While the left is “oohing and ahhing” about Monica Goodin taking the Fifth amendment as a sign of guilt, it’s anything but the case. Is That Legal has this opinion:

“Josh Marshall asks his lawyer-readers to opine on whether Monica Goodling is stating a valid basis for invoking the Fifth Amendment privilege in response to a subpoena by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The answer: Yes, rather clearly so, unless there is no reasonable scenario under which she fears that a prosecutor could take something she says before the committee as a link in a chain leading to evidence of wrongdoing. (Hoffman v. United States, 341 U.S. 479, 486 (1951).)

The Fifth Amendment privilege protects not just the guilty, but also the innocent, who fear that even their entirely truthful responses might provide the government with incriminating evidence from their own mouths. (Ohio v. Reiner, 532 U.S. 17 (2001) (dictum).) “The privilege serves to protect the innocent who otherwise might be ensnared by ambiguous circumstances.” (Slochower v. Bd. of Higher Ed. of the City of New York, 350 U.S. 551, 557-58 (1956).)

A careful defense lawyer would be especially justified in advising his or her client to consider taking the Fifth in a highly charged political environment such as the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation into the firings of U.S. Attorneys and the alleged minimization (dare we say “cover-up?”) of the role of the Attorney General and the White House in those firings. It is important to remember that “a witness innocent of wrongdoing may well refuse to answer a question not because he fears conviction, but because he fears unfounded prosecution, a risk which every one runs at all times, theoretically at least.” (Lewis Mayers, Shall We Amend the Fifth Amendment? 4 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1959).)”

The writer goes on to say “I understand and share the disgust over the firing of these U.S. Attorneys, over the politicization of the institution of the United States Attorney’s Office.”

Of course one can be right on one thing and wrong on another. As I said in a previous post there would be no way in hell that I would advise my client to attend Leahy’s Salem Trials, because no matter what the facts, his mind is made up. That said, it must be remembered that US Attorneys are political appointees who have alway been selected with political purposes in mind, and incidently they have been fired, released, let go for political purposes. It’s never been any different in any previous administration, which really makes it such a pitty that people seem so bent on making it a characteristic only of the present administration.

But then again if you listen to the left nobody played politics until George Bush came into town.