Dan Froomkin says Bush has a "Monica Problem"

"Will another presidency be tripped up by another Monica? As suspicions about the White House role in the firings of eight U.S. attorneys last year continue to deepen, one of the people who could shed light on what happened -- Monica Goodling, the Justice Department's White House liaison -- has suddenly decided to clam up, invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination."

I usually agree with Froomkin, but this time I disagree - Monica Goodling isn't Bush's problem, she's Karl Rove's problem.

Goodling's taking the Fifth is confusing bloggers into thinking she committed a crime. But that's not why she refuses to testify.

She's not protecting herself - she's protecting her boss Karl Rove.

What was Goodling's role in this scandal? According to Ron Hutcheson of McClatchy Newspapers,

E-mails show that Goodling was involved in planning the dismissals and in later efforts to limit the negative reaction. As the Justice Department's liaison to the White House, she could shed light on the extent of White House involvement in the dismissals.

Goodling took a leading role in making sure that Tim Griffin, a protege of presidential adviser Karl Rove, replaced H.E. 'Bud' Cummins as the U.S. attorney in Arkansas. Documents released to Congress include communications between Goodling and Scott Jennings, Rove's deputy.

Goodling was in the middle of a nakedly political scheme by Rove to appoint his completely unqualified protege as U.S. Attorney in Arkansas.

Griffin is actually worse than unqualified - according to Greg Palast, he's a criminal:

Griffin, according to BBC Television, was the hidden hand behind a scheme to wipe out the voting rights of 70,000 citizens prior to the 2004 election.

Key voters on Griffin’s hit list: Black soldiers and homeless men and women. Nice guy, eh? Naughty or nice, however, is not the issue. Targeting voters where race is a factor is a felony crime under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Palast learned of Griffin's crimes by a very humorous accident:

In October 2004, our investigations team at BBC Newsnight received a series of astonishing emails from Mr. Griffin, then Research Director for the Republican National Committee. He didn’t mean to send them to us. They were highly confidential memos meant only for RNC honchos.

However, Griffin made a wee mistake. Instead of sending the emails — potential evidence of a crime — to email addresses ending with the domain name “@GeorgeWBush.com” he sent them to “@GeorgeWBush.ORG.” A website run by prankster John Wooden who owns “GeorgeWBush.org.” When Wooden got the treasure trove of Rove-ian ravings, he sent them to us.

(Of course mis-directed emails are playing a key role in the Rove-gate investigations.)

How exactly did Griffin disenfranchise black voters?

And we dug in, decoding, and mapping the voters on what Griffin called, “Caging” lists, spreadsheets with 70,000 names of voters marked for challenge. Overwhelmingly, these were Black and Hispanic voters from Democratic precincts.

The Griffin scheme was sickly brilliant. We learned that the RNC sent first-class letters to new voters in minority precincts marked, “Do not forward.” Several sheets contained nothing but soldiers, other sheets, homeless shelters. Targets included the Jacksonville Naval Air Station in Florida and that city’s State Street Rescue Mission. Another target, Edward Waters College, a school for African-Americans.

If these voters were not currently at their home voting address, they were tagged as “suspect” and their registration wiped out or their ballot challenged and not counted. Of course, these ‘cages’ captured thousands of students, the homeless and those in the military though they are legitimate voters.

We telephoned those on the hit list, including one Randall Prausa. His wife admitted he wasn’t living at his voting address: Randall was a soldier shipped overseas.

Randall and other soldiers like him who sent in absentee ballots, when challenged, would lose their vote. And they wouldn’t even know it.

Of course Griffin should have been prosecuted for violating the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But who would do the prosecution? The U.S. Attorney in Florida, of course.

Who is that U.S. Attorney? I don't know, but (s)he must have been a "loyal Bushie" because (s)he wasn't purged. Of course all the U.S. Attorneys in Florida were selected with the utmost care in 2001 to make sure there was no investigation of Karl Rove's Stolen Election of 2000 (which I "blogged" before "blogging" was invented).

So returning to the present...

Tim Griffin was completely unqualified for appointment as a U.S. Attorney in Arkansas. There's no way in hell he could have gotten the support of the state's two Democratic Senators, Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor. So Rove, Jennings, and Goodling had to do a whole lot of manipulating to get him appointed.

Goodling is a first-hand witness. Her computers contain all the incriminating documents. If Goodling tells the truth, Karl Rove is going to jail.

Goodling must remain silent to protect Rove. That's why she has one of the most expensive lawyers in DC, according to the Wall Street Journal:

John Dowd, head of the criminal litigation at Akin Gump and part of the elite pack of Washington defense lawyers. He’s represented senators, governors, judges, etc. in hot water, but is perhaps best known for heading up the investigation that forced Pete Rose to leave baseball.

Goodling is a young 33-year-old attorney who graduated from Pat Robertson's Regent University in 1999 and took a low-level government job in 2001. As Christy Hardin Smith writes,

Ms. Goodling either has a nice cash stash, that someone else is footing her legal bills, or that Mr. Dowd is an old family friend, because a man with this background does not come cheaply to the negotiation table.

What are the odds a very rich friend of Karl Rove is buying Monica Goodling's silence?

I'd say about 1000%.

Update 1: Coincidentally (or not!), Rove's deputy Scott Jennings is in the line of fire at today's hearings on corruption at the General Services Administration (GSA), zeroing in on a very political Powerpoint.

Chairman Waxman: “The first issue we will examine is a political briefing that took place at GSA on January twenty sixth of this year. This briefing was conducted by Scott Jennings, Karl Rove’s deputy at the White House. Mr. Jennings has been in the news for his involvement in the firings of the US Attorneys and is one of the White House officials that both the House and Senate have asked to testify. Also at this briefing were administrator [Lurita] Doan and forty other political appointees at GSA some of whom participated by videoconference.”

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