Posted on 10/30/2005 8:40:57 AM PST by smoothsailing
NEWS ANALYSIS
Patrick Fitzgerald Uses Martha Stewart Technique to Indict Scooter Libby
By Sher Zieve
Oct 29, 2005
After Martha Stewart was convicted for saying she was innocent of a crime, which could not be proved, many saw this as the test-case for allowing prosecutors free reign to employ any and all manners of Stalinesque prosecutorial techniques. Stewart was deemed "guilty" of a non-crime for essentially saying she wasn't guilty.
Is it no longer acceptable to defend oneself? In Martha's case, it most certainly appeared not. However, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald advised that he supported the case against Ms. Stewart. Apparently, Fitzgerald is a backer of creativity in the law.
Attorney and co-author of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, Victoria Toensing, said of Fitzgerald's 'Plame-gate' case: "If you don't have a clear violation, you should not become what's called 'creative with the law'. I don't think you're supposed to be creative with the criminal law. I call it fitting the stepsister's foot into Cinderella's shoe." Toensing advised that there was no violation of the 1982 Act. Toensing further quoted the Chicago Tribune, which had written in February: "Probably Fitzgerald's greatest talent was finding creative ways to interpret the law." In regards to Fitzgerald's Lewis Libby indictment (and/or any others to come), this well-known Fitzgerald creativity strongly appears to be the case.
Please don't misunderstand me. Obstruction of justice and perjury are serious crimes.
But, we're not even certain that these charges are either warranted or accurate. However, attaching additional "crimes" to an underlying "crime" that has already been dropped seems baseless at best. At its worst, it smacks of 'we used the pretense of an underlying crime to put you into the hot seat—so that we could go on a fishing expedition and try to get you to make inconsistent statements'. And at his over-an-hour press conference on Friday, Fitzgerald seemed determined to keep Karl Rove and others "on the hook". Fitzgerald refused to answer mainstream media reporters who continued to breathlessly salivate, while asking if he still had plans to investigate and/or indict Rove.
Fitzgerald coyly refused to answer. However, during his press conference, Fitzgerald did manage to make Libby sound more like an axe murderer than someone who had (possibly inadvertently) contradicted his statements.
Note: In a legal system already rampant with activist judges performing legislative duties, to say that our "legal" system has gone wild is a cosmic understatement.
Fitzgerald said that he had charged the now former VP Chief of Staff Lewis Libby with obstruction of justice, making false statements and perjury because "we didn't get the straight story." When asked why he didn't charge Libby with the "outing" of former CIA covert agent Valerie Plame, Fitzgerald said that he didn't know if a "serious national security crime" had been perpetrated.
Silly me and others. I'd thought that the outing-crime might have actually been the reason the investigation began, in the first place. Whew!!! After almost 2 years, the special prosecutor still doesn't know if a real crime was committed or not?
Note: Again it appears that for politicians 'innocent until proven guilty' applies only to Democrats—not to Republicans or conservatives.
When Fitzgerald was asked by reporters why he had not charged anyone with the outing-crime, he gave the baseball analogy: "What we have when someone charges obstruction of justice is the umpire gets sand thrown in his eyes. He's trying to figure out what happened, and somebody blocked their view." Hmmm. Not to argue with the special prosecutor, I'd still like to know what real crime he believes was 'being obstructed'. From what Victoria Toensing says, no crime was ever committed. As she wrote the 1982 Act upon which this investigation was purportedly begun, she should know.
So, I have to wonder if this case was and is being made up as it goes along and more people are questioned. However, with no crime having been committed, I'm increasingly uneasy about true motivations. Is it simply that the special prosecutor believed that after 2 years he had to come up with some cause of action? Or, is there something else afoot?
Others, besides me, are asking these same questions.
.................................
Sher Zieve is an author and political commentator.
© Copyright by NationalLedger.com
My comparison is that it's like getting pulled over for drunk driving, found innocent but being charged with being in the bar anyway.
Not a bad comparison.
Another would be to get pulled over for drunk driving, found innocent of that charge, but charged for remembering incorrectly the exact time you were last in a bar.
I knew it! The old "trip them up with talk" technique. Bastards!
It's also very flimsy - why accept the "recollections" of reporters and commentators (particularly one who was already shown to have had a faulty memory) against those of Libby?
In any case, I thought the Martha Stewart thing was a dangerous precedent. Anyone should have the right to file a not-guilty plea without having to worry about being prosecuted essentially for having made use of their right to be considered innocent. The other thing that appalled me was that many Freepers, who seemed to have a particularly violent hatred of Martha Stewart, thought this perversion of justice was perfectly all right.
I think Fitzgerald is also setting a dangerous precedent here, essentially that of having to find some procedural crime or suggestion thereof even when there was no substance to the initial case.
I don't think it was ever supposed to be a crime to lie... unless you were under oath.
And if they insist you DO talk to them as if you were under oath, you should always have 5th amendment protection.
This whole mess seemed to me to be somehow a way of getting around the fifth amendment.
I've read the indictment, and can't figure out why Libby
would lie to the GJ about when and how he learned about
Ms. Wilson. We await his version of the events and timeline.
It's possible that Libby screwed up. He needed the wife-
arranged-trip detail to help discredit Wilson, but
apparently considered it classified. It appears that
instead of having Cheney ask Bush to order it declassied,
he relied on the old trick of finding an "open source"
report of the fact.
And if there wasn't one, or he got confused and merely
thought there was one, or relied on an actual open
source from an unrecorded phone call with a hostile
member of the legacy media, then he's got a problem.
And had Libby admitted to the GJ that he didn't have
an open source for the admitted discussions with
reporters, would Fitzy have then tried to charge on
the supposed original leak?
The Fitzgerald indictment is as political as anything
Ronnie Earle would have coughed out.
But yes, this has troubling parallels with the Stewart
case, and these persecutors had better realize that we
are watching all this, and the lessons we are taking
from it are:
- render no aid to the FBI - it's dangerous to talk to them
- always take the 5th in front of a jury, even if you are
supposedly a non-target friendly witness
Fitz & pals are wrecking the legal system in order to
carve notches on their resumes.
Seems to me the grand jury could have returned no bills on all of this and he wouldn't have had a leg to stand on.
Well, you know what they say, if they want to, they can indict a ham sandwich.
I must be missing something.
The "evidence" used to indict Libby for at least one count was a series of recollections made before the GJ about his discussion with Russert.
My read of those statements was that was describing his thought processes before the GJ - in which he was admittedly trying to deceive Russert - and *not* that he was trying to the GJ itself. It's possible you could read it either way, but that's precisely why it fails to be a solid charge.
If Scooter Libby were facing two months at "Camp Cupcake", this might all be just fine.
He's facing THIRTY YEARS IN PRISON. And a fine of 1.5 million dollars.
He's facing financial ruin, and virtual life in prison.
For what? Talk about a kangaroo court.
This is really disgusting, IMHO. Big time disgusting. Bush really should pardon Libby - proudly, unapologetically, then look right into the cameras and lecture democrats on PARTISAN HATE.
(rant off)
Granted I'm not a lawyer, but c'mon,
/s
Plame (not Libby) has to meet three conditions for there to be a charge for revealing her identity: (a) her status must have been classified, (b) there must have been active government measures to conceal her status and identity, and (c) she must have operated overseas within the last five years.
All three conditions must be met.
Given that he's working out of the long-established Counter Espionage offices at the DoJ, it's implausible that Fitzgerald *doesn't* know beyond question what Plame's status actually was. He never even *hinted* at her actual status in his one-hour+ press conference (yet that has been the central scope of the investigation).
Since Libby did receive his information though classified channels, and he also holds clearance, there's no doubt that he could be charged if Plame met the above criteria.
And since Fitzgerald went instead for five lesser charges, we must infer that Plame did not hold the necessary status. After all, the entire 2-year investigation revolved around this central issue.
That isn't what Martha Stewart was guilty of at all. She was found guilty of lying to investigators. This article is spin, and not very good spin at that.
Neither Stewart nor Libby had to say anything at all to investigators or the GJ. Once they did, they had a legal duty to tell the truth. The prosecutors in both instances had evidence that statements that were made were not true. We get upset about the fact that Clinton and his accomplices lied and were not charged; we should uphold the standard that those who lie should pay the price. I personally hope that Libby is found not guilty. But with what is alleged in the idictment, I don't blame the prosecutor for bringing the charges.
I think the prosecution does have a problem with motive. That will be a major defense, I suspect.
>> would Fitzy have then tried to charge on the supposed
>> original leak?
> Plame (not Libby) has to meet three conditions for there
> to be a charge for revealing her identity:
I wasn't referring to the 1982 law, but Libby's general
requirement to not disclose classified info.
I suspect everyone except barking moonbats agree by now
that Plame wasn't covered by the 1982 law.
My guess is that Tim Russert secretly recorded his phone conversation with Libby.
The reason I think that is that Fitz seems so extremely confident that it was Libby who lied about that conversation, not Russert.
Secretly recording one's phone conversations is not illegal in either D.C. or VA, IIRC (although it is in Maryland -- hence the prosecution of Linda Tripp).
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