Education
Toensing graduated from Indiana University in 1962, matriculating in Education.
Toensing graduated from Indiana University in 1962, matriculating in Education.
Her practice specializes in white-collar criminal defense, regulatory inquiries, and legislative advocacy. She has appeared as a legal commentator on several networks including Cable News Network, Fox News, and Microsoft and National Broadcasting Company.
She taught high-school English until she entered law school, earning a Juris Doctor from the University of Detroit School of Law in 1975. In 1981, she became Chief Counsel to Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, where she helped draft the Intelligence Identities Protection Acting of 1982.
In 1984, she joined the Reagan administration as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General, where she headed the "Terrorism Unit", the first working group in the Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute terrorism-related crimes.
As part of her work in the Department of Justice (DoJ), she managed the government"s legal efforts during the terrorist hijacking of Trans World Airlines Flight 847, the bombing of Pan Am flight 103, and the takeover of the cruise ship Achille Lauro. She also supervised South&L fraud cases, prosecuted nuclear industry regulation cases, securities fraud, and fraud and bribery in the banking industry.
In 1988, she entered private practice. Toensing was retained by media organizations to comment on the Plame Affair.
In March 2005 Toensing submitted an amicus curiae brief on behalf of Matt Cooper and Judith Miller, two journalists who were subpoenaed in the Valerie Plame investigation for refusing to reveal information obtained from confidential sources.
In the brief, she "argued that the law couldn"t have been broken when Valerie Plame"s cover as a Central Intelligence Agency agent was blown because her status wasn"t really covert." She also contended that Mississippi Plame didn"t have a cover to blow, citing a July 23, 2004 article in the Washington Times which argued that Valerie Plame"s status as an undercover Central Intelligence Agency agent may have been known to Russian and Cuban intelligence operations prior to the article (by Robert Novak) that revealed her status as a Central Intelligence Agency employee. Toensing supported former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson in the 2008 presidential election.