What We Are About To Do Here Is What The Good Lord Would Call A Cleansing of the Wicked. I Call It A Good Old Fashioned Texas Ass Kicking.
Posted on 05/10/2006 9:45:38 PM PDT by Jean S
Will CIA-leak prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald indict Karl Rove?
Who knows? While some observers search the tea leaves for answers, the only real answer right now is that nobody outside of Fitzgerald’s office knows for sure.
And it’s possible that nobody inside Fitzgerald’s office knows for sure either.
But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Rove is indicted. If that were to happen, it appears he would be charged with lying to Fitzgerald’s grand jury and not with any underlying crime, such as exposing a covert CIA agent.
In that event, a Rove prosecution would probably resemble the case of Lewis Libby, the former Cheney chief of staff charged with perjury and obstruction of justice. And, although no one seems to have noticed, that case is descending into absurdity.
Perhaps the key moment in the descent happened last February in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton. Fitzgerald was there, along with the Libby defense team.
Libby’s lawyers had asked Fitzgerald to produce evidence that Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert agent at the CIA. They had also asked for an assessment of the damage, if any, caused by the exposure of her identity.
In papers filed with the court, Fitzgerald refused both requests. Now, in the courtroom, Judge Walton wanted to hear Fitzgerald’s reasons.
“Does the government intend to introduce any evidence that would relate to either damage or potential damage that the alleged revelations by Mr. Libby caused, or do you intend to introduce any evidence related to Ms. Wilson’s status and whether it was classified or she was in a covert status or anything of that nature?” Walton asked.
“We don’t intend to offer any proof of actual damage,” Fitzgerald said. “We’re not going to get into whether that would occur or not. It’s not part of the perjury statute.”
It was an astonishing statement, in the context of what Fitzgerald has said in the past.
Go back to the news conference he held last October in which he announced the Libby indictment. The case was very serious, Fitzgerald said, as he launched into the famous metaphor in which he compared the CIA-leak case to a baseball game in which the pitcher threw a fastball, hit the batter and “really, really hurt him.”
This case is kind of like that, Fitzgerald said, only “it’s a lot more serious than baseball. And the damage wasn’t to one person. It wasn’t just Valerie Wilson. It was done to all of us.”
There was no way one could listen to that and escape the conclusion that Fitzgerald was claiming the disclosure of Mrs. Wilson’s identity did serious damage. But that was then. Now Fitzgerald doesn’t want to talk about it.
But what about Mrs. Wilson’s job status? When that issue came up, the conversation went truly off track.
Wells was again pressing the judge to force Fitzgerald to turn over evidence of the damage done. The reason he needed it, Wells said, is that Fitzgerald will likely — and understandably — tell the jurors that the case began with the outing of a CIA agent.
“What [the jurors] are hearing is that, as Mr. Fitzgerald said in his press conference, Mr. Libby outed a CIA agent, and they are going to be sitting in the box thinking 007’s identity has been disclosed and that my client is a terrible person,” Wells said. “It’s going to be like we have turned over the crown jewels because we outed a classified CIA agent.”
The judge then turned to Fitzgerald. What did he have to say?
“We are trying a perjury case,” Fitzgerald said. “If she turned out to be a postal driver mistaken for a CIA employee, it’s not a defense if you lie in a grand jury under oath about what you said.”
So there you have it. Not only does it not matter if the Valerie Plame Wilson leak did any damage, or no damage at all. It doesn’t even matter if Wilson even worked for the CIA. What Patrick Fitzgerald set out to investigate, the alleged politically motivated, deliberate exposure of a covert CIA agent, no longer matters.
Now, say that Rove is indicted. His lawyers would no doubt argue that Rove did not intend to mislead the prosecutor or the grand jury.
But they, like the Libby defense team, would also ask Fitzgerald for evidence showing that the investigation was based on something. Was there an underlying crime that justified Fitzgerald’s two and a half years of investigating and his threats to jail journalists, as well as the jailing of New York Times reporter Judith Miller?
Was there some reason for it all?
If that happens, if Rove’s lawyers were to ask Fitzgerald those questions, the prosecutor will likely say to them what he has said to the Libby defense team:
It doesn’t matter.
And that is what has become of the CIA-leak investigation.
York is a White House correspondent for National Review. His column appears in The Hill each week. E-mail: byork@nationalreview.com
Hey, no mention of illegal aliens. Five yard penalty, loss of down.
We should all be thankful that Byron York does what he does in the way that he does it. He's the best.
Fitzgerald needs to be grilled under oath about every meeting he's ever had in his life. If we find just one instance in which his account differs in any way from the accounts we gather from everyone he's ever met with, even about something like in what week or month the meeting occurred, we will charge him with perjury and throw his butt in jail.
LOL! And not "Bush's fault" either?
Even if Rove isn't indicted Chrissy Matthews will find something so obsolete to drag this thing out on his show.
Byron York: At immigration rallies, look for the union label
See, it's really bad. Their names are in a file and everything!
And then during the segment he'll throw in some 20 times about how much her exposure ruined National Security.
No underlying crime, AT ALL. Perjury traps is all Fitzgerald has.
And this guy is supposed to be a hotshot US Attorney?
This is akin to a cop stopping me for speeding. He comes up to the car and I ask "Was I speeding?"
"I have no evidence you were. Do you have 33 pounds of air in your front left tire?"
I say "Yeah. I do."
The cop pulls out a tire gauge and measures. "You only have 29 pounds. You're lying. YOu're going to jail."
Even intenitonal lying about something that is not a crime should not be prosecutable.
Ah Jeez, can't even get 2 posts without illegal aliens being mentioned. Thread hijacker!
No, it doesn't matter, because now we know, as we always suspected, that Wilson outed her.
Wilson.
So, when Fitz gets done harassing the people who didn't out her, is he going after the people who did?
Is he going to go after the people behind the whole put-up job, the fake Niger investigation, the attempt by CIA personnel to attempt to throw an election? The whole bogus affair, in which we must either believe that Plame was betrayed and used by her husband, or else was complicit in a fraudulent operation against a sitting president during war...?
"Even if Rove isn't indicted Chrissy Matthews will find something so obsolete to drag this thing out on his show."
Rove will be indicted, because Patrick Fitzgerald wants to render Rove inoperative as a political planner for the mid-term elections. Fitzgerald is a Dem, and wants to be a king-maker. What better way to do it than destroy Rove's capability to organize the political campaign for the Pub mid-term election effort. Mark my words, here, unless Fitzgerald just can't come up with enough to please a Grand Jury, which seems unlikely, as Grand Juries are parrots for the prosecution, Rove's *ss is grass.
Isn't materiality an essential component of perjury? How can even a deliberate lie in an investigation of a crime be material if the crime being investigated never occurred?
SCORE!!!!
If you ever get an answer to this question - I sure would like a ping. It's difficult to wrap my mind around Fitzgerald's reasoning on this.
http://teriobrien.webloggin.com/2006/three-strikes-and-you%E2%80%99re-out-patrick-fitzgerald-and-i-don%E2%80%99t-care-if-the-msm-does-love-you-as-much-as-it-loves-tiger-woods/
It's going to be up to the defendant to prove it's not material to the initial investigation and that's why Libby is calling 5 witnesses to show that Wilson outed his own wife way before, thus rendering the investigation of her "outing" null and void.
Exactly the same as the Martha Stewart sham show-trial.
Uh, look at the simple worms who award Pulitzer "Prizes" and I think you will agree that getting one essentially amounts to an insult. It's like getting a 'Raspberry', or being named "worst dressed" by that fashion designer guy.
It's almost as disgraceful and embarrassing as getting a Nobel.
This punk prosecutor for the first 30 minutes at his "big" press conference lectured us about the importance of national security. You punk ass B&*%! ... So all you have is some alleged, BS "perjury case." So Fritz, I guess 'perjury' wasn't good enough to lead your silly press conference.
Thanks toby. You wrapped it up in just one sentence. And that's all I need to know - legalese challenged here. :o)
There is nothing more fun than dissecting Wilson's stories, and if you start running searches, you'll see that its a sport around here.
The Niger "investigation" was a fraud, and thats pretty easy to parse out even from Wilson's own writings. In fact picking the whole Niger story apart is great fun, and anyone can play. The joke is that the Niger story was never in doubt, never controversial, never from the beginning.
Saddam's contacts with the government of Niger were public knowledge, admitted by everyone involved, including Wilson.
And Wilson's claim that uranium couldn't have been shipped, was false on two levels. First, that wasn't part of Bush's claim. And, secondly, since he didn't actually investigate that, he had no way of knowing one way or the other. He self-admittedly didn't go to the mines, or follow any trucks, or tap any phones. He just claimed that it couldn't have happened, since the IAEA wouldn't have allowed it.
Except that IAEA itself said (1) they weren't in Niger, they didn't have legal permission to operate there; (2) they didn't have the manpower available to monitor Niger's mining, and (3) its just yellowcake anyway, and they aren't interested in monitoring yellowcake mining.
While we're swearing that uranium smuggling is impossible, has anyone thought about where Libya got its yellowcake? Half of its accounted for. Where did the other half come from?
Anyway, moving on.
Most people here had surmised that Wilson had exposed her, or she had exposed herself, a long time ago, by simply looking at the journalists they socialized with, and the information those journalists published. It became pretty apparent that the Wilson's were the source for quite a bit of WMD related journalism. If you are leaking WMD backgroud information to your friends, how do you explain your bona fides?
It seems unlikely that Judith Miller went to jail to protect Libbey, since he had given her permission to speak from the beginning. So if she wasn't protecting someone in the administration, then who?
So, people have been putting two and two together for a long time.
Libbey is accused of revealing her name to Cooper, who is a friend of Plame's. But the actual conversation as reported by Cooper, has Cooper asking Libbey about it, as if he already knows. If you'll remember, Novak already knew when he asked Rove. Everyone already knows.
You might remember that, when Novak called CIA to get permission to reveal her employment, CIA confirmed it. Which is strange, if its a secret. They didn't flat out give permission, they hedged on that, but they did confirm her employment, which if she was covert would not have happened.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1628703/posts
Libbey claims to have 5 witnesses who can confirm that they heard of her status from Wilson himself. Don't know who all of them are. At least one, one of the retired generals who is a talking head, already came forward months ago. So its not really a secret. Don't know if he's one of Libbey's five witnesses or not.
So I feel like I'm on pretty firm ground. That the Niger "investigation" was fraudulent has been plain from day one, for anyone paying attention. Once you realize that Wilson's basic story is flawed, once you begin to notice that he keeps changing his story, then the lights start to come on.
Hitchens has done some good writing about it, sometimes I think he reads us. Steyn has done some good writing as well. But the best at dissecting the whole affair is our Fedora. Run a search on her name.
I went through a messy divorce with a custody fight that spanned a total of three lawsuits filed by my litigious ex-wife who has borderline personality disorder. Most jurists in my ultra-liberal county, from what I experienced, are grossly incompetent and corrupt to the point of sacrificing the well being of the children, the father, and society as a whole to find in favor of the mother.
My ex was lying her ass off, which I pointed out repeatedly and documented with solid evidence, but the judges always chose to ignore this. My attorney told me that the state perjury statute is rarely if ever enforced, and that a judge can always skate around it easily by declaring even an obvious and intentional lie to be immaterial.
If a whimsical determination of immateriality is the card judges keep up their sleeve to avoid perjury cases--and to help sway cases in favor of their sociological bias--then I would think proof of immateriality should be a rock solid defense against perjury...unless the federal statute is different. And if after years of investigation the government can't provide evidence of an underlying crime, I would think that alone would be obvious proof of immateriality.
Fitzgerald needs to spend some time with Rep. Tom Lantos and learn about Admiral Boorda.
Fitzy may not believe he has enough for a conviction and I doubt that Rove would waive his right to a speedy trial in which the case would be done before the end of September and if Rove wins it would near certainly spell the end for Fitzy in Libby's case.
All Fitzy has to do is wait until end of August to pull the plug on Rove. Early enough to screw up Rove's election battle plans, and late enough that Rove won't be able to get a speedy trial before the November election takes place. Officially screwed. Fitzy 1, Rove 0.
"Isn't materiality an essential component of perjury? How can even a deliberate lie in an investigation of a crime be material if the crime being investigated never occurred?"
Well, I give you credit, you seem to have reduced this conundrum to its essence.
Hey Mr. Fitgerald, if there was no crime, then wrap it up, the investigation should not be allowed to morph into a stand alone perjury claim.
Isn't that akin to evidence discovered during an invalid search, say one conducted without probable cause? The case gets thrown out, does it not?
I'm no legal scholar, but as Byron York points out this has become theatre of absurd.
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It goes back to the phone calls by Matt Cooper to Rove & Libby.
Cooper is married to Mandy Grunwald who is Hillary's best friend and media advisor and Bubba's former campaign manager. To top it off, it was Matt's first week as Chief Whitehouse correspondent and lo and behold he "made" the big story of the year.
It all leads back to Hillary...and all benefits from weakening the Repubs flows to Hillary for 2008.
I still wonder who the hell would roll over and run as VP with Hillary after working all their lives toward the Presidency?
"I still wonder who the hell would roll over and run as VP with Hillary after working all their lives toward the Presidency?"
Would you like that long list of whores alphabetically or chronologically?
McCain comes immediately to mind, for one.
Is that you in the OTHER NEWS box?
Go back to the news conference he held last October in which he announced the Libby indictment. The case was very serious, Fitzgerald said, as he launched into the famous metaphor in which he compared the CIA-leak case to a baseball game in which the pitcher threw a fastball, hit the batter and “really, really hurt him.”
~~~~~~~~~
Has Patrick's dream of a grand slam Fitz-zled???
So in Libby's case, the DC Grand Jury decided it was material? And when it goes to trial, then the judge will have that discretion?
My attorney told me that the state perjury statute is rarely if ever enforced, and that a judge can always skate around it easily by declaring even an obvious and intentional lie to be immaterial.
Well then, what's the point? So you could have told outrageous lies also and could have been immaterial. But wait, you're a conservative and probably voted for Bush....so rare enforcement probably would have been made in your case.
Thanks for the real life example. I've only been in court myself once briefly and I try to stay away from lawyers. :o) That leaves me rather ignorant of what really goes on.
Right now, they want the big block of Hispanic votes. The abortion block is diminished.
No matter, she'll use hubby in her campaign as a spokesperson. She will only address "Dem Groups" so no one hears the boos to get all positive press and if you "own" the press like the Dems do, it's a homerun day after day.
Thanks for that link. I've thought the Libby deal had an odor to it from the git-go but had not delved into it this much.
If Libby lied to a grand jury, then he should not have lied.
But there is a difference between speaking an untruth and speaking a lie. A lie is a deliberate misrepresentation of the truth and requires insight into intent and motivation.
There are all kinds of mistakes people make with information every single day. Honestly, even my computer has real glitches that are not input based, and it spews out mistaken info on occasion.
Anything from misunderstanding to misremembering and everything in between is fair game for concluding that Libby(and Rove?) did no wrong.
And now we have further evidence that Libby's lawyer is prepared to have any number of people testify that they knew prior to anything said in the media that Plame worked for the CIA. Since this is all about where someone first heard that Plame worked for the CIA, then that means this can of worms probably cannot be unraveled.
If I'm asked when I first recall being told that Santa Claus was not real, then I might offer a stab at an answer and say it was my big brother when I was 7. If I'm wrong, and someone takes me to court because they find my Aunt told me a month before my brother, then have I lied? Nope. I was simply mistaken.
And then what if they find a host of folks in my life who all knew that Santa wasn't real, and all have a proclivity for straightening those things out with 7 year olds?
Answer: no telling where I heard it first.
My crime: simply trying to be helpful and provide a best recollection for that moment. Should one have to say the words "this is my best recollection at this moment" in order for that to be understood?
2+2=4 :-(
Pinz
Not reported was the sound of "boing boing boing" as the kangaroos bounced around the courtroom...
Well, that's it, then. Libby's "for it". However, under the "no harm, no foul" and "he was only lying to protect..." principles established in the Jones V Clinton matter, Libby should receive the same Draconian punishment as the Former Chief Executive.
BTW, didn't the rumor mill establish that Fitzgerald had mentioned the "substantial damage" angle when he went before the Grand Jury on one or more occasions? Do we know for a fact that he would have gotten his indictment without mentioning the "substantial damage"?
Do you listen to Teri on the radio? I really look foward to her show.
That is a nice way of putting that.
Here's what happened in practical terms, IMO.
- Fitgerald realized 2 years ago that he had no case.
- Fitgerald began subpoening Administration officials and asking the tons of questions in minute detail about conversations that were 1-2-3 years old.
- He then called the other parties to the conversations, looking for any miniscule insconsistency.
- He filed for indictments on these miniscule inconsistencies as a last gasp to show something for 2 1/2 years and millions of dollars investigating an non-crime.
It gives you the impression that he found out real early on that Plame didn't fall under the "007" clause.
I'm sure there is some connection to April 28, 1998...the date that Valerie and Joe got married and 5 years later..."spring of 2003" when everything about "007" was about to erupt.
The initial match was struck by Joe in his revelation of being the Niger envoy and the 5 years had just passed. Joe knew he was off the hook on the 5 year thing...but no one elase did. Regardless, they had to play out what had been started...to get Rove...Cooper was to be Hillary's patsy.
Anyone with common sense would look at the whole picture including his wife who is not just a government employee, but works for the CIA, the organization that sent Joe.
I think the marriage date or shortly thereafter is likely when she said "no more overseas" and took the Langley job.
She probably did it to "relieve her conscience" having told Joe about her "007" work under the covers ON THEIR THIRD DATE. "Valerie made herself subject to Dem blackmail no matter how you cut it."
So 5 years after their marriage, when Joe told the "3rd date story" in his book brings into question the "integrity of "007" on a third date. That was the Dem agreement: a book deal to compensate for the job loss and "get out of dodge".
I had a great memory....but my diary sure helps....but sometimes even I can't interpret "exactly" what I meant when I wrote it.
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