According to the Virginia Bar and in a filing that she agreed with, Monica Goodling committed “a criminal or deliberately wrongful act” that reflected badly on her “honesty, trustworthiness or fitness to practice law.”
Monica Marie Goodling, the key figure in the controversy about the political hiring and firing of U.S. Attorneys during the Bush Administration, has received a public reprimand from the Virginia State Bar.
A VSB subcommittee concluded that Goodling, a member of the VSB since 1999, had violated ethics rules by committing “a criminal or deliberately wrongful act” that reflected adversely on her “honesty, trustworthiness or fitness to practice law.” The subcommittee’s reprimand, to which Goodling agreed, was handed down in March and made public late yesterday.
Mind you, they stopped short of finding it an illegal act, largely because she broke civil service rules rather than other criminal laws.
And maybe it doesn’t matter, since she’s working in market research now and not–unlike Kyle Sampson, for example–practicing law.
But labeling what Goodling and others did to politicize the Bush DOJ as “criminal or deliberately wrongful” is at least a start to describing what they did.