Monica Goolding is scheduled to appear before the House Judiciary Committee today to give testimony about the US Attorney firings. She's been offered an immunity deal in exchange for her testimony, and Washington is eagerly anticipating what she might have to say.
After all, she was integral to the whole scandal. Young and inexperienced, she nevertheless was granted enormous authority to make hiring (and firing) decisions, which she often did on a political basis. For example:
When Jeffrey A. Taylor, interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, wanted to hire a new career prosecutor last fall, he had to run the idea past Monica M. Goodling, then a 33-year-old aide to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales.
The candidate was Seth Adam Meinero, a Howard University law school graduate who had worked on civil rights cases at the Environmental Protection Agency and had served as a special assistant prosecutor in Taylor's office.
Goodling stalled the hiring, saying that Meinero was too "liberal" for the nonpolitical position, said according to two sources familiar with the dispute.
The tussle over Meinero, who was eventually hired at Taylor's insistence, led to a Justice Department investigation of whether Goodling improperly weighed political affiliation when reviewing applicants for rank-and-file prosecutor jobs, the sources said.
Stay tuned for more on her testimony as it comes to light.
UPDATE: Goodling says she believes testimony about the timeline of the planning of the firings by Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, who resigned earlier this month, "was incomplete or inaccurate in a number of respects." This disagrees with transcripts released by the Committee yesterday that have McNulty saying he believes Goodling and Kyle Sampson had provided him with misleading information in preparation for his testimony.
