Lewis I. “Scooter” Libby was found guilty on four of the five charges against him including Obstruction of Justice, Perjury, and lying to the FBI. He was found innocent of another charge of lying to the Feds.
Cue the netnuts.
This proves Bush lied about WMD in Iraq. He knew prior to the invasion that we would find no WMD there. Never mind that if Bush knew there were no weapons of mass destruction that you must assume he either wanted to lose the war or didn’t want to win re-election. That’s because if we won the war, that would mean a search for WMD that he already knew weren’t there – handing his opponents a ready made charge that against any other Democrat save John Kerry, would probably have cost him the election.
No matter. This also proves that Busco and Evil Karl would rather have outed a super duper, super secret, CIA agent than have their “lies” about WMD exposed. Except no one was charged with any crime relating to outing a clandestine agent because the agent wasn’t clandestine as the Prosecutor Fitzgerald made clear.
And the left’s extraordinary concern about not ruining anything or anyone at the CIA may be the biggest irony in politics of the last half a century. They have worked about that long to destroy or emasculate the agency that they now claim to have such empathy and concern for. To believe that they cared one whit about damage to national security is to believe in fairies (the magical kind). What they cared about was the political damage such an investigation could do to the Bush Administration.
This led so many of them to eagerly embrace every rumor, every hint about the investigation that pointed to the “imminent” indictment of a dozen or so former and current White House officials including Karl Rove, Vice President Cheney, and the Bush’s dog Spot. (Note: Spot passed away before he could be called to testify against Rove.) Watching the left wait for Fitzmas after Fitzmas, constantly proclaiming ever longer ever more fantastic lists of officials who would be brought up on charges, engendered feelings of pity and humor. A truly pathetic performance by all those members of the so-called “Reality Based Community” who will, I’m sure, spin this verdict into “proving” their grand conspiracy theories about evil Bush and his band of constitution tearing, bloodthirsty war mongering incompetent boobs.
Instead, all they got was Scooter Libby who lied to the FBI and the Grand Jury about who told him what and when about a non-clandestine CIA agent who was married to someone who has been proven a liar by at least two investigations.
What the verdict proves is that you should never lie to the FBI or the grand jury. That’s all. Anything else is fantasy.
Did the Administration deliberately try to discredit loose cannon Wilson? Since the guy was shopping his classified trip to Niger for 6 months prior to his editorial in the New York Times and believed him to be lying through his teeth, the answer is yes. Did they think that revealing the fact that Valerie Plame joined others in recommending her husband for the junket to Niger might discredit Wilson? Again, the answer is yes.
But context is everything. And considering the fact that there was (and still is) a faction in the intelligence community opposed to the Administration’s foreign policy and that this cabal used leaks in order to not only discredit the Bush Administration but also to deliberately interfere in the 2004 Presidential election, one can understand this “push back” by the Bushies while still condemning it.
Scooter Libby is going to jail. Kind of a dismal scalp for Fitzgerald to hang on his lodgepole but after nearly 4 years of investigations, it’s all he had.
UPDATE
I will add to this update as the afternoon wears on.
First stop, Michelle Malkin who rounds up some early react. Keep clicking back because I’m sure she’ll add to it as the day goes on.
Ian at Hot Air has the video of defense attorney statement.
1:27 pm
[...] Hot AirWizbangRight Wing Nuthouse [...]
1:39 pm
And of course, the Right’s aboutface on Perjury since 1998 raise no eyebrows?
1:41 pm
Um…1998 – perjury bad.
2007 – “What the verdict proves is that you should never lie to the FBI or the grand jury.”
Duh.
1:55 pm
“... because the agent wasn’t clandestine as the Prosecutor Fitzgerald made clear.”
Maybe I missed something but when was this made clear?
Last I read was this:
“Feb. 13, 2006 issue – Newly released court papers could put holes in the defense of Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, in the Valerie Plame leak case. Lawyers for Libby, and White House allies, have repeatedly questioned whether Plame, the wife of White House critic Joe Wilson, really had covert status when she was outed to the media in July 2003. But special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald found that Plame had indeed done “covert work overseas” on counterproliferation matters in the past five years, and the CIA “was making specific efforts to conceal” her identity, according to newly released portions of a judge’s opinion. (A CIA spokesman at the time is quoted as saying Plame was “unlikely” to take further trips overseas, though.) Fitzgerald concluded he could not charge Libby for violating a 1982 law banning the outing of a covert CIA agent; apparently he lacked proof Libby was aware of her covert status when he talked about her three times with New York Times reporter Judith Miller. Fitzgerald did consider charging Libby with violating the so-called Espionage Act, which prohibits the disclosure of “national defense information,” the papers show; he ended up indicting Libby for lying about when and from whom he learned about Plame.”
from
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11179719/site/newsweek/
2:34 pm
What do you mean that’s all he had?
Lying to the grand jury and/or to the FBI about the outing of a CIA agent is not a smal issue.
Fitz proved the guy lied.
And you other conclusions re: the implications- that Bush lied-that the admin lied to protect their own lies-all dead on.
But this implications of this are not small. They are huge; and Fitz delivered in an atmosphere where the defense tried to obfuscate the charges by floating a lot of he-said-she-said crap. It took 4 years to work through the most secretive lyingest corruptniks ever.
5:56 pm
What a crock of spit! This was a political show trial. James Taranto of Best of the Web Today from WSJ spells it out right. Virtually all of Joe Wilson’s claims were shown to be false.
Libby should have avoided all the crap by just pulling a sHrillary and saying he couldn’t remember, can’t recall, has no memory of anything at all.
If real criminals get pardoned with not ever facing actual jeopardy (see marc rich), I see nothing wrong with libby getting pardoned here. Let the Kos Kids/Huffs howl.
7:32 pm
I note the amount of attention this case got from the media and the prosecution. I guess Sandy Berger is seen as a true innocent for his memory lapses walking away with national security secrets, hiding them, etc.
Ditto for the way Willam Jefferson with the freezer full fo cash has been babied and supported to be on House Intelligence committee.
10:18 pm
Libby lied to the grand jury and the FBI. People go to jail for those crimes. To say the dems have bad guys too is pathetic. Sure they do, does that make Libby innocent? Hell no! Get over it neo-cons, if you do the crime you better be prepared to do the time. Personally I think Libby was stupid, how could you think you could lie to the FBI and get away with it? The Bush administration should be known as “the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. This one sealed Bushies legacy, what a bunch of dopes.
11:22 pm
“about the outing of a CIA agent”
The guy that outed secret agent Plame was named Armitrage. That’s A. R. M. I. T. A. G. E. Why don’t you go make a citizen’s arrest already?
11:52 pm
Fitzgerald lied to the press when he announced the charges against Libby. He said Libby was the first official to out Plame. That was a lie since he already knew Armitage did it. Or did he forget that he knew that????
2:08 am
“Virtually all of Joe Wilson’s claims were shown to be false”.
And the evidence, please…..........
6:06 am
Rick-Scooter Libby is not going to jail.
8:34 am
Sorry, I gotta scoot
Right Wing Nuthouse gets the Libby verdict down in a (four paragraph) nutshell Instead, all they got was Scooter Libby who lied to the FBI and the Grand Jury about who told him what and when about a non-clandestine CIA agent who was married to someone …
8:50 am
Washington is an almost impossible place to put together a jury to try this case.
Two profiles of just one juror
From the Legal Times
http://tinyurl.com/2j2ef4
Seat 9, Juror 1869: A white male and a former Washington Post
reporter who once had Bob Woodward as an editor. He used to share space
with Tim Russert of “Meet the Press.†While he had questions about the
Bush administration’s rationale for going to war, he said that, “I’m
very skeptical about everything I hear until I see it backed up.â€
Described in the Washington Post
http://tinyurl.com/2puzpk
Another candidate, the former Post journalist, seemed to have a link
to nearly every key player in the case. He had worked in the
newspaper’s Metro section, he said, where his editor was Woodward, a
key defense witness. Until recently, he lived across an alley from
Russert, a star witness for the prosecution. And he had gone to parties
with The Post’s Walter Pincus, another defense witness.
He said
he would understand if the lawyers believed he couldn’t be impartial,
but he promised he would use his reporter training to sort through the
facts fairly.
“If I were in your seats, I’d be skeptical,” he said.
6:25 pm
#11 well duh, as the Washington Post and WSJ point out: Bipartisan Senate Intelligence committee itself said ALL of Wilson’s Niger claims and wife BS was false. Of course you L3s will believe whatever you wish.