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Whatever
I. "Scooter" Libby was found guilty of 4 of the 5 charges against him by a Washington jury this morning. He was acquitted of one count of lying to the FBI.
I confess I am surprised by the conviction. With the number of reporters who also misremembered key details and conversations, or who didn't remember conversations at all until prompted by notes pointed out to them by the prosecution, I was anticipating an acquittal or a hung jury.
Watch for the appeal. After Libby decided not to testify, the judge prohibited his attorneys from making certain arguments, particularly from arguing that Libby was so busy with other more serious issues that this was, for him, the equivalent of misremembering what he had for lunch that day. That prohibition will certainly be appealed.
I think the ultimate lesson from this investigation is part and parcel with the lesson the FBI and the DOJ have been giving others like Martha Stewart... do not talk to the FBI. You have no obligation to do so, and if you misremember something, they can and obviously will prosecute you for it. And you'll have no tape of what you said, just the agent's typed report on the interview. And if the grand jury calls you, don't try to help out by recalling as best you can. If you're not absolutely sure of the details, just say you don't remember.
I'm a law abiding citizen. I've worked for the U.S. Department of Justice before, and served as a state prosecutor for 5 years. And if the FBI wanted to question me tomorrow, I don't think I would cooperate. The risk of an over-zealous prosecution is too great. Perjury is an awful crime and not prosecuted often enough. But when it is prosecuted, it should be because it hindered an investigation into an actual crime. When the prosecution already knows the truth when it was questioning the witness in the grand jury (or with the FBI), and doesn't confront the lying or misstatement on the spot, that's just not right.
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Amen
I'm a law abiding citizen. I've worked for the U.S. Department of Justice before, and served as a state prosecutor for 5 years. And if the FBI wanted to question me tomorrow, I don't think I would cooperate. The risk of an over-zealous prosecution is too great.
Amen to that. "If you wish to communicate with me, please do so through my attorney." And I'm certainly no fan of the grand jury system, which is wide open to prosecutorial abuse. I'm absolutely positive that if called for questiong by one, my answers would be downright Clintonian. "I don't recall."
Seriously, when conflicts of memory can get you prosecuted for felonies, a lapse in recollection seems prudent even if one is completely innocent. (Bill Clinton's memory failed him over 250 times in the Paula Jones deposition...) Stress certainly makes it difficult to recall things with certainty and exactitude.
over 251?
..and ultimately it didn't fail him often enough! :-)
During the January 17th
During the January 17th deposition in the Paula Jones case, Clinton indicated an inability to recollect 267 times.
Technically Clinton wasn't convicted of perjury in the Paula Jones case. The judge ordered Clinton to pay Jones an additional $91,000 over and above the settlement for damages and expenses caused by his "evasive and misleading testimony." Clinton later surrendered his law license to close out the ethics panel referral that resulted.
what folks remember
Right. The thing to notice here is that most people don't remember or look poorly on Clinton's memory lapses, which practice we agree has a defensive merit in a climate of grand juries and overzealous prosecution. What people remember is the bald-faced lie that "I did not have sexual relations with that woman."
That lie is IMO the one that really nailed him to the cross in the public's eyes. Not that he didn't deserve it, of course.
I did try to warn them that
I did try to warn them that they needed to file for change of venue... ;)
You said it, Tully...
Did you read the comments from one of the jurors? Terrifying. He seemed to openly admit they saw this as a political case and were judging it on political grounds.
The fact that Miller had notes gives her some credibility? Did they convict Libby because he didn't keep notes of his conversations? On one of the charges, Miller initially told the grand jury that she didn't talk with Libby about Plame in one particular conversation, until Fitzgerald pointed out her notes from that call. Is Libby guilty of perjury and not Miller just because she kept notes?
Pat, that juror's the same
Pat, that juror's the same guy who wrote Behaving Badly: Ethical Lessons from Enron and SPYING: The Secret History of History. How did they let him on the jury? Makes me shudder to think what kind of folks got voir dired if they let him stay on.
Yeah. Libby may indeed have perjured himself, but a he-said/he-said case like this should never have seen a court in the first place. Only with a grand jury and a zealous prosecutor do you get indictments on such thin gruel.
More on that juror here,
More on that juror here, from HuffPo via Byron York.
Collins went to grade school with Maureen Dowd, worked for years with Bob Woodward, was a neighbor-buddy of Tim Russert's, and wrote a book on the CIA. How the hell did this guy get on the jury? (York speculates that the defense may have thought the other potentials were even worse.)