Monica may soon be on the hot seat.

No, not that Monica! Monica Goodling, the Justice Department Official. First Reps. Conyers and Sanchez and now Sens. Leahy and Whitehouse are corresponding with her lawyer and Alberto Gonzales about meeting with them to find out what she is taking the 5th for.

From TPM Muckraker:

It's a busy day for Monica Goodling's lawyer.

House Democrats asked again today to question Monica Goodling, the Justice department official who has pled the Fifth. Goodling notified the House Judiciary Committee last week that, as she had with regard to a potential Senate committee hearing, she planned to invoke the Fifth rather than participate in interviews with House committee staff -- as seven other Justice Department offiicals have been and will be doing over the coming week.

But in the letter today from committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) and subcommittee Chair Linda Sanchez (D-CA), they wrote that Democrats weren't
convinced that Goodling was invoking the Fifth for valid reasons. Goodling's
lawyer John Dowd had cited earlier comments by Democrats to show that they had "reached conclusions" about the matter under investigation.

Conyers and Sanchez aren't buying it.

"The fact that a few Senators and Members of the House have expressed publicly their doubts about the credibility of the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General in their representations to Congress about the U.S. Attorneys' termination does not in any way excuse your client from answering questions honestly and to the best of her ability," they wrote.

And more from TPM Muckraker:

For perhaps the first time in history, a Justice Department official has invoked the Fifth Amendment -- and remains in her position at the Department. In a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales today, Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT) and committtee member Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) asked what the
Justice Department was going to do about it.

The first order of business, they said, was to figure out who to talk to at the Justice Department about Goodling. Ordinarily, they wrote, they would ask the Department about how to proceed, so as not to interfere with a possible criminal investigation. But "the office of the Attorney General appears to be hopelessly conflicted," they wrote. So who's it going to be?

The senators also want to know whether Goodling will be cooperating with the internal Justice Department investigation of the firings, given that career Department employees are required to cooperate with such investigations.

Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington Law School who's handled a number of high-profile clients in his career, said that Goodling, having invoked the Fifth with regard to Congress' investigation, is in a bind.

"It's a very clever question, because if she does not invoke the Fifth [for the internal Justice Department investigation], then she obviously has a fundamental contradiction in her legal position. She would basically be saying that despite having a high-ranking position in the Justice Department, she will not cooperate with a coequal branch... Congress has oversight responsibiilty over the Justice Department, over Monica Goodling. It would be an obvious contradiction with her job description."

It looks as though her Lawyer's little stunt might not work. But as I said before, just invoking the 5th makes people think you are guilty.