Busy day for Monica Goodling who testified with immunity yesterday before the House Judiciary Committee.

She admitted her own wrong doing when it came to hiring new lawyers at the Department of Justice:

A former top Justice Department aide testified on Wednesday that she had “crossed the line” in considering the political beliefs of applicants for nonpartisan legal jobs and suggested that earlier testimony by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and another top official about the dismissals of federal prosecutors may have been flawed.

She testified that she really had no significant role in getting the U.S. Attorneys fired:

But she said that even though she was the Justice Department’s liaison to the White House, she did not play a significant role in the dismissals and never discussed them with Karl Rove, the president’s chief political adviser or Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel.

“I did not hold the keys to the kingdom as some have suggested,” Ms. Goodling said to the House Judiciary Committee.

She intimated that the Attorney General of the United States may have misled Congress (while apparently trying to get their stories straight):

Ms. Goodling appeared to contradict Mr. Gonzales’s testimony to the committee this month in which he said he had not spoken to his senior aides since the firings “to protect the integrity of this investigation.”

During a meeting in March before she resigned, Ms. Goodling said, Mr. Gonzales asked her questions that left her uncomfortable. She thought he might be trying to compare recollections, so their stories would be consistent if they were questioned about their actions, she said. “I just thought maybe we shouldn’t have that conversation,” she said.

And, like her former boss Alberto Gonzales, she threw for Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty under the bus:

Ms. Goodling also accused Paul J. McNulty, the outgoing deputy attorney general, of misleading Congress when he testified on Feb. 6 to a Senate panel. Specifically, she said Mr. McNulty knew more details about the White House involvement in the firings than he acknowledged in his testimony.

“I believe he was not fully candid,” she said.