“I can’t recall”???? Isn’t that how they got Libby?
>>>“I can’t recall”???? Isn’t that how they got Libby?
Yes. Obstruction Justice, which is the other consolation prize that a prosecutor goes for when he doesn’t get someone for the big one.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1873827/posts?page=17#17
Duncan Hunter: First I would not pardon or commune the sentenced without reading the transcript. Having said that, I think there are a couple of things the American people have to know and reflect on. Most of the citizens think that Mr. Libby was sentenced for the disclosing the identity of a CIA agent. That is not true. Ultimately the prosecutor understood that Libby was not the person that disclosed the identity of the CIA agent’s identity. He did not prosecute him for that. You may notice that. That is not what the conviction is for. The conviction was for inconsistent statements and lying to the prosecutor.
Now I think there is something that folks have to look at here and that is this. When prosecutors get into a high profile class, in which he was going to persue people for disclosing the identity of a CIA agent under the Foreign Agents Identity Disclosure Act. That is a law we put into place to keep people from being disclosed. This is a very serious thing so he starts off on this prosecution where he is going to, by gosh, bring people to justice for that. He ends up not doing that because he didn’t find a case where a person had their identity illegally disclosed, so he takes the consolation prize. The consolation prize is always perjury. It is lying to the grand jury. The point that I made the last time I was interviewed on this is this point. Tell me what you did 30 days ago. Tell me all the meetings you had 30 days ago. You probably can’t tell me. So if I ask you questions for 3 or 4 hours as a cross examining attorney, I could probably bring up places where you have not given all the information about things in fact happened on particular days because you can’t remember. Now Libby claims he couldn’t remember these things and after they asked him many questions, they got him for inconsistent statements or lying.
I think you always have to be careful about that. But I think in terms of Obstruction Justice, which is the other consolation prize that a prosecutor goes for when he doesn’t get someone for the big one. Which is what he pursued in the first place. They left Mr. Libby with $250,000 in fines and on probation. His law career is ruined he will be disbarred. He will never be able to practice law again. I think that is probably reasonable. But now my recommendation is this. I would not pardon Mr. Libby without reviewing the transcript. And I haven’t reviewed the transcript.
I think that Libby recalled, but didn't recall exactly as Tim Russert did and thus was determined to have lied. If he had just taken a note from Hill's playbook, he'd have been a lot better off.