As White House liaison, Goodling was part of a small cadre of senior Justice officials responsible for vetting U.S. Attorneys, a position that became far more significant after the 2006 reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act, which gave Justice authority to install interim U.S. Attorneys without congressional approval. She played a central role in the appointment of her one-time boss J. Timothy Griffin, who replaced ousted U.S. Attorney H.E. "Bud" Cummins III in Arkansas. Beyond that, she wielded significant power in determining which U.S. Attorneys would go — or stay.
…Sampson suggested that Goodling also encouraged the last-minute decision to ax New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Iglesias. The decision, he said, came after Goodling met with some New Mexico Republicans concerned about Iglesias. Asked by Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., whether he would fire Iglesias today, Sampson responded: "In hindsight, sitting here today, I would not."…Among Goodling’s close associates were Barbara Comstock, head of opposition research for the RNC and later the chief spokeswoman for Ashcroft; Griffin, Comstock’s deputy, whom Goodling would later help to win the interim appointment to replace one of the eight ousted U.S. Attorneys in Arkansas; and Mark Corallo, who in 2003 took the helm of the Justice Department’s Public Affairs Office after Comstock.
Goodling quickly won Comstock’s trust for her hard work and talent for digging up information on tort litigation and judicial nominations. And when Griffin left in 2001, Goodling became Comstock’s deputy. They helped prepare Ashcroft and Theodore Olson for their confirmation hearings to be attorney general and solicitor general, respectively.
When Comstock became Ashcroft’s spokeswoman in 2002, she brought Goodling along as her deputy. Goodling stayed for three years. In no time, Goodling became "indispensable" to the office, says Corallo, who became Ashcroft’s spokesman in 2003. "I have never known anybody that works harder or does better work than her."…A few months later, she moved into Gonzales’ office as a senior counsel and soon took on the responsibilities of White House liaison. In that post, Goodling served as the gatekeeper for the White House for all 400-some political appointees in the Justice Department, from U.S. Attorneys and marshals to secretaries.Interviews for U.S. Attorney replacements took place with only a handful of people: David Margolis, the department’s top-ranking career official and a 40-plus year veteran; a member of the White House Counsel’s Office; the head of the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys; and Goodling.
Charles Miller, whom Gonzales appointed as interim U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of West Virginia, interviewed with the panel in the fall of 2005. "They asked me what I’d done to support the president," Miller says. It wasn’t a question Miller expected. He told them he’d voted for Bush.
But a former prosecutor who did not get a U.S. Attorney post was left with a sour feeling after his interview in 2006. "Monica was in charge, in essence, of the interview," recalls the former supervisory assistant U.S. Attorney. "I walked out of that room and thought, ‘Wow, I’ve just run into a buzz saw.’"
These interviews took on new meaning after the renewal of the Patriot Act; Goodling was one of the first to push the attorney general’s new authority to choose replacements, and she pushed particularly hard for Griffin.
Griffin was slated to take over the slot in Arkansas, but by August 2006, the White House had hit trouble with home state Sen. Mark Pryor, D.-Ark. In an Aug. 18 e-mail to Sampson, Goodling proposed a solution: Have Justice pick Griffin for a political position, and then detail him in as an interim.
"Tim knows nothing about my idea for a solution at this point — wanted your sign-off, and a home for him, before I called him," she wrote in the e-mail. The idea paid off: The Criminal Division agreed to take Griffin on upon his return from his post as a judge advocate general in Iraq in late September.
Goodling continued to work closely to coordinate Griffin’s assignment to Arkansas, organizing his formal December interview with Gonzales.
When the ultimate plan for the firing of the other seven U.S. Attorneys went into effect, Goodling rode the point, directing the public-relations team.
THE SCANDAL unfolding around the firing of eight U.S. attorneys compels the conclusion that the Bush administration has rewarded loyalty over all else. A destructive pattern of partisan political actions at the Justice Department started long before this incident, however, as those of us who worked in its civil rights division can attest.
I spent more than 35 years in the department enforcing federal civil rights laws — particularly voting rights. Before leaving in 2005, I worked for attorneys general with dramatically different political philosophies — from John Mitchell to Ed Meese to Janet Reno. Regardless of the administration, the political appointees had respect for the experience and judgment of longtime civil servants.
Under the Bush administration, however, all that changed. Over the last six years, this Justice Department has ignored the advice of its staff and skewed aspects of law enforcement in ways that clearly were intended to influence the outcome of elections.
It has notably shirked its legal responsibility to protect voting rights. From 2001 to 2006, no voting discrimination cases were brought on behalf of African American or Native American voters. U.S. attorneys were told instead to give priority to voter fraud cases, which, when coupled with the strong support for voter ID laws, indicated an intent to depress voter turnout in minority and poor communities.
At least two of the recently fired U.S. attorneys, John McKay in Seattle and David C. Iglesias in New Mexico, were targeted largely because they refused to prosecute voting fraud cases that implicated Democrats or voters likely to vote for Democrats.
This pattern also extended to hiring. In March 2006, Bradley Schlozman was appointed interim U.S. attorney in Kansas City, Mo. Two weeks earlier, the administration was granted the authority to make such indefinite appointments without Senate confirmation. That was too bad: A Senate hearing might have uncovered Schlozman’s central role in politicizing the civil rights division during his three-year tenure.
Schlozman, for instance, was part of the team of political appointees that approved then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s plan to redraw congressional districts in Texas, which in 2004 increased the number of Republicans elected to the House. Similarly, Schlozman was acting assistant attorney general in charge of the division when the Justice Department OKd a Georgia law requiring voters to show photo IDs at the polls. These decisions went against the recommendations of career staff, who asserted that such rulings discriminated against minority voters. The warnings were prescient: Both proposals were struck down by federal courts.
And speaking of "Crime" at the DOJ. It was the rule rather than the exception.
This story doesn’t just have legs. It has deep roots. It’s been called "Purgegate," but the purge isn’t just eight U.S. Attorneys, it’s a systematic attempt to replace the Department of Justice with a cadre of Republican Party Operatives to shut down Civil Rights and purge the voter rolls of poor and Minority voters who might vote Democratic.
These people are evil. When I was 15 years old, I volunteered to walk up and down in NYC with a poster encouraging voter registration. I lived in NJ and I was not real comfortable going into NY but I believed in democracy. My family were diehard Republicans but I know they would not approve what is going on now if they thought this purgegate was true. Of course, I said if it was true because those who are alive do not believe it is. They will be watching American Idol and Dancing with the Stars this week as in the past weeks because it makes them upset to watch MSNBC or CNN about the news. Oh by the way, I got into a lot of trouble when my parents found out what I was doing in the city.