So does spousal-immunity come into play now?
Hard to believe the answer is anything but "yes":
Three days after guilty plea, Griles ties the knot
By Mike Soraghan
April 20, 2007Two Bush administration officials who have been linked in scandal are now linked in wedlock.
The union of former Deputy Interior Secretary J. Steven Griles and Sue Ellen Wooldridge could have implications for the investigation into Griles’s ties to ex-lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
They were married March 26, three days after Griles pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about his relationship with Abramoff and a previous romantic partner. Wooldridge was the top environmental prosecutor at the Department of Justice (DoJ) before she resigned in January.
Legal experts note that people can refuse to testify against their spouses, and that in some cases, people can prevent their spouse from testifying against them.
"There have been plenty of cases where marriage was a good strategy for a criminal defendant,” said Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor. But he added, “It’s plausible they simply picked an odd time to wed."
Such "spousal privilege" can be waived in a plea agreement requiring a defendant to cooperate with an ongoing investigation like the Abramoff investigation, said Roscoe Howard, a former U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, now with Troutman Sanders in Washington.
Griles's guilty plea does not include any requirement that he cooperate in the investigation. It does include likely prison time.
The plea agreement Griles entered into only covers his lying to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, essentially McCain and Dorgan. It does not cover any of the other various crimes to which he might also be a party, with or without the knowledge of his current wife, also the former Solicitor of the Interior and Counsel to the Secretary (Norton), prior to being Associate Attorney General of the Natural Resources and Environmental division of the DoJ.
Talk about thumbing your nose at the DoJ Public Integrity section. But seeing that they've a new head (the fifth in four years) hand-picked by Gonzales, don't expect much to come of it, other than perhaps new china and congratulatory flowers.