Express card was used to purchase a leather sofa and a sleigh bed for Cunningham.

In all, more than $100,000 in cash and furnishings were given to Cunningham even before MZM had posted its first revenue.”

May 2002: “Although MZM had no experience with government contracts, the General Services Administration in May 2002 placed the company on a list of approved information technology service providers, a key step for the company to get business from federal agencies.”

Summer, 2002: According to Cunningham’s sentencing recommendation:

“In the summer of 2002, through an intermediary, Cunningham approached the seller of a 42 foot Carver yacht then named the ‘Buoy Toy’ (…) and eventually negotiated a price.”

August 2002: “The first contract, worth $140,000, came from the White House — to provide office furniture and computers for Vice President Dick Cheney.”

August 30, 2002, just two weeks later: “Wade purchased a yacht, later christened “Duke-Stir,” for $140,000, according to court documents. Cunningham used the yacht, docked at the Capital Yacht Club, as his home in Washington — and the scene of parties for lobbyists and others.”

Isn’t that interesting? A company that has never had a government contract before, but that has been paying off a powerful Congressman, suddenly lands a contract from the Vice President’s office, and two weeks later the head of that company turns around and buys a yacht for the use of that same Congressman, a yacht that the Congressman had previously negotiated to a price for. And, by an astonishing coincidence, that price was the exact same amount that the contractor’s contract was for. I mean, what are the odds of that?

I’ve always wondered what, exactly, that contract with Cheney’s office was for. Not being an investigative reporter, however, I wasn’t able to find out. Luckily for all of us, the investigative reporter who broke the original Cunningham story did, and apparently he’s written about it in a forthcoming book. Josh Marshall reports what he found:

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