quote:March 6, 2007 — - Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff is now a convicted felon.
I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby has been found guilty of four of five charges in the CIA leak case stemming from a three-year investigation and trial that revealed the innermost workings of the top levels at the Bush White House.
A jury found Libby guilty of charges claiming he lied to the FBI and a grand jury, and obstructed justice.
The former White House aide faces as many as 25 years in prison and fines up to $1 million.
Questions:
Will Libby cut a deal with prosecutors? There have been strong suggestions that Cheney played a major role in Libby's action and in the subsequent coverup.
Will Bush pardon Libby?
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posted
If Bush pardons Libby, it won't happen until the last minute of his presidency. Doing so before then will create a storm of disapproval from everyone and will look like his approval of a coverup. We'll find out in 22 months.
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posted
You know, I would love to see Bush pardon that poor substitute teacher with the porn popup problem.
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quote:If Bush pardons Libby, it won't happen until the last minute of his presidency. Doing so before then will create a storm of disapproval from everyone and will look like his approval of a coverup. We'll find out in 22 months.
If that's the plan, I suspect that Libby will know it much sooner than that. Could work, though.
Do the usual appeals, stay out of jail, and get pardoned at the final hour.
Needless to say, there has to be some help coming in for the legal fees. I suspect this has already run up a considerable bill and an appeal will run up even more.
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quote:He should only get community service and maybe pay a fine, kinda like Sandy Berger did.
You don't think that lying to federal prosecutors and obstructing justice in an investigation as to why the White House seriously damaged our intelligence gathering abilities is a particularly bad thing?
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posted
That *is* what Berger did, after all. That and steal classified information and destroy it.
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After this and Martha Stewart, the lesson is clear: if federal investigators ask you anything, *don't answer*. If you make any mistakes in your testimony (or say true things that can't be proved true, perhaps), even if they're irrelevant to the case, even if there's no crime to investigate and the prosecutors know it, it's a felony. The only safe thing to do, if they want someone to nail, is to say nothing about anything.
Police work just got a whole lot harder.
[ March 06, 2007, 02:23 PM: Message edited by: Will B ]
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posted
Will, Are you saying that lying to federal prosecutors and obstructing justice isn't a particularly bad thing?
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Also, I think you may be projecting what you would have liked to happen onto what actually did happen. A jury who saw all the evidence and heard the testimony found beyond a reasonable doubt that he knowingly lied. That seems an important bit of data there. (edit: Will deleted what this was in reference to. And now it's back.)
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quote:even if they're irrelevant to the case, even if there's no crime to investigate and the prosecutors know it,
This is not true. Lying to a grand jury means 18 USC 1623, which requires the false statement be material. False statements to the FBI means that the statement was materially false. Obstruction of justice required that he intended ("endeavored") to impede the investigation.
The jury specifically analyzed (assuming they followed the instructions, something we have good reason to believe) whether the statements were relevant and decided the prosecution proved that they were beyond a reasonable doubt. They also examined his intent and found that he intended to impede an investigation by a grand jury, again beyond a reasonable doubt.
But the most important thing to remember is this:
quote:Also, I think you may be projecting what you would have liked to happen onto what actually did happen. A jury who saw all the evidence and heard the testimony found beyond a reasonable doubt that he knowingly lied.
I know juries reach the wrong decisions sometimes. But they certainly know more about the case than us. Unless there's exlcuded evidence, there's little credible way to assert our judgment in the matter is better informed than the jury. I'm not aware of any excluded evidence here, although I've not followed closely enough to be sure I would be.
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posted
Except that's not what he was charged and convicted of. He was convicted of knowingly lying and intentionally obstructing the investigation by a jury of people who know a heck of a lot more about the situation than either you or I and found beyond a reasonable doubt that he did so.
Do you think that what he was convicted of shouldn't be considered a serious crime?
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posted
It's also important to note that he is not guilty of outing Palme. He is not accused of being the leak which I think sort of sheds a different light on his conviction.
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From the Breaking News article linked on this page: "Just eight days after Wilson's article appeared, columnist Robert Novak outed Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA officer. Libby was not said to be responsible for that disclosure, but was soon caught up in the FBI Leak investigation, started in September of 2003."
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posted
That seems like it might be poor writing, as the article also says:
quote:Prosecutors argued Libby helped lead a campaign to refute and discredit Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson.
They didn't charge him with doing it, but that doesn't mean that he didn't do it.
Also, from the article
quote:Following the trial, juror Denis Collins, a former Washington Post writer, told reporters there was a "tremendous amount of sympathy" for Libby and that most of the jury thought, "He was the fall guy."
Collins described, "The belief of the jury was that he was tasked by the Vice President to go and talk with reporters."
quote: Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who has led the leak investigation, said no additional charges would be filed. That means nobody will be charged with the leak and Libby, who was not the source for the original column outing Plame, will be the only one to face trial.
posted
The Yahoo news one does seem to establish what you are claiming. So, I guess, for curiousity's sake, I wonder whether it was Rove or Cheney.
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quote: Months earlier, Novak had caused a huge stir when he revealed that Valerie Plame, wife of Iraq-war critic Joseph Wilson, was a CIA officer. Ever since, Washington had been trying to find out who leaked the information to Novak. The columnist himself had kept quiet. But now, in a second column, Novak provided a tantalizing clue: his primary source, he wrote, was a "senior administration official" who was "not a partisan gunslinger." Armitage was shaken. After reading the column, he knew immediately who the leaker was. On the phone with Powell that morning, Armitage was "in deep distress," says a source directly familiar with the conversation who asked not to be identified because of legal sensitivities. "I'm sure he's talking about me."
quote: Armitage, a well-known gossip who loves to dish and receive juicy tidbits about Washington characters, apparently hadn't thought through the possible implications of telling Novak about Plame's identity. "I'm afraid I may be the guy that caused this whole thing," he later told Carl Ford Jr., State's intelligence chief.
quote: The Yahoo news one does seem to establish what you are claiming. So, I guess, for curiousity's sake, I wonder whether it was Rove or Cheney.
Nope, it was Armitage, but you do express a good point on how things get spun out of control and no one will stop to see what is really going on. Why look for any kind of truth when you can bash Rove, Cheney, or Bush without having to care about the facts?
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posted
I was pretty sure that other people had come out to say that they hadn't heard it from the same source as Novak, who as you said, had confirmed that it was Armitage, but I could have been wrong about that.
Actually looking over it, the yahoo link does not establish what you said. He may not have been the original leaker to Novak, but that doesn't mean that he didn't out her.
Edit: In fact, according to Judith Miller, he did out her. She said he was her primary source.
posted
Novak was how the whole thing started. He was not charged. Armitage was the one who told Novak. Again, not charged with anything.
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posted
My point is that people like you don't seem to care who actually leaked the information to Novak, just as long as Bush, Rove, and Cheney get some bad press. They knew who actually leaked the name, which was why the investigation was called for in the first place, but didn't charge the person who admits that they leaked the name? How does that make any kind of sense?
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Each count of perjury, false statement, and obstruction of justice is considered a 14-pt offense. Each is increase by 3 if the offense caused substantial interference with the administration of justice. This requires either a premature end to a felony investigation, a false indictment/conviction based on perjury, or the unnecessary expenditure of substantial government resources. The first two factors do not apply here; the substantial resources factor is unknown to me. So we have offense levels of 14 or 17.
Now we decide if the sentences run concurrently. The applicable factor is whether the "counts involve the same victim and two or more acts or transactions connected by a common criminal objective or constituting part of a common scheme or plan" (where victim translates to "societal interest" in justice-related cases). I think this will apply, and the sentences will be concurrent.
Under the guidelines for a first-offender, a 14 pt offense is 15-21 months; a 17 point offense is 24-30 months. I predict the high end of the 17 point range.
Now, I haven't evaluated any of the dozens of additional factors, so this is basically a guess. To make it more fun, the judge is not obligated to follow these guidelines at all.
One thing is sure: for crimes like this, the sentence is almost never the high amount the press mentions (i.e., "faces up to XX years in prison"). This is by design and does not represent coddling.
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quote:They knew who actually leaked the name, which was why the investigation was called for in the first place, but didn't charge the person who admits that they leaked the name? How does that make any kind of sense?
What do you think they should charge Armitage with? It didn't look like they could prove he broke any laws.
From my understanding of the story, while there is strong suspicion by the investigating attournies that there was a high level decision to attack Joe Wilson that may have included deliberating out his wife to the press. However, perhaps partially due to Libby lying to them, they were unable to prove that this happened.
Law isn't about what happened. It's about what you can prove.
They got Al Capone for tax evasion.
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quote: You know, I would love to see Bush pardon that poor substitute teacher with the porn popup problem.
Tom, I thought the teacher got in trouble because she (?) didn't turn off the monitor. She left the porn on the screen for kids to see.
I think. I need to find the article again. At any rate, I remember thinking the prison term possibility seem wildly outrages.
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