The House Judiciary Committee has voted to extend immunity from prosecution to Monica Goodling, who was the Justice Department's White House liaison and senior counselor to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Committee leaders want to know about the White House's role in the firing of eight U.S. attorneys in 2006.
Goodling resigned her post as the scandal over the dismissed federal prosecutors exploded.
The committee also voted to subpoena Goodling, but Chairman John Conyers says he hopes she will testify voluntarily. Goodling has previously said through her attorney that if subpoenaed, she would invoke her rights under the Fifth Amendment.
As the inquiry into the firings continues, the top Democrat and Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee sent the attorney general a letter Wednesday following up Gonzales' widely panned testimony last week.
It reads, "You spent weeks preparing for the April 19th hearing. Yet during your testimony, in response to questions from senators on both sides of the aisle, you often responded that you could not recall."
The letter demands that, within a week, Gonzales provide "answers to those questions for which you responded that you could not recall or did not know."
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