Goodling, Sampson Attended Rove Political Briefing

As The Washington Post reported over the weekend, Justice Department officials attended a dozen political briefings at the White House since 2001. You can see the Justice Department’s catalog of the briefings here.

Karl Rove and his aides, remember, delivered the briefings for agency officials throughout the government. Briefing slides from a presentation at the General Services Administration and the State Department show that Rove’s shop lectured the officials on which GOP incumbents were vulnerable. It wasn’t publicly known until Friday that Rove had included Department officials in his briefing circuit. White House aides have defended the briefings by saying they were merely meant to “inform” appointees by giving them the “political landscape.”

As you can see, most briefings were attended by the White House liaison at the Department, and a number were delivered by Karl Rove himself.

Most notable is a September 5, 2006 briefing for “agency Chiefs of Staff and White House Liaisons” at the White House; both Kyle Sampson, Gonzales former chief of staff, and Monica Goodling, the White House liaison, were scheduled to attend. Rove led the briefing.

These, of course, were the two 30-something senior staffers at the center of the U.S. attorney firings, and the briefing was given shortly before the firing process entered its final stage. One week after the briefing, Sampson sent then-White House counsel Harriet Miers another draft list of U.S. attorneys to fire — the first such list he’d drafted for more than six months. There’s no evidence that the briefing, which was given to political appointees from a number of agencies, led directly to the generation of that list, but surely it helped Sampson and Goodling, who were at the forefront of the politicization of the Department, to be well apprised of “the political landscape.”

The catalog of briefings was included in a June letter to Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) from Department official Richard Hertling, in response to Waxman’s committee’s investigation of the briefings. Hertling cautions that the Department doesn’t know for sure that individual Republican candidates were discussed at these briefings, and with regard to the September 5th briefing, he notes that the Department couldn’t confirm that either Goodling or Sampson actually attended (although all indications are that they did). Both, of course, have resigned due to the scandal.

Note, via Tim Grieve at Salon: During his hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee a couple of weeks ago, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) asked Gonzales, “Has Karl Rove or anyone from his office given similar briefings to the leadership in the Department of Justice?” Gonzales’ answer was “Not that I’m aware of.”

But in his letter seeking to clarify certain aspects of his testimony sent this past Friday, Gonzales changed his tune. Or, rather, he made it clear what question he was answering when he said “Not that I’m aware of.” Kennedy’s question had referenced certain briefings Rove had given “at the Peace Corps.” And Gonzales really is “not aware of political briefings… occurring at the Department of Justice,” he wrote in his letter. Sure, there are all those briefings that Department officials received at the White House (thus the catalog provided), but that’s another question altogether, isn’t it?

If only lawmakers knew how to ask questions precisely, maybe Gonzales wouldn’t appear so dishonest.