John Conyers: Goodling Testimony Revealing (Except to Republicans)

[babylonsister]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_john_con_070524_goodling_testimony_r.htm

Goodling Testimony Revealing (Except to Republicans)

by John Conyers Page 1 of 3 page(s)


After today’s testimony from Monica Goodling, I think Republicans need to come up with some new talking points on the United States Attorney matter. They keep saying that

There’s nothing to this investigation... Democrats are on a fishing expedition... There’s no there there.

That has never been true, but today was a crystallizing moment. I thought Ms. Goodling was a good and loquacious witness who brought forward some critical information:

snip//

Based on today’s testimony, I believe it is more important than ever that the Judiciary Committee get to the bottom of this matter. It is important that we obtain the testimony of Mr. McNulty, given that Ms. Goodling essentially stated that he misled Congress, as well as Mr. Sampson. It is also imperative that we at long last obtain the cooperation of the White House. Today we learned that laws have been broken and trust has been violated, and the American people deserve to learn the truth.

This leads our investigation in two important directions. The first direction stays at the Department of Justice. That is where serious allegations of improper and potentially criminal activity have been made against senior Department officials. They must answer these allegations in an open and public hearing, under oath.

The second direction is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. If testimony received to date has been truthful, no one at the Justice Department knows who put the names of the United States Attorneys on the list and why. That leaves one place where these answers reside: the White House.

more...

[whistle]

1. Where is the three monkey avatar... hear/see/speek nothing

[spindrifter]

2. It was replaced by an all-purpose, new

and improved avatar--the CRS model*


*Can't Remember Sh*t

[L. Coyote]

3. McNulty, Medicare Fraud, the McNulty Memo, and the Continuing Ruse?

"In the first five minutes of this hearing, we learned that in Ms. Goodling's view, Paul McNulty, the Deputy Attorney General, misled the Senate in his testimony about the limited role of the White House, when he personally knew otherwise. We also learned that Mr. McNulty withheld information from the Senate which had the effect of concealing Senator Domenici’s role in the termination of Mr. Iglesias. Ms. Goodling also admitted to taking inappropriate political considerations into account when hiring non-political DOJ employees."

ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE: "McNulty and the Political Centralization of Corporate Charging." Consider the timeline. A few days after the firings, the power of USAs is curbed by McNulty such that the decisions Carol Lam made, charging corporations with crimes, could not be repeated anywhere in the Nation (except by him, of course)! (I wonder how many GOP campaign contributions flowed in the next day. ??) I suspect that even Iglesias is singing to keep our attention directed away from the $billions$ and the looming larger scandal, public corruption a la Abramoff and Cunningham reaching to the very top, The Decider in all this and his amnesiac lawyer.

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http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x877011#885015
New DOJ Guidelines Tone Down Corporate Fraud Prosecutions = McNulty Memo
http://www.itbusinessedge.com/item/?ci=22930
Date Published: 12/22/2006
With Richard Cellini, attorney and Integrity Interactive vice president.

Question: What is the Thompson Memo? Why is it problematic?
Cellini: The U.S. Department of Justice is the primary law enforcement arm of the U.S. government... The department frequently indicts corporate executives who have broken the law in their capacity as company officers. When the alleged illegal conduct involves not just a few isolated or "rogue" executives but the entire company, the department will actually indict not just the company's officers, but the corporate entity itself. The indictment of accounting firm Arthur Andersen is a memorable example.
Of course, corporate entities are abstract entities that cannot be jailed. ....

The department is aware that innocent people can be hurt badly when their company is indicted. For this reason, it follows detailed guidelines when weighing the decision to indict. Since January 2003, these guidelines have been written down and set forth in a document known as the "Thompson Memo" (named after then-Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson, who issued these formal written guidelines to federal prosecutors located around the country).
The Thompson Memo sets forth nine different factors for prosecutors to weigh ....

Question: What is the McNulty Memo, and what does it do?
Cellini: On Dec. 12, 2006, Paul McNulty, the incumbent Deputy Attorney General, issued a revised memorandum to prosecutors outlining the factors they should consider when deciding to charge corporate entities with wrongdoing. .... the McNulty Memo dramatically limits the circumstances under which it will require corporations to waive the attorney/client privilege. In other words, the Justice Department has made a choice and has come down on the side of encouraging companies to establish compliance programs (even at the expense of giving up its power to force companies to disclose unfavorable information uncovered by those programs)...............

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http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x877011#885015
McNULTY: Federal prosecutors required to seek approval from senior DoJ officials
DOJ Revises Corporate Fraud Procedures
Jason McLure - Legal Times - December 13, 2006
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1165917921963

Bending to pressure from Congress, a federal judge and a lobbying campaign by business and legal groups, the Justice Department announced a number of immediate changes to its corporate-fraud charging policies Tuesday.

Federal prosecutors will be required to seek approval from senior Justice Department officials in Washington, D.C., before requesting that a company turn over the results of an internal investigation or the strategic advice of the company's lawyers.

In addition, with rare exception, prosecutors will no longer be allowed to pressure companies to cut off legal fees to executives or employees under scrutiny in fraud investigations. Previously, companies could earn "cooperation credit" with the government in certain cases by cutting off those fees. Such credit was an important factor for companies seeking to avoid a potentially crippling criminal indictment.

The changes, announced in a Tuesday speech by Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty at a legal conference in New York, are a step back from the government's aggressive anti-fraud prosecution tactics outlined in the so-called Thompson memo, named for former Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson, in 2003.

In the speech, McNulty said the new guidelines were designed to address the "perception, well founded -- or not," that the Justice Department's policies were "chilling attorney-client communications" and hurting the effectiveness of corporate lawyers ...................