Scooter Libby found guilty.

CNN: A jury has found guilty Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s top aide, on charges of obstruction of justice and perjury. Top administration officials just keep going to prison. It’s a hell of a trend. Let the Republican defenses and minimizations begin.

Published by Waldo Jaquith

Waldo Jaquith (JAKE-with) is an open government technologist who lives near Char­lottes­­ville, VA, USA. more »

37 replies on “Scooter Libby found guilty.”

  1. Dude has small children and was probably following orders from Cheney. I hope he doesn’t get any actual prison time. Big fine, probation, community service. That would be good.

  2. If he wanted to avoid jail time, and he was following orders from Cheney, then he should have spoken that truth rather than play the fall guy with the ridiculous claim that he has a notoriously bad memory.
    Wonder when the pardon is due?

  3. Perhaps if he woulda had a jury whose members weren’t confused over whether or not it’s a crime to lie to journalists, or if he coulda been as forgetful as Billary were in their grand jury testimony, he woulda gotten a better outcome.

    As it is, we’ve just taken a giant step toward the criminalization of politics.

  4. Wonder when the pardon is due?

    Last day of Bush’s term as president would be my guess.

    Dude has small children and was probably following orders from Cheney. I hope he doesn’t get any actual prison time.

    While I agree that we shouldn’t make Libby a scapegoat. Perhaps you believe that a big fine, probation, and community service are sufficient to dissuade others within the administration from committing perjury, in which case, I have to respectfully disagree.

    I can’t see how the fact that he was just following orders is a moral justification for giving him a smaller or easier sentence than he would otherwise get. It wasn’t unclear that he was breaking the law.

    Besides, if the court believes he was following orders, then conspiracy charges should be filed against those from whom he was taking orders. If he wants to rat out Cheney for a smaller sentence, then he should do so, and at that point the court can consider the fact that he was not acting alone.

    The argument that he has small children is a bit more troublesome, morally. Regardless, if anything this seems like an argument for house arrest.

  5. On second thought, I’ll rescind my “It wasn’t unclear that he was breaking the law,” but that doesn’t really matter in this case, anyway.

  6. What’s wrong with you liberals? Didn’t you see that Scooter’s Not Guilty?

    ~

    Scooter Libby was not, and is not, a stupid man. He knew exactly what he was doing. “Just following orders” doesn’t cut it. Prison time is well deserved.

  7. Hmm… found guilty of lying to investigation about whether or not a CIA agent was outed in order to disparage the findings of her husband, who happened to disagree with the President. In other words, trying to harm those who dare to disagree with the administration. Let’s just trod on the foundation of our democracy, shall we? Community service? Even if he IS a scapegoat, are you kidding?

    Whereas, apparently it’s impeachable to lie about having an affair on one’s wife. Didn’t know that was harmful to the country, but then, that distinction of harm to our country seems to have been lost somewhere. How else to explain the reelection of a man who misled us into a war?

    I have no sympathy for Libby. He chose who he wanted to hang with, and now he’s hanging for them. Let him.

  8. I agree with MB “He knew exactly what he was doing. “Just following orders” doesn’t cut it. Prison time is well deserved.”

    If Fitzgerald’s past performance (Chicago Corruption cases- “Hired Truck Scandal” and “Political Hiring” in violation of the Shakman decree) I think Scooter Libby is as far as this whole thing goes. Fitzgerald got as far as the two “right hand men” in Mayor Daly’s inner circle- and then everything stopped there.

    Libby (and maybe one or two more previously unknown fall guys) and that will as far as this thing goes.

  9. A lot of these “just following orders” posts seem to imply at least that Libby was charged and convicted for something relating to the outing of Valerie Plame as a CIA agent. I’ll skip the peculiarity of many liberals’ sudden and recent conversion to the idea that protecting the identities of CIA employees/assets is important and simply note that the perjury/obstruction rest on their own and have nothing at all to do with “outing” Ms. Plame.

    That, of course, was apparently done by then Dep. Sec. of State Richard Armitage. But, you know, he’s such an avuncular fellow with all sorts of witty bon mots to drop at DC cocktail parties that the media couldn’t be bothered to report on it very much. Nor the fact that he left Libby and Rove to twist for a year or so during the investigation when he was quite aware it was he who had leaked and outed Valerie Plame. But hey, the MSM LIKED him.

    I hope Libby gets pardoned. He deserves it. Certainly more than some of the less-than-savory characters pardoned in Jan. ’01.

    Until that happens, or until the 2nd Circuit overturns on appeal the verdict of a jury that didn’t understand the commonsense concept of “reasonable doubt” as recently as yesterday, enjoy your scalp.

  10. I’ll skip the peculiarity of many liberals’ sudden and recent conversion to the idea that protecting the identities of CIA employees/assets is important

    No, please don’t skip it. Explain to me liberal Democrats’ recent history of believing that undercover CIA agents should have their identities exposed.

  11. My point, Waldo, was that many Dem partisans were not at all concerned about damage done to US intelligence by the Church Cmte. or, more recently, NY Times exposes on CIA ops than they were over the still-just-alleged “outing” of Ms. Plame. It’s not hard to figure out why.

  12. Oh, look, Smails throws out another completely baseless slander and then can’t back it up. The Church Committee? You really *are* left with nothing, aren’t you?

  13. “Perhaps you believe that a big fine, probation, and community service are sufficient to dissuade others within the administration from committing perjury, in which case, I have to respectfully disagree.”

    Ben, I agree with you completely. Committing a fraud on the court is a serious offense and should be punished. But I have to ask, was that your position when Clinton committed perjury? Did you favor jail time for him?

    Waldo, who are the other top administration officials that went to prison? Maybe I’ve been living in a cave, but I can’t remember any.

  14. Ben C.,

    As Jon just pointed out, there is little difference between the judgement to be made in Libby’s case and the judgement to be made in the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Like most Democrats, I felt that Clinton’s obvious perjury offense was to minor to merit the degree of pursuit that followed. The double standard is wrong. Scooter Libby doesn’t belong in prison any more than Bill Clinton does. Both should be punished in an appropriately minor way.

  15. “Committing a fraud on the court is a serious offense and should be punished.”

    I agree, and Libby was convicted, so unless it’s overturned he should probably face a punishment commensurate with that handed out to Bill Clinton. To wit:

    – a $90,000 payment to Jones’ lawyers (not sure how that would work in Libby’s case).

    – a 5-year suspension of his law license in Arkansas

    – a $25,000 fine

    – loss of his (never used) privileges to argue before the US Supreme Court.

  16. With the conviction of I. Lewis Libby, Assistant to the VPOTUS, America knows that a willful, and orchestrated Whitehouse campaign of fabrication and deception regarding the pretense to unilateral war in Iraq was micro-managed from the Vice President’s office (at the very least). These efforts included the willingness to destroy a covert asset (Brewster Jennings), and the very operation (WMD intell) that would have informed a clear analysis of the situation in Iraq. This is a treasonous crime. And it has lead to the death and injury of tens of thousands.

    The prosecutor has handed America a gift – he brought evidence of a crime into the Whitehouse. Prosecution of the larger crime, violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA) will require the subpoena of classified documents regarding the status of Ms. Plame, and her NOC. It will be a logarithmically more difficult prosecution.

    The final disposition of this treasonous act will rely upon America’s desire for truth and justice. To that end, Scooter-boy should be squeezed like a ripe grapefruit right up to the inevitable day when George Bush sends Uncle Dick over the penitentiary to pick up their errand boy. Gitmo would be a good first point of incarceration. I understand they have ways of making even the most resistant criminal talk.

  17. @ Bubby. It was Richard Armitage who leaked the fact that Ms. Plame worked for CIA. Not Scooter Libby nor anyone in the VP’s office. Don’t take my word for it though, here’s The Nation’s David Corn (who broke the story) describing the Armitage revelation with notable understatement:

    The Plame leak in Novak’s column has long been cited by Bush administration critics as a deliberate act of payback, orchestrated to punish and/or discredit Joe Wilson after he charged that the Bush administration had misled the American public about the prewar intelligence. The Armitage news does not fit neatly into that framework.

    Or are the “facts” just too good to check?

  18. How about these facts: Vice President Cheney’s Chief of Staff has just been convicted of 4 felony crimes; lying, perjury, and obstruction of justice in an investigation about who disclosed the identity of a covert CIA agent. The hurdle you need to leap, is why didn’t Libby simply point at Armitage and say, “him”?

    Let me help you with the answer. Libby knows that a crime was hatched and directed from the office of his boss – Vice President Cheney. There was an extensive conspiracy within the Bush Administration, specifically Cheney’s office to discredit Joseph Wilson, and it involved violations of IIPA. All in service to the goal of starting a war.

    Apparently you have decided to assist that effort. And you might get lucky. But this thing is not over yet. The war drags on and 70% of Americans hate this war. I’m betting they will want to know the extent that Vice President went to in his effort to start it. And I understand how important it is for you, and your kind to maintain the fantasy that there were no lies and deception from the Vice President. However, yesterday, four felony convictions said otherwise.

  19. Jack,

    You make an unsubstantiated argument that Libby and Clinton’s offenses should be equally. Assuming Clinton really was guilty of perjury (a crime for which he was never, to my knowledge, convicted of, though I don’t suggest I’m an expert on the matter), then there is a case to be made that these two are equivalent, though given the nature of the question in Clinton’s case as well as using a Republican appointee to allow for an impeachment, I think it would be easy to make the case that in Clinton’s case, the infraction was fairly minor by comparison, and should therefore have a lesser sentence.

    In other words, prove it. Prove that Libby and Clinton are analogous, assuming you don’t believe that there exists NO perjury that warrants jail time.

    All in all, I support tough penalties for perjury just as I support tough penalties for white collar crime and corruption. I think corrupt government officials should be treated as harshly as enemy combatants, because I believe they represent at LEAST as serious a threat to our democracy. If Clinton really did commit perjury, then he should’ve been dealt with in a serious manner. He wasn’t (again, by my knowledge) convicted, whereas Libby was. THAT’S the important distinction. If someone changes my mind on Clinton, then you’ve changed my mind on Clinton, but that really has nothing to do with my belief that Libby should be facing harsh penalties.

    Why? Because I don’t think that community service and fines are enough to dissuade the Bush administration or an even more corrupt and power-hungry future administration from lying to the courts, and that’s extremely dangerous to the balance of power in our country.

  20. C’mon, Bubby, you’re better than that. That’s not even a very good polemic. It’s just a bunch of crazy assertions on par with JFK assassination conspiracy notions.

    Libby didn’t point to Armitage b/c he didn’t know that Armitage had leaked. The VPs office and State under Powell and Armitage weren’t exactly pals. But Fitzgerald knew back in ’03 that Armitage was the leaker not anyone in the VP’s office.

    It’s not a crime to discredit a critic of the Administration, particularly one as dissembling as Joe Wilson. Hell, a bipartisan Senate Intel Cmte report as much as called Wilson a liar.

    As for your conspiracy hatched in the VP’s office to lie us into war, I mean, there’s not a lot I can say to dissuade you from this view. You’re a true believer, I get it. But there’s no evidence for it either.

    Lastly, it would seem pretty important to my friends on the left to cling to this conspiracy theory out of the VP’s office. They seem to be rather, um, emotionally invested in it.

    BTW, if you’re interested, you can read the Libby juror’s personal trial diary. Available exclusively at…wait for it…The Huffington Post.

  21. Ben C. & Bubby,

    You are both making the huge error of thinking that it is justice to punish Scooter Libby as a proxy for punishing Cheney and Bush for their crimes. That’s not justice – it’s bullshit. Libby was not on trial for the lies that got us into Iraq. He wasn’t on trial for bungling the occupation or for torturing people at Gitmo. Scooter Libby didn’t do any of these things.

    You want to hold Bush accountable for his crimes? Fine – let’s do it. Put together articles of impeachment. Justice is handing out a sentence to the culprit that fits the crime. Not looking for a handy whipping boy to send a political message.

    With regard to Clinton and perjury, there’s no denying it. He said under oath that he “did not have sexual relations with that woman” and later admitted that he’d lied and had in fact had sexual relations with Monica Lewinski. Do I think that this would have been a sound reason to remove him from office? Of course not. But there is no denying the fact that he did lie under oath in a court of law. He admitted it.

    Perjury is a crime that should be punished with fines, community service and probation. Ask anyone who has been subjected to these things and they will tell you that the details make those things more of a punishment than those who know nothing about it believe.

  22. Jack: Riddle me this; How are we going to build the impeachment case against Cheney et al, if we have crazies like Libby willing to lie themselves into felony convictions in defense of their boss. Save your tears for Libby, he made himself a human shield and he took the fall. Do you have any misgivings about a half-trillion dollar useless war, or the loss of a WMD intell asset during a time of war over WMD? I do. Now we put Libby in jail, let him wail and see who starts talking first, Mr. Libby, or Mrs. Libby. And watch the President as he eyes the campaign calendar with one eye, and the jailhouse testimony with the other.

  23. Smails: You make me laugh – calling the guy who told us that Iraq didn’t have WMD a liar!

  24. Jack said,

    You are both making the huge error of thinking that it is justice to punish Scooter Libby as a proxy for punishing Cheney and Bush for their crimes. That’s not justice – it’s bullshit. Libby was not on trial for the lies that got us into Iraq. He wasn’t on trial for bungling the occupation or for torturing people at Gitmo. Scooter Libby didn’t do any of these things.

    I said,

    I agree that we shouldn’t make Libby a scapegoat.

    As I said, I believe that lying to the court is itself an offense that should carry a heavy penalty. You believe it should be paid for by fines and community service. I supported my argument about why I believe that (to recap: because I don’t believe fines and community service to be effective deterrents), and furthermore, I believe that the public perception of what these punishments means is precisely what’s important about them as deterrents.

    Show me what’s wrong with my reasoning rather than unsubstantiated assertion that I’m blinded by my hate for Bush, and I’ll be quite interested to discuss it.

    Although this is getting a bit off track, Jack also said,

    With regard to Clinton and perjury, there’s no denying it. He said under oath that he “did not have sexual relations with that woman” and later admitted that he’d lied and had in fact had sexual relations with Monica Lewinski.

    Wikipedia has this to say,

    The issue was greatly confused by an unusual definition for sexual contact which excluded oral sex. This definition was ordered by the Independent Counsel’s Office during the initial questioning which led to the perjury allegations. During the deposition, Clinton was asked “Have you ever had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky, as that term is defined in Deposition Exhibit 1, as modified by the Court.” The judge ordered that Clinton be given an opportunity to review the agreed definition. Afterwards, based on the definition created by the Independent Counsel’s Office, which was limited strictly to intercourse, Clinton answered “I have never had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky.” Clinton later stated that he believed the agreed-upon definition of sexual relations excluded his receiving oral sex.

    From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewinsky_scandal#Allegations_of_perjury

    Now, this article isn’t well sourced, and as I said, I don’t claim to be an expert on this subject, but this leads me to believe that there is denying the fact that Clinton perjured himself. If the information on the Wiki is false, I’d love to see the evidence.

  25. Waldo, who are the other top administration officials that went to prison?

    Some Republican blogger recently claimed that the Bush White House was squeaky clean. In response, Talking Points Memo held a competition to come up with a list of every administration official who had been convicted of a crime. I was pretty surprised by the list. Let’s see if I can find it…

    Ah, here it is. The discussion is actually broader in scope than I recalled — it’s not that many people have gone to prison, it’s that many people have a) been indicted b) been forced to resign or c) gone to prison. They ended up with this list. I started typing it out, but it’s just too long. It’s broken up into categories of those who have been convicted, those who resigned after indictment or overwhelming evidence against them, and those individuals nominated for top positions who were forced to withdraw after it became clear that they’d committed crimes.

  26. @ Bubby: That’s ’cause he is a liar. We know he lied about not being picked for his mission to Niger by his wife, and I think the Senate Intel Cmte. found some more, um, discrepanies as well. Basically, he went to Niger to find out if the Iraqis were trying to make a deal to import yellowcake uranium. He was sent b/c some Iraqi government bigwig had recently been in Niger on some sort of trade mission. Wilson reported he found no evidence of the Iraqis attempting to acquire yellowcake from Niger. So far, so good.

    But when you dig just a little deeper and realize that Niger’s major exports are uranium ore, livestock, cowpeas, and onions, it becomes a little harder to believe they weren’t trying to get some yellowcake from Niger.

    In fairness to the lefty fever swamps, the stupidest thing Bush et al could have done was to disavow the famous 16 words in the SotU Address like they did. The Brits stand by their intel, and once folks learn something about the exports of Niger, I think a lot of other fair-minded people would too.

  27. Smails,

    Joe Wilson never lied about who recommended him for the mission to Niger. There is a myth among conservatives that Wilson claimed that Cheney sent him. Not true. Wilson never said who sent him.

    I’ve never understood why it matters who sent him.

    How does the fact that Niger exports yellowcake uranium to some countries allow you to conclude that the Iraqis had tried to get some of it? At the end of the day, yes, it was worth looking into. Which we did and we found that it wasn’t true. The total lack of any evidence of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq after years and years of searching would tend to support Wilson’s conclusions.

    However, everyone needs to drop this whole line of inquiry with regard to Libby. We should not allow Scooter Libby to be turned into a punching bag over the Iraq war. Bush himself presents an adequate target with the added bonus that it is actually his fault.

  28. Jack,

    I agree the lack of a nuclear weapons program infrastructure is hard to square with the “16 words,” but nevertheless you do have one of Saddam’s lackeys on a trade mission visiting a country that uses 5500 barrels of oil a day with the aforementioned exports. Taken together with what the Brits found, that (for me) outweighs what an out-of-work tourist says he found during a long weekend on a mission under his wife’s aegis.

    As for who sent him, here’s a slice of the WaPo’s (hardly a conservative myth-making organ) lead editorial today in which Wilson is called a blowhard, among other things.

    “In conversations with journalists or in a July 6, 2003, op-ed, he [Wilson] claimed to have debunked evidence that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger; suggested that he had been dispatched by Mr. Cheney to look into the matter; and alleged that his report had circulated at the highest levels of the administration.”

  29. Smails, Dude, seriously, a high ranking Whitehouse official has just been unanimously convicted of 4 felonies relative to the release of top secret information and you STILL want to make it about politics-as-usual. Yours is the same sort of la-la gibberish that cost the Republicans their worst election loss in American history – 2006. The depth of self-deception is breathtaking.

  30. Here’s some more from the WaPo – that bastion of the VRWC – for ya Bubby:

    “A bipartisan investigation by the Senate intelligence committee subsequently established that all of these claims [by former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV] were false — and that Mr. Wilson was recommended for the Niger trip by Ms. Plame, his wife… The [Libby] trial has provided convincing evidence that there was no conspiracy to punish Mr. Wilson by leaking Ms. Plame’s identity — and no evidence that she was, in fact, covert… The former ambassador will be remembered as a blowhard. Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby were overbearing in their zeal to rebut Mr. Wilson and careless in their handling of classified information. Mr. Libby’s subsequent false statements were reprehensible. And Mr. Fitzgerald has shown again why handing a Washington political case to a federal special prosecutor is a prescription for excess. Mr. Fitzgerald was, at least, right about one thing: The Wilson-Plame case, and Mr. Libby’s conviction, tell us nothing about the war in Iraq.”

  31. I couldn’t tell how many of those were top officials or had gone to prison, but thanks for the list.

  32. I am consistently amazed at the right’s inability to distinguish journalism or ‘news’ from editorial.

  33. The only “news” is that Libby was convicted on 4 of 5 counts. Everything else is opinion.

    If you’re of the left, it seems to me you can rejoice in the conviction like the KosKids and Huffposters, or you can join the grown-up wing of your party and admit that the case should have never been brought and that there was no conspiracy to destroy anyone’s life. The latter being the view held by the WaPo editorial board and David Boies, among others.

  34. I guess that, once the hole is deep enough (so deep that the light of decency and common sense no longer reaches you), it only makes sense to keep digging.

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