Feb 09 2007
Fitzgerald Loses Part Of One Count Against Libby
I am stunned, but it seems Fitzgerald was so successful in his case the judge threw one portion of one of the indictments against Libby (saw it first, where else, at Just One Minute).
The Libby defense won a victory of sorts when Judge Reggie B. Walton agreed to exclude part of one of the five felony counts against Mr. Libby. But it remained unclear whether the change, which was not contested by the prosecutors, would matter in jury deliberations.
Interesting that Fitzgerald succeeded in damaging his case only slightly. After the testimony we saw it could have been much worse. Now onto the defense, which is the wild card in all of this. My guess is Fitzgerald has shown the best he has and will look much worse for the remainder of the trial. But clearly he lost some ground, albeit just a small portion.
If the jury is made up of liberals such as the ones we hear from on right blogs, Libby doesn’t have a hope of a not guilty verdict. I have wondered if the questions the jurists asked the judge hold this theory up. This may be what Fiztgerald is counting on. That no matter what kind of case he presents the jury will convict on ideological basis. I feel the best Libby can hope for is a hung jury. I don’t see any other result with the liberals in Washington, DC on the jury.
And the media is showing itself by printing false reports about the trial. This is all extremely scary. An out of control prosecutor (maybe for personal reasons) aided by a out of control media to metaphorically lynch an innocent man. This was a nothing case from start to finish. The whole thing is based on everyone’s memories and it seems everyone’s memories are bad. Fitzgerald should have closed the case when he found out Armitage was the leaker and he took no action on that fact. The rest was a fishing trip to try and catch some big fish for something or other. So much for a non partisan prosecutor.
Fitzgerald seems to have latched onto Libby for his own reasons and has ignored any evidence that exonorates Libby. The whole thing is a travesty and is a huge blot on the justice system.
I do not trust the jury system. These people carry their own prejudices into the courtrooms and their votes are based on these prejudices and those prejudices are usually based on something that hapened to them personally.
After all these cases that have come up in the news lately, I am beginning to wonder if there is any justice in the justice system. However, as bad as it is, it is still the best system going. And at least if Libby is convicted it will not be the end of the road. He can appeal and maybe get a judgement according to the law and not prejudices of people with closed minds.
More likely Bush would grant him “amnesty.”
…A jury that was educated in the NEA brainwashing lab called Public School….has no idea what it is supposed to do, imho.
Why pre-guess what ordinary people do?
The questions the judge reads out loud from the jurors, after each witness is finished, shows them to be listening intently. And, their questions hone in on things that weren’t asked and answered in testimony.
Sometimes, we just have to put our prejudices aside.
can a suit be brought against Fitz for obstructing justice??
(re:Armitage)
I guess you haven’t been thru too many trials, AJ. While the prosecution is putting on its case-in-chief, itis restricted to direct examination, which means the prosecutor is not allowed to lead witnesses (unless he asks the judge for leave to treat the witness as hostile).
However, when the defense calls witnesses, Fitzgerald is allowed to cross-examine them (just as Wells was allowed to cross-examine Fitzgerald’s witnesses).
Cross examination allows the inquisitor to lead the witness, and to force him to answer “yes or no” to questions. Example: “isn’t it a fact that on such-and-such a date, you said so-and so?”
Direct examination is a tedious chore, herding cats as it were. We’ll see how Fitzgerald does crossing defense witnesses, such as they may be. If Wells fails to call Libby, he can’t argue faulty memory, so this could be brief. As for Cheney – I don’t think a congenital liar is going to let himself be placed under oath . . .
I hope Cheney sues you for calling him a congenital liar. You cannot provide one shred of evidence to substantiate your claims. Not one.
It is an indictment on you as to how you see this honorable man.
Keep it up. We love having liberals expose themselves.
Barbaras – I think some of your concern is well taken. I don’t believe this case is about obstruction of justice – it’s about political power. If you can’t beat someone at the ballot box, you can at least damage them with a prosecution – as has been demonstrated in this country numerous times.
Well, sootslayer,
Fitzgerald’s already taken it on the chin.
And, while the “case in chief” was still being presented; Wells POINTED TO THE LYING AFFIDAVIT.
And, according to a witness in the courtroom? Fitz slipped down in his chair.
On, and, Sootslayer.
While it was “still” the Case-in-Chief, Judge Walton took out his scissors, and “snipped.” So that now you now Fitz has “become” circumcised. Will that give him religion? TOO LATE!
8 days old? Circumcisions are good.
Judge snipping away at your case? Shows ya that to the judge there was no evidence to support the charges.
Someone said, those charges are “c” and “d” … 33? … And, it sounded more like cup sizes on a bra. Than anything we can figure out. OR THE JURY? They haven’t seen the indictment (that had parts snipped out). So they will never know.
But if you don’t think Fitz took it on the chin, what do I care?
It wasn’t my baseball analogy in that Presser.
I agree with BarbaraS. It is scary beyond belief that Fitz could actually get a judge to allow this trial. Any real unbiased judge would have thrown it out on its face. This is pure political gamesmanship and any intelligent person can see that. Then the judge, Walton, allows Fitz to narrow the scope so much as to limit even the fact that Libby did not have a motive to lie because no underlying crime was ever committed! Why cover up anything? The other twist of this case is that there was some conspiracy to injure Joe Wilson by outing his wife as a CIA employee. Fitz is allowed to get away with this charade while the truth is that if any person posts an article in the NYT slamming the Prez over a “fact finding mission” that the VP’s office sent them on, and they didn’t, there would certainly be many many conversations around the VP’s office pertaining to how that event actually started! Doesn’t that make a lot of sense?!
I still believe that if this jury convicts Libby out of hatred for Bush, he will probably get it overturned on first appeal. For a perjury case, you have to prove deliberate intent and I don’t believe that is possible in this case, not to mention the many other obvious warts that should have sunk it before it left the dock.
Nothing in the world could make me happier than to have the draft-dodging, drunk-driving, errant-shotgunning, bum-tickered fat boy sue me for calling him a congenital liar.
The truth is ALWAYS a defense in a libel action; demonstrating Cheney’s untruthfulness would be a walk in the park.
If the jury convicts, the odds that the First Circuit court of appeals will overturn the verdict is 0.5% at best.
IMIGHTHAVEUSEDTOHAVEIT –
I hope Cheney sues you for calling him a congenital liar. You cannot provide one shred of evidence to substantiate your claims. Not one. It is an indictment on you as to how you see this honorable man. Keep it up. We love having liberals expose themselves.
You’re a funny (if perennially angry) Joe. ‘Taint a “liberal” position, just a reality-based one. And one shared by a heckuva lot more Americans than there are liberals (hint: how have Ol’ Scattershot’s poll numbers been on the truthfulness axis over the past couple of years?)
… one shred of evidence …. LOL. Cheney isn’t simply a congenital liar, he is Dark Matter which destroys the truth whenever he comes in contact with it. “One shred”? Oh, start with the “Arlington Cemetary” reference, jump to the categorical “there is no doubt that Iraq has [WMD]”, skip to the “last throes”, hop to another “last throes” (and another?), trot on over to …
It’s really sad what “these people” have done to America. (And to the World). It’s no accident that, following widespread and significant worldwide support for America in the aftermath of 9/11, world opinion of the US government has plummeted. It is no accident that even friendly governments’ tangible support for the Iraq adventure (such as it had been), is whisping into nothingness. It is not happenstance that even staunchest of allies Britain is withdrawing, while we are forced to “surge”.
We are all almost certainly less safe (and markedly so) than we were before this mis-adventure was recklessly and yes, even fraudulently, entered into. Who was righter on Iraq’s WMD? Bush/Cheney/Feith/yourpick, or El-Baradi and Blicks and Ritter and the State Department’s intelligence analysis and yourpick. Why were they righter? Hmm. Maybe honesty played a role. (Or maybe just the vague caprices of the Universe.)
Ignorant, arrogant and “non-honest” leadership; a largely lickspittle Republican legislature; a largely supine and fearful Democratic legislative opposition; this and more has landed us in the quite predictable (and indeed, quite accurately predicted) niche between a rock and a very hard place.
God save us all. And there’s no “Plan B” for Iraq, and Iran’s just over the horizon, and . . . Oh, stop it, dgfx! It’ll be a cakewalk, no doubt. Whatever Bush has (un-)planned for us. If not immediately, then in another six months; or in a further six months after that; or surely at worst just 6-9 months after that. . . We’ll turn the corner, eventually (and probably just did).
I suspect that Bush/Cheney is a liar mantra stems in part from the fact that Clinton was a demonstrable liar.
David Addington, chief legal adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, says he was taken aback when the White House started making public pronouncements about the CIA leak investigation.
In the fall of 2003, President Bush’s press secretary was categorically denying that either Karl Rove or I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby was involved in exposing the identity of Valerie Plame.
“Why are you making these statements?” Addington asked White House communications director Dan Bartlett.
“Your boss is the one who wanted them”, Bartlett replied, referring to Cheney.
With that, “I shut up,” Addington recalled recently for jurors in Libby’s CIA leak trial.
Business as usual in Cheneyland.
Did the sane posters on this thread read Clarice today? A MUST read.
http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2007/02/libby_trial_the_nbc_connection.html
As for the others, why do you care so much about this trial? You are not seeking the truth.
And do you personally know George W. Bush and Dick Cheney?
Just curious on what authority your comments stand…
IVEHADIT,
You will want to read this long post over at Free Republic by “Fedora”:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1780926/posts
Plamegate – 25 Questions (answered)
This is a SERIOUS piece of investigation. Everybody should read it.
A small sample –
15. What role did the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence play in triggering the Niger forgery investigation?
Following the November 2002 elections, in which Republicans regained control of the Senate, Senator Jay Rockefeller was slated to ascend in January to Vice-Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Rockefeller’s famous family has oil interests linked to Saudi interests, and in January 2002 he had travelled to Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria to advise those governments that President Bush was determined to go to war with Iraq. Even before assuming his new position on the SSCI, Rockefeller announced his intention to split the committee along party lines into two separate committees: a Democratic group under himself as Vice Chairman and a Republican group under Republican Chairman Pat Roberts.
Joining Rockefeller on the SSCI was Senator Carl Levin, a close associate of the far left and Muslim lobbies. Since October 2002, Levin had been campaigning to replace President Bush’s proposed war resolution with an alternate resolution that would only authorize the President to use force if the UN authorized military action. Meanwhile he had joined Senator Dick Durbin and other Democratic Senators in pressing for the declassification of US intelligence on Iraq. In December 2002 he began pushing for the US to share more of its intelligence on Iraq with the UN. He emphasized this throughout January 2003, echoing a January 6 request from IAEA Iraq Nuclear Verification Offfice director Jacques Baute for information to substantiate the State Department fact sheet’s allegation about Iraq’s interest in Niger uranium. On January 29, 2003, Levin asked CIA for details on what the US intelligence community knew about the Iraqi attempts to acquire African uranium mentioned in the President’s State of the Union address. While awaiting CIA’s reply, which came on February 27 and did not mention the forgery issue, Levin travelled to New York to meet with UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix on February 1. Then he, Rockefeller, and their Intelligence Committee colleagues Pat Roberts and John Warner went on their own secret fact-finding mission to the Middle East on February 15, stopping along the way in Naples, Italy to be briefed by the head of Allied forces in Southern Europe, and ending their trip in England before returning to the US on February 25. After Levin got back, he and Joseph Wilson appeared together on ABC’s Nightline on March 4, 2003, as mentioned in the answer to Question 9 above.
The day Wilson published his famous July 6, 2003 New York Times editorial, “What I Didn’t Find in Africaâ€, Wilson appeared with Andrea Mitchell on NBC’s Meet the Press, followed by Carl Levin through prearrangement with the producer. The next month, in the wake of Wilson’s article, Levin spoke to Congress calling for an investigation into the inclusion of the African uranium claim in Bush’s State of the Union address. Echoing Levin’s comments was Dennis Kucinich, who led the Congressional antiwar lobby.
As Levin was speaking to the Senate on July 15, Kucinich held a press conference with Wilson’s associate Ray McGovern and retired Australian intelligence agent Andrew Willkie. The next day Wilson’s friend Corn accused the Bush administration of leaking Plame’s name to Robert Novak, a charge echoed July 17 by TIME reporter Matthew Cooper. Two months later, at the request of CIA, the Department of Justice asked the FBI to investigate the Plame leak.
…..
Carol
Thanks Carol, I am headed over there now.