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A group of present and former law professors asked the court in the Scooter Libby case to be allowed to file a "friend of the court" brief. The court granted their request with this footnote. Source.
(Thanks to a Decatur reader for sending this one to me.)
15 comments:
LIB DEM JUDGE. LIB DEM PROSECUTOR UNLEASHED. REPUBLICANS SCREWED.
Correction 12:07: I believe the judge was a Republican appointed by a Republican. The Special Prosecutor was appointed by Bush. The man lied repeatedly to FBI and other investigators - under oath (at least 12 jurors thot so). Elite criminal goes to jail - for a change.
Didn't Clinton lie while under oath?
Prosecutor Fitzgerald knew that Armitage was the "leaker" prior to Fitzgerald's prosecution of Libby -- so Fitzgerald knew that no crime had been committed (Armitage was assured early on that he would not be prosecuted.)
Libby's crime, if any, was minor and resulted in harm to no one. The punishment is exorbitant and excessive.
The entire investigation was media-driven. Why else would Fitzgerald continue when he already knew who the culprit was? Only to try to trap someone in a process crime, which is exactly what happened.
wordkyle - you missed it again. A crime was committed - lying under oath and obstructing an investigation. The "other crime" of outing an undercover CIA agent was not prosecuted.
BTW Clinton lied but was not charged with that - he was impeached for "high crimes and misdemeanors" but was not convicted by the Senate.
WordKyle: Nice job of making sh*t up.
You're a RIOT! :)
TxSheehan, How is the first 100 days of a liberal weenie controlled congress workin out for ya? I forgot, they did eliminate poverty in America when they attached the raising of the minimum wage ammendment to the defense spending bill. I sure am glad mush filled skulls serving french fries at McDonalds don't have to go to bed hungry anymore.
3:18 & txs: The prosecutor knew no crime was committed before the investigation had momentum.
From MSNBC: "Early in the inquiry, Armitage told authorities he was Novak's source. Armitage said Fitzgerald asked him to not to say that publicly. Fitzgerald then pressed on with the investigation, questioning White House aides. Among them was top Bush adviser Karl Rove, who appeared five times before a grand jury before being cleared of wrongdoing this summer."
It's apparent that the prosecution was out to "get" somebody to mollify the media's feeding frenzy. A juror on the case said it clearly: “It was said a number of times: ‘What are we doing with this guy here? Where’s Rove? Where are these other guys?’”
Regardless of whether a crime had been committed initially or not, somebody had to pay.
1. This judge is a Republican, appointed by GWBush.
2. This prosecutor is a Republican, appointed by GWBush.
3. A jury of 12 citizens found Libby guilty of several separate charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, despite Mr. Libby having the benefit of the best white collar criminal defense money can buy.
4. Libby's sentence was well within federal sentencing guidelines.
5. The fact that no one has been prosecuted for the "underlying crime" of revealing the identity of a covert agent has no legal significance in regard to the question of whether Mr. Libby is guilty or what his sentence should be.
6. The idea that the prosecutor forged ahead with the case knowing that no "underlying crime" had occurred is false. The crime of revealing the identity of a covert agent requires, among other things, knowledge on the part of the perpetrator that the agent was, in fact, covert. This determination, among others, was the subject of the prosecutor's ongoing investigation.
7. Contrary to what wordkyle implies, Armitage was clearly not the only leaker of the information. Others (including Libby) also leaked this information to other reporters, including Tim Russert and Judith Miller. Thus, another subject of the prosecutor's ongoing investigation was to find out who else (other than Armitage) leaked the information to whom, and when, and at whose direction.
8. If you are really interested in learning about this, there is no one who knows more about it than Patrick Fitzgerald. His May 25th court filing prior to Mr. Libby's sentencing is available online (at WaPo's site, among others). It is very enlightening, both with respect to the facts and the legal principles involved. If you can read this and still hold onto the idea that Mr. Libby should not be punished, then I applaud you for your highly developed sense of partisanship.
And by the way, the reason "Rove and the other guys" were not prosecuted was in large part due to Mr. Libby's efforts in obstructing the investigation, which happens to be the very thing he was convicted of.
Oh, and "the media's feeding frenzy" was stoked in a significant degree by GWBush himself, who at one point, quite rightly, said (and I'm too lazy to look it up, so paraphrasing): "this is a very serious matter that we are going to thoroughly investigate, and if we can find out who did it, we are going to punish them to the fullest extent of the law, and I encourage anyone in my administration that knows anything about it to come forward and testify in a truthful and straightforward manner."
Regarding Libby's harsh sentence, here's what TIME.com had to say:
"Pre-trial maneuvering found the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, insisting that this was not a case about a leak and fighting defense requests for documents about whether Plame was ever a covert agent, a status that could have made intentionally leaking her identity a crime.
"But when the issue of sentencing came around, Fitzgerald changed his tune, arguing that the underlying (and uncharged) crime was so serious as to warrant a sentence twice as long as what the federal probation office recommended."
"An offense that may never have happened — and that at one point the prosecutor argued was largely irrelevant to the case — has now increased Libby's criminal sentence."
Democrats and the media demanded that someone's head roll (no matter the validity of the charges,) and the judge and prosecutor -- not immune to such pressure -- complied.
Regarding Fitzgerald's brief: It's a document designed to persuade, not inform. See above.
And the jury was stacked with "Liberal Weenies." Right WP?
Like I said, I applaud your high degree of partisanship -- especially in the face of such a tremendously adverse set of facts.
As for the Time article, there is certainly no small amount of support for Libby. It's not difficult to find people repeating the talking points.
The article itself is mistaken. Fitzgerald goes into detail about the leak only to show that Libby's crime was not merely "incidental" (i.e., rebutting claims like yours above), but was instead very serious because: (1) the crime under investigation was serious, and (2) Libby's lying and obstruction directly prevented Fitzgerald from prosecuting that serious crime.
I think it's funny when people that normally go around yelling at the top of their voices about "law and order" suddenly change their tune when the head of one of their heroes is in the noose. And I don't mean "it's funny" in a rhetorical sense; I mean it really does make me laugh out loud.
I had never heard of Libby before this debacle, so he's certainly not one of my "heroes." But he is a high-profile victim of a witchhunt. The prosecutor had to come up with something, anything, in the predatory environment swirling around Valerie Plame. To deny this situation is either blind or (in your words) partisan.
The only prosecution, for anything, in this entire investigation, was Libby. The jurors -- Liberals, Dems, whatever -- by their own remarks were frustrated because they couldn't "get" Rove, Cheney, et al. Libby paid the price for their media-driven hunger.
Libby and Paris Hilton both victims of witch hunts. It just breaks my heart. They both are just being made examples of because of a liberal media feeding frenzy. Save LIBBY! Save PARIS!
Seriously, HHL your responses are awesome! Wordkyle go whine somewhere else!
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