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.
