Libby Trial: Place Your Bets

Who Will Take The Stand? Shooter or Scooter?

UPDATE:

Jeralyn Merritt: Libby To Rest Without Calling Cheney or Libby:

"Ted Wells announced they will rest their case tomorrow. Neither Libby nor Vice President will testify. Wells said he and Jeffress advised Libby and he accepted their advice...."

Jane Hamsher, Marcy Wheeler and Jeralyn Merritt talk about Scooter Libby trial on Feb. 12, 2007.

Also See:

• Wa Po: Pincus Reveals Fleischer as CIA Leak Source


• Libby Trial: "Total Involvement" of Vice President Cheney:

  "...'What didn't he touch? It's almost like there was almost nothing too trivial for the vice president to handle,' said New York University professor Paul Light, an expert in the bureaucracy of the executive branch.
  
  "The details suggest Cheney was almost a deputy president with a shadow operation. He had his own source of advice. He had his own source of access. He was making his own decisions,' Light said...."

Technorati tags: Libby Trial, Scooter Libby, Plamegate, Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby, news, commentary

Libby Trial: Update

JustOneMinute: What Is Russert's Game (And Is Fitzgerald Helping Him Play It?)

"Tim Russert's testimony, as elicited by the defense, painted a picture of a pundit with a puzzling problem. Arianna HuffingtonArianna Huffington has a great collection of links and a quick summary of Russert's baffling testimony and Jane Hamsher offered some helpful hints as well [and let's include Swopa's liveblogging 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6].

Let me point out a few dots that the defense has introduced and make some predictions about how they will attempt to connect them. In one sentence, the defense insinuation will be that Russert cooperated with the FBI investigation and committed a firing offense by keeping that from his NBC overlords; he also misled the FBI and the grand jury about his talk with Libby in order to minimize his own role in this case...."

Technorati tags: Libby Trial, Plamegate, CIA Leak Investigation, Tim Russert, Patrick Fitzgerald, Arianna Huffington, Firedoglake, news, commentary

Libby Trial: Day Fourteen

Libby: Don't Release Grand Jury Tapes:

The Washington Post reports: "Former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby is fighting to keep his grand jury testimony about the leak of a CIA operative's name from being released and broadcast in the media.

Libby's grand jury testimony _ the sworn statements he gave to investigators about his conversations with Vice President Dick Cheney and journalists _ is at the heart of his perjury trial. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald plans to play hours of recordings of that testimony in court next week to bolster his case that Libby lied and obstructed the investigation.

Trial evidence is normally public and all exhibits in Libby's case have been made public so far. Even though Fitzgerald successfully fought to get Libby's full grand jury testimony admitted into evidence, Libby's attorneys say the audiotapes should not be released outside the courtroom...."

Brent Budowsky: The Cheney Trial, Within The Libby Trial:

"Note: for six years I was one of the original writers of the CIA Identities Law working for its orignal sponsor, Senator Lloyd Bentsen.

For the judge and jury, it is the Libby trial.

For America and American politics, it is the Dick Cheney trial and the stakes are far higher than reported in the media.

What has emerged in evidence so far, is not surprising, but it is astonishing. Vice-President Cheney was so deeply involved and obsessed with discrediting Joe Wilson that the impact and implications are enormous and underestimated....

[...]

My theory, with substantial evidence to back it up, is that the danger of Joe Wilson was not the damage that Wilson's view did to the Administration policy. It was the danger that Wilson's work would unravel a long term, well planned, highly deceptive campaign that preceded Joe's involvement to deceive the country to drive us to war.

Prediction: major plea bargaining either has begun, or will begin, before the verdict and watch out if Libby sings in a plea deal.

Prediction: the original defense argument that Libby was a fall guy for others, would only anger and inflame the judge and jury. It is no defense to say that others might have committed similar or related crimes and that is the impression this argument created.

Watch this: the sequence of events that could be explosive includes a) the original Cheney deposition to Fitzgerald, then b) testimony on the record of extensive and absurd involvement by the Vice President to the micro-level on the attack against Wilson, leading to c) Cheney's testimony in the trial if it happens.

The prosecutor and jury will compare what Cheney said in the deposition, what facts emerged in the trial, and Cheney's testimony at trial. Do not be surprised if the word pardon appears in the press, though the reaction would be as strong as the Saturday Night Massacre in the Nixon years.

The Surprise: what will shock people will be when the Senate Intelligence Committee releases its report on pre-war intelligence, which was covered up by the Republican Committee before the elections.

The Senate report will, I predict, show major deceptions that well preceded the events in the Wilson case. This will put the whole case in context. It will turn the spotlight on the misrepresentations prior to Wilson, that will explain the obsessive attack of Cheney and Libby against Wilson.

Fasten your seat belts...."

• Andrew Cohen: The Libby Trial, Two Weeks In


• Bloomberg: Thanks, Scooter, for Helping Lift the Veil: Margaret Carlson:


• Editor & Publisher: News Orgs Fight for Airing of Libby Tapes


• Editor & Publisher: The Libby Trial for Dummies -- The First Days in a Nutshell


• More Live blogging at Firedoglake

Technorati tags: Libby Trial, Plame Leak Case, Plamegate, Scooter Libby, news, commentary

Deconstructing the Indictment

Stirling Newberry: analyzes the Libby indictment. Stirling deconstructs the indictment and raises the questions that need to be asked.

Op-Art: Dick and Don's Cabal

With Libby indicted, that's one down, 28 to go. Here's the TomPaine official guide to the Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal that sold America an unjust war.

The Heart of the Matter

William Rivers Pitt writes that...

Mr. Libby may be a target of Mr. Fitzgerald, but no one should forget the trips Cheney personally made to Langley in order to wring war-supporting evidence out of the analysts. He went himself. His fingerprints are all over the scene.

It's Bush-Cheney, Not Rove-Libby

Frank Rich (NYT) reports:

"Asked repeatedly about Mr. Rove's serial appearances before a Washington grand jury, the jittery Mr. Bush, for once bereft of a script, improvised a passable impersonation of Norman Bates being quizzed by the detective in "Psycho." Like Norman he stonewalled. What makes Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation compelling, whatever its outcome, is its illumination of a conspiracy that was not at all petty: the one that took us on false premises into a reckless and wasteful war in Iraq. That conspiracy was instigated by Mr. Rove's boss, George W. Bush, and Mr. Libby's boss, Dick Cheney...."

Who will be indicted, and when?

Sidney Blumenthal (Salon.com) writes:

"As dread descends on the White House, all of Washington waits for the Valerie Plame endgame...."

Photo Credit: Salon.com