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Meatgrinder Politics By Thomas Sowell Mar 11, 2007 If you wanted a textbook example of what is wrong about appointing a special prosecutor, the prosecution of White House aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby is a classic. Let's go back to square one to see how this sorry chapter in criminal law unfolded. The charge that was trumpeted through the media was that the Bush administration had leaked the fact that Joe Wilson's wife worked for the C.I.A. in retaliation against him for saying that Saddam Hussein was not seeking uranium in Niger, contrary to intelligence reports cited as one of the...

Jurors in the perjury trial of ex-White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby returned to work Friday with no verdict immediately in sight. The seven women and four men have been deliberating for more than a week but have indicated they still have plenty of work to do. They recently asked for more office supplies and asked the judge to let them go home early Friday for the weekend. "So I assume they will not have a verdict tomorrow either," U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton told lawyers Thursday as jurors finished their seventh day of deliberations. Libby, the former...

Six Reasons the Plame Episode is a Farce 2007-02-03 -- In a syndicated newspaper column by Robert Novak on July 14, 2003, Valerie Plame (aka Valerie E. Wilson) was identified as a CIA "operative on weapons of mass destruction." Plame was married to former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, who had worked briefly for the CIA and had written a scathing editorial a week earlier in the New York Times accusing the Bush administration of "twisting," "manipulating," and "exaggerating" intelligence about Iraqi weapons programs "to justify an invasion." Bush's adversaries quickly concluded that he or someone close to him had illegally...

Leak Trial Reveals Flaws in Note - Taking By Mark Apuzzo, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON (AP) - Write this down: Your notes aren't as reliable as you think. That's true whether they're scrawled in the margins of a business meeting agenda, typed on a secretary's laptop, scribbled on a patient's chart or carefully recorded from a lecture hall blackboard. And, as the monthlong trial of former White House aide I. Lewis ''Scooter'' Libby has shown, they're no more reliable if the notes belong to FBI agents, journalists or White House aides. That's a somewhat disconcerting thought. People are charged, front-page...

WONDERLAND Scooter Libby and Reputation Prosecutions that wreak ruin on a lifetime. The trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby is the closest version of a Red Queen trial this country has had in a long time. One says that knowing it might start a stampede from past defendants laying claim to the most upside-down prosecution. Lewis G. Carroll's account of the Knave' s trial before the Red Queen and White Rabbit is famous for the Queen's dictum, "Sentence first, verdict afterward." But read the full transcript of the mock trial and one will see that the real subject is not...

Judge Walton, at the end of yesterday's "festivities" culminating in the mental breakdown of the lead prosecutor, indicated that they would resume at 9:30 Eastern. In anticipation of that, I am setting up this thread even though I don't as yet see any FDLers gathered in the court room.

The Bottom Line By Christy Hardin Smith @ 5:00 am Summations in the Libby trial will begin today, and hopefully conclude, although you can never be sure of that in a trial that has defense counsel asking for four hours and having that whittled down to three by the presiding judge. (And with pending motions from both sides requesting additional time for arguments that were filed over the weekend, I'm thinking we are not likely to finish today.) This morning, Jane, Pach, and I will be sitting in the courtroom to watch the closings, and Emptywheel will be manning the...

"There are certain themes and classic techniques that the Defense bar takes advantage of at Summation. Some call them old chestnuts. Some treat them like the works of Shakespeare. Among the themes you will usually hear from the Defense is often a discussion of reasonable doubt. The usual jury charge judges give says something along the lines of “beyond a reasonable doubt is not beyond all doubt. It is the level of certainty you would use in making a serious decision in your own life; buying a house, choosing a job, planning an education.” The Defense’s job is to confuse...

Could someone please explain to me why Scooter Libby is the only person on trial in the Valerie Plame leak investigation? Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald charged Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff with perjury on the theory that Libby had a nefarious reason for lying to a grand jury about what he told reporters regarding CIA officer..... http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/16/AR2007021601705_pf.html

Could someone please explain to me why Scooter Libby is the only person on trial in the Valerie Plame leak investigation? Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald charged Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff with perjury on the theory that Libby had a nefarious reason for lying to a grand jury about what he told reporters regarding CIA officer Plame: He was trying to cover up a White House conspiracy to retaliate against Plame's husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV. Wilson had infuriated Vice President Cheney by accusing the Bush administration of lying about intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq...

WASHINGTON - Sworn testimony in the perjury trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby has shone a spotlight on White House attempts to sell a gone-wrong war in Iraq to the nation and Vice President Dick Cheney's aggressive role in the effort. Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald rested his case against Cheney's former chief of staff on Thursday in a trial that has so far lasted 11 days. The defense planned to begin its presentation Monday. The drama being played out in a Washington courtroom goes back in time to the early summer of 2003. The Bush administration was struggling to overcome...

The courtroom was packed, the overflow room was packed, the street in front of the Prettyman building looked like it did back when the Lewinsky scandal was in full flower. All the attention was for the media's star witness against President Bush: Tim Russert. Actually, Russert was prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's star witness against I. Lewis Libby.I arrived in the afternoon, a few minutes into the cross examination of Russert by Libby's attorney, Theodore Wells.Russert started off strong, a little too strong in his demeanor on the witness stand. He didn't want to get boxed in by Wells' questions so he...

The Libby trial finished for last week on Thursday with the start of the cross examination of FBI agent Deborah Bond, the interrogator who first questioned Libby. The cross examination revealed that Bond was hostile, that she had neglected to fully incorporate into her notes of the interview important portions of his testimony, most especially some matters that Libby's counsel had specifically asked be included. These were:

January 29, 2007 What You See (in the Media) is Not What You Get (in the Libby Trial) By Clarice Feldman In the wake of the first week of the Libby Trial, Patrick Fitzgerald's soufflé has turned into a pancake. Of course, if you are getting your news of the trial from the press you're certain to believe Libby is in trouble. Nothing could be further from the truth. The reporting is as bad as I've ever seen (Matt Apuzzo of AP being the rare exception of a reporter who's getting it mostly right).

WASHINGTON -- Vice President Dick Cheney said Thursday he might have to testify in the CIA leak trial of his former chief of staff. Cheney made the comment in a CNN interview, following last month's suggestion by prosecutors that the vice president would be a logical witness in the case of I. Lewis Libby, who is accused of perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI. Libby is "one of the finest men I've ever known," Cheney said, then declined further comment. "I may be called as a witness." Cheney's state of mind is directly relevant to whether Libby lied to...