Monica Goodling admitted “crossing the line” earlier in her testimony with regard to hiring assistant U.S. attorneys based on their political affiliations. That’s against the law. Assistant U.S. attorneys are the prosecutors in the U.S. attorney offices across the country that actually prosecute the cases.
But how many federal prosecutors were submitted to Goodling’s litmus test? Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) asked was it fewer than 50, more than 50? Goodling couldn’t say. “I can’t think that I could have done it more than 50 times, but I don’t know.”
Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) asked Goodling if she looked at the political contributions made by applicants for AUSA positions. Goodling said that she’d done that for other non-political career positions and may have done it for prosecutors, too: she couldn’t “rule that out.”
Here’s the transcript:
Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA): Who’s paying for your lawyers?
Monica Goodling: I’m paying for them.
Rep. Johnson: Has anyone agreed to reimburse you for legal fees?
Goodling: No. I intend to establish a legal defense fund at some point, but I haven’t had the chance to do that yet.
Rep. Johnson: Well, ma’am, let me ask you thisâ¦How many times did you use that power that you had to hire and fire with respect to hiring of U.S. — assistant U.S. attorneys and you used political reasons for making a decision not to hire? How many times did you do that?
Goodling: I can’t give you an estimate.
Rep. Johnson: Would you say less than 50 or more than 50?
Goodling: I hesitate to give you a reason, just because I can’t — or, an estimate, because I can’t remember. I don’t think that I could have done it more than 50 times, but I don’t know. I just — there were times when people came to the department and they were interested in career positions or political positions. And those people, I certainly asked political questions ofâ¦I was involved in career hiring in a number of different ways, sometimes because people would come in and they would be interested in different sorts of positions at the same time. And they would sometimes get asked political questions. When I was looking at waiver requests for AUSA positions…
Rep. Johnson: OK, this is non-responsive to my question.
Goodling: I did not normally ask questions.
Rep. Johnson: All right. Thank you. Now, did the attorney general know that you were asking political questions of applicants for career positions?
Goodling: I don’t believe that he knew.
Rep. Johnson: Did the deputy attorney general know that you were asking those kinds of questions of applicants for career positions?
Goodling: I’m sorry — it depends on the category. I’m sorry. I was just involved in too many different categories of personnel things to give you straight answers that are going to apply to each one.
Rep. Johnson: Well, let me ask you this question, then: Who knew that you were asking — let me ask it this way. Did you discuss the fact that you were asking political questions of applicants for career positions with any of the following: the attorney general, yes or no?
Goodling: Discuss it, no. I did receive resumes from him of Republicans.
Rep. Johnson: Did you — the deputy attorney general, yes or no?
Goodling: I don’t know.
Rep. Johnson: The associate attorney general or the acting associate attorney general.
Rep. Conyers: The gentleman’s time has expired, but please answer the questions.
Goodling: I don’t know specifically, but I do know that I did interview detailees for their offices, and I think that they had a sense that I was looking for people that were generally Republicans to work on their staffs as detailees, and those were people who currently held career positions. So in that category, I would think they had a general sense of that.
Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA): OK. Also, in looking at the nonpolitical appointees, you’ve talked about doing Web searches. And I know that you had, you know, used Google or LexisNexis, see what was in the press.
There are, also, though, some particular Web sites that just focus on people’s political contributions. In looking at nonpolitical appointments, did you ever look at FEC.com or TRE.com (ph) or any of the other sites that are pretty much focused on political giving?Goodling: Occasionally. Not terribly often. It frankly wasn’t very common to find people in the law enforcement area that were active on that site. But, yes, we did in some cases check those records.
