Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing run a law firm together. They are also married. They are also soldiers in the dirty wars we have between the two major parties. When Scooter Libby was indicted, diGenova and Toensing demanded a pardon. In fact, they had been brawling on Libby’s side for years. Toensing even authored an amici curiae brief with the US Court of Appeals in Washington, seeking to overturn the ruling that forced Matthew Cooper and Judy Miller to testify in the Libby case.
Back in 1998, Howard Kurtz reported that diGenova and Toensing had made 300 television appearances in the month after news of the l’affaire Lewinsky broke on Drudge Report. That’s an average of five appearances each, every day for a month. Who appointed them to head the lynch mob?
Strangely, Geraldo Rivera played a part.
“I love him and I love his wife,” the talk host and fellow lawyer says. “They’re the most honorable people inside the Beltway. . . . He’s a strong, principled guy who doesn’t back down. If I played any part in making him a media star, I gloat with pleasure.”
More from Howard Kurtz, circa 1998:
Name a high-profile investigation in this city and chances are the prosecutorial pair is involved.
Charges that Republican Rep. Dan Burton improperly demanded campaign contributions from a lobbyist for Pakistan? DiGenova and Toensing are the Indiana congressman’s personal attorneys.
Newt Gingrich’s ethics problems? Toensing represents the speaker’s wife, Marianne, to ensure her compliance with House ethics rules.
A House committee investigation of the Teamsters and the union’s links to improper Democratic fund-raising? DiGenova and Toensing are leading the probe as outside counsel.
They are nothing more than partisan brawlers. And now they are representing so-called Benghazi whistleblowers who claim they have faced intimidation from their employers in the State Department. Mr. diGenova is representing Mark I. Thompson, who is a deputy coordinator for operations in the State Department’s counterterrorism bureau. Ms. Toensing is representing Gregory N. Hicks, who was serving as the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Libya at the time of the Benghazi attacks. Both men will testify on Wednesday before Rep. Darrell Issa’s House Oversight & Government Reform Committee.
If they wanted to be taken seriously, they would have retained less notorious counsel.
This is weak tea indeed. I am a strong advocate for the rights of anyone to obtain representation. We have democrats who represent murderers, terrorists, and killers, and all of us on the left applaud these. In fact, John Adams, 2nd POTUS, represented British soldiers accused of committing an atrocity, and this was considered an honorable and courageous act.
I applaud this couple for their standing up on the other side.
Most counsel represents solely the interests of their clients. What is different about diGenova and Toensing is that they use the interests of their clients and their representation of those interests to push a specific political narrative in the media.
They are exactly and precisely like John Adams. But a clearer reading of history shows that John Adams was not exactly being honorable and courageous.
My reading is that their representation is to ensure that the guys who will be testifying before the Committee do not say anything out of school to destroy the Benghazi narrative the Republicans are trying to craft or to open up a whole can of worms involving CIA activities. Likely also to act as a foil for when they don’t want to answer Congressional questions–“on advice from my counsel…”
WTF do folks need representation in testifying to Congress? These folks who are testifying are not accused of misdeeds.
This couple is scum, but whistleblowers are wise to obtain counsel.
My point is that Toensing and her hubby are gunslingers. Their clients are just the bullets in their gun. To expect these folks to be telling the truth when this is their counsel is naive.
Yep. The word “minders” crossed my brain.
It’s not legal jeopardy that is the danger for these whistleblowers but departing from the Republican Party script.
Where’s my fainting couch? You mean that someone is using the law and representation to advance a political agenda? Oh my stars and garters, what a travesty? !! ?!!??
Well, considering it’s an attempt to gin up a scandal out of whole cloth where none exists, it’s just as much a travesty as Whitewater and Kenneth Starr’s use of it.
We will not recover decent institutions as a country as long as our cynicism blocks our outrage. Or as long as we remain ignorant of the players involved in the behind-the-scenes maneuvering.
political operatives first, lawyers second.
A “practice” specializing in trying to damage Democratic admins. Very curious indeed. Clearly there was a marketplace need!
Thank you for this reporting. What the folks I know need more than anything else in order to shift their views of politics and policy is some idea of what is really going on in Washington.
It is not helpful that these folks have been able to operate under the radar. Nor does it help for former White House staffer Anita Dunn to be a lobbyists for the folks wanting to build the Keystone XL pipeline.
The brawling goes along with the corruption, allowing phony issues like Benghazi to become media fodder while the real shenanigans remain hidden for both parties. So Baucus never gets called out as a shill for Wellpoint when Baucuscare is being drafted, which could have shifted the political dynamics. None of the Republican operatives get exposed. There is no exposure of ALEC early enough to prevent the damage in state legislatures.
The names of the lobbyists, lawyers, and shady organizations shaping policy on both sides of the aisle need exposure.
DiGenova and Toensing certainly are at the top of that list.
“If they wanted to be taken seriously, they would have retained less notorious counsel.”
Yes, but if they want futures on TV, then they got the right team!
“Oh, YOU’RE the one they represented! Well, of course we can find you a time-slot!”
If they wanted to be taken seriously, they would have retained less notorious counsel.
Well, given the fact that degree of plugged-in-ness is the sole determinant of how seriously one gets taken in D.C., I’d say Hicks has retained just the right counsel.
This seems to me like it’s all about Hillary right now. These people specialized in going after Bill…Benghazi is something they want to tie around Hillary’s neck. They want to tarnish her record and try to bring down her favorables. Wonder if the PUMAs will rise up to her defense. Probably not, they’re too obsessed with making the President look bad.
Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding.
I remember seeing a book in the 90s about Hillary’s fiendish plot to take over the United States. I don’t remember if the cover showed her with red Satan eyes and blood dribbling down her chain, but that sort of book. So naturally I was curious, and indeed the book revealed a plot so sinister, so depraved, that you’d better be sitting down when you read this. She was going to take over the United States by running for president.
I really like the first half of your comment – very insightful.
The second half is totally unnecessary.
OK OK but there’s one basic question that I still don’t have an answer to: What the fuck exactly is the scandal supposed to be here? The most serious allegations these whistle blowers are these:
And? They changed their talking points as new information came in? The Secretary of State didn’t return two of her staff members’ phone calls at a time when everybody on the planet was calling her? I’m willing to try getting outraged over this, but somebody has to give me something to get outraged about.
If you have to ask….you’re not likely the target market!
But this is a really slow moving “scandal”. I’d say glacial, but the glaciers are melting much faster than the Benghazi Bamboozle is proceeding. What Act are we in again?
Anyway, pay no attention to the failing country and gub’mint, bread and circuses for all! Second terms are the time for scandals, even if manufactured out of molehills…
The first rule of scandals is (or should be) “If it takes a 3 page memorandum to explain the issue, it’s not a scandal”.
I still have no idea what the issue is with Bangazi.
I don’t see this “scandal” capturing the imagination of the American public, no matter how hard the media tries to inflate it into something other than an inside-the-beltway circle jerk. I don’t see this cutting through even the day to day noise. It might get a lot of play on Sundays and a few Op-Eds but overall, it’s a big yawn that the American public thinks is resolved.
More Benghazi-gate?
You’d think the Republicans would move onto greener political-scam pastures after “Please proceed, Governor.”
The State Department IG’s report, which led to some high-level folks spending time with their families, is all of the investigation we need.
Isn’t the goal with the likes of diGenova and Toensing to move the story out of the rightwing echo chamber and into the mainstream media, so that dim bulbs like Wolf Blitzer, Andrea Mitchell, (your favorite here) will start saying things like “questions have been raised about the administration’s handling of Benghazi” and “was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton entirely honest in her post-Benghazi testimony before Congress? That is the question a number of critics have raised in recent days. For more we go to . . .”?
If it turns out to be a ratings loser, then they’ll drop it soon enough. A few days of people changing the channel every time the topic is brought up will sink it pretty quickly. It’s boring.
Candy, whatever the truth of these allegations, doesn’t the existence of these questions put a cloud over Barack Obama’s presidency?
Oh, absolutely, Wolf.
they are grifters with law degrees