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Okay, Libby has been convicted.

By The Armorer on March 6, 2007 | | Comments (20)

For lying to the FBI, who were investigating a case in which... there was no actual crime committed, and the only charges to come out of the whole thing were against Mr. Libby for lying. Note - no charges that what he said was actually illegal, just that he lied about what he said.

Gottit. Lying is obstructing justice, and that's what he was convicted of.

Senator Reid jumped in early, saying that President Bush better not pardon Libby for his heinous acts.

Heh. Okay.

It will be interesting to see what happens to Mr. Libby come sentencing.

Why? Oh, I don't know, there was that seated President lying thing which resulted in a huge legal penalty. Not.

Then there's the Sandy Berger thing. Ditto.

If Mr. Libby gets more than a fine and some community service... that will have a lot to say about Justice now, won't it.

Discuss among yourselves.

Update: Interesting view from NRO.

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20 Comments

By J-P on March 6, 2007 1:48 PM
There has been some talk amongst the jurors that Libby was a "fall guy" for someone else in the administration, like Rove, indicating that at least one of them thought this was bigger than the perjury charges. I don't know how you can claim someone is a fall-guy for choosing to speak words on their own, but such words are just fodder for an appeal. Combined with the juror's notes, which indicated that they were having problems with simple concepts like "reasonable doubt," I would not be surprised if this whole thing was successfully appealed away.
 
By Tim on March 6, 2007 2:19 PM
Funny that one of the jurors, a journalist, would trust 2 other journalists' memories over a White House official's memory. I guess we couldn't have seen that one coming.
 
By ry on March 6, 2007 3:46 PM
Hey, Martha Stewart went to prison for a year over very similar crimes. no biggy. IF true, it does worry me that jurors were making more of this than was what they were told to consider---did he lie to the FBI.
 
By John of Argghhh! on March 6, 2007 4:04 PM
No biggy? Care to elaborate?
 
By Hawk on March 6, 2007 4:28 PM
Why the jury convicted him is almost impossible to appeal unless tampering can be shown. I don't think the jury's statements in the press are going to be grounds for appeal.
 
By SangerM on March 6, 2007 7:14 PM
Ry has let his fast fingers get away from him, I'm sure, because his 'no biggy' comment rates right up there with some of the dumbest things I've ever said.... :-) It is a biggy. But the fact is that there is no guaranteed justice in this nation, never has been, only a guarantee of rule of law, which is a different thing entirely boys and girls. There is only justice in this country by accident. A jury--a mind made up of 12 parts--is no more competent to judge the facts or validity of a case than one well-informed individual. Law is manipulable, Justice is a victim of law as much as it is a beneficiary. Never, ever, _ever_, expect to get Justice in the United States unless you have a good lawyer, the facts support your argument at least a little, and the jury selection process can be manipulated in your favor instead of the opponent's. PRESIDENT Clinton lied while under oath (I have a recording of his lies coming from his mouth for anyone who doesn't remember them). He violated the most sacred American oath a person can make after marriage vows (oh wait, he violated those too), and he lied to the American people, and not just to those who didn't like hm, but those who elected him (of which I was, sadly, one--both times)... Clinton is a LIAR, he lied under oath, but HE was never charged for that crime. By my standard, no one should ever be convicted in the US again for lying, at least until Clinton serves some time. There are also questions about the death of the staffer in the whitehouse (suicide, people going through his stuff illegally afterward, etc...).. and so on. Clinton walked and now his wife thinks she's going to waltz back into the whitehouse as if everyone has forgotten that stuff. Well a lot of us haven't, and Libby's conviction is just one reason. Kerry is, IMO, a traitor and should have been prosecuted. Biden was caught plagiarizing in his bid for the whitehouse, but now he's in power. Liars! All of them and serving under the same oath I took, essentially. So what, eh? No biggy?!? It is a big deal! Libby is being taken to task for something (several) more powerful democrats have got away with and laughed at the American system about (think we got the truth about Chappaquiddick). The greatest travesty in our history would be for Bill Clinton to be allowed to live in the whitehouse again. And yet for Libby, there is no Justice. Just law. Our legal system sucks. It may be better than in other places, but it still sucks. People with money can buy their way out of trouble most of the time, and people without money get screwed unless organizations come to their rescue. I may hate the ACLU, but we sure need it (or something less biased, perhaps), because not only does the Law wear a blindfold, it has no heart, and those scales are made to balance a rendering opposite the money it takes to get that rendering. Bear in mind, the scales are empty--nothing gets you nothing. I really need to go to Law School!!
 
By FbL on March 6, 2007 7:37 PM
I'd agree with most of what you've got there, Sanger. But Libby not having the money? Nah, I doubt it. I haven't followed the Libby case day-to-day, but here's what I thought had happened: Libby testified to something, then he or his legal team found HIS OWN EMAILS that contracted his testimony. He turned in those emails to the prosecutor and said, "Oops. I was incorrect; here's the correct info." And my understanding is that THAT is the heart of the "lies" he as convicted for. Huh???
 
By SangerM on March 6, 2007 7:48 PM
Oh, I know...and you are correct FbL.. I wasn't really thinking about Libby anymore when I wrote that, because even if he didn't have the money, he would have been given it by someone. No, in his case, I just consider the target was lased and he wasn't going to get away no matter what. I had segued in my head to the law in general...
 
By Hawk on March 7, 2007 12:12 AM
Does anybody here really believe that Libby had a faulty memory? or are do you just support what he lied about and believe the ends justify the means?
 
By SangerM on March 7, 2007 4:11 AM
For my part, neither. I really truly don't think anyone should ever go to jail again for lying until AFTER Bill Clinton and the secret docs-in-the-pants guy do. It's that simple for me. I wouldn't care what he lied about, it is simply not Justice being served that he is convicted of something that a rather large number of notable Democrats have got a get a pass on. The legal system is broken, and it has been for quite some time. This just breaks it a little more. Another emminent domain case, maybe another unreasonably contested election, and I think we'll see some serious rumblings about the need for legal reform and accountability of people in power. Until then, I think he should just be told "don't do it again" and let go home.
 
By jimmyb on March 7, 2007 4:38 AM
I doubt libby will get much. Reid has a lot of nerve bi##hing about pardons after Clinton's pardon-fest at the end of his term.
 
By Justthisguy on March 7, 2007 4:57 AM
Anarcho-Tyranny, as I mentioned over at Lex's place. Sorta like what they got Martha Stewart for, that is, nothing. She lied about something that would not have been a crime, had she done it. I thought that (as Jerry Pournelle wrote) the best thing that ever happened for freedom was the posting of the Twelve Tables of the laws in ancient Rome, so that all could know the law, know what was permitted, what was forbidden, and by avoiding the doing of the forbidden, be safe from the punishment of the law.
 
By John of Argghhh! on March 7, 2007 6:11 AM
Hawk - the issue never would have come up if Libby and his legal team hadn't gone through some emails, discovered a discrepancy, and pointed 'em out to the prosecutors. As for me - based on the standards seemingly applied in the Libby case, I'm in deadly trouble if I'm ever hauled in front of a Grand Jury and asked to remember every detail and jot and tittle. I really suck at that. Reading what the juror had to say - I can empathize to a point with them. I get the sense that they didn't really think they should have been there at all. I've been on a courts-martial panel that heard a case that never should have been brought. We acquitted on all the charges relating to the offense in question - and ended up having to convict on a very minor charge. A charge that never would have been a charge if the whole thing had been handled properly by the people who made the complaint and the command which ended up referring it to court. But we just couldn't get around it, so we very reluctantly voted to convict, and *blasted* the Prosecution and Defense and really hammered the chain of command and local JAG. And we sentenced the guy to a $1 fine. Which isn't as easy on him as it sounds - he was still a convicted federal felon. But the penalty would allow him to make it clear to people in the future that the whole thing was picayune, and might well form the basis for a pardon application.
 
By Hawk on March 7, 2007 9:06 AM
You didn't have to convict. You coould of said not guilty. While the defense may be stopped from arguing jury nullification, the jury never has to convict. Clinton was impeached and tried. Sandy Berger plead guilty. And I don't think Scooter Libby was as cooperative as you make him out to be. I would guess those e-mails were part of a discovery request.
 
By John of Argghhh! on March 7, 2007 9:13 AM
No, I couldn't really vote not guilty. He did it. But if they bogus prosecution hadn't been brought, he never would have been in the position he was in.
 
By SangerM on March 7, 2007 1:52 PM
Hawk: Clinton was impeached and tried. True. But that doesn't mean he didn't lie. He lied, not only to a grand jury but to the world. There is no question about this fact. He was not convicted by the Senate, however, for mitigating reasons; namely, that it was a travesty in the first place for him to have been brought to impeachment over something that had nothing whatsoever to do with the original investigation of the GOP's witch-finder general KStarr. I was glad to see Clinton was not kicked out of office, but I do believe he should have resigned after the fact. And for the record, I wrote to my congressmen and to the president several times before and after that circus expressing exactly those opinions. Thus: While it's true Clinton got away with it, he was nonethelss more clearly guilty of a crime than OJ, just as was Kerry, Berger, Biden, and many others. And it is with all of that in mind that I would have no problem at all with Libby being given a $1 fine or even being acquitted. Oh, and that $1 fine of the military person spoke whole libraries more about the opinions of the court than an acquittal would have done. I would not have wanted to be the prosecutor or the command chain that pushed the trial. Talk about a spanking! Wow.
 
By Casey Tompkins on March 7, 2007 11:12 PM
Let's use Martha Stewart to put the current case in perspective. First, recall that Stewart was never charged with, nor convicted of insider trading. Period. End of fracking story. She was convicted under Federal Code section 1001, wherein it is a felony to lie to any federal agent -and here's the kicker- even if you are not under oath!! So if you tell someone (anyone) definable as a "federal agent" that you were getting an oil job for your car (when you were in fact getting a lube job from your mistress), while they were interrogating you about unrelated charges of embezzlement at your place of employment, they can charge you with a felony. They just may do this, if they think blackmailing your into cooperation will help them prosecute their case. Martha Stewart was never convicted of any of the original charges for which she was investigated. But she was eventually convicted for something... Food for thought. John makes an excellent point about his court martial experience which relates to president Clinton. Yes, he lied under oath, and yes, that's perjury. So, yes, he should have been impeached. On the other hand, the original thrust of the Starr investigation related to alleged improprieties invoving Whitewater. To my knowlege, the (literally) tens of millions of dollars and several years of effort of the Starr investigation resulted in precisely ZERO charges relating to Whitewater. Whether or not Clinton cheated on his wife, or whether he "had sex with that woman" had nothing to do with the Whitewater investigation. Period. It wasn't relevant to the original investigation. So Clinton should have been impeached, but he shouldn't have been convicted. This relates to John's experience in that the actual charge (perjury in one, a non-specified but minor charge in the other) had little to do with the actual case, but both charges were, in fact, accurate. Call it "trivial, but accurate," in a twist on the "fake, but accurate" meme. ;) So Clinton was impeached, and lost his ability to practice law for a couple years. John's guy was charged $1. In this case I seem to stand in a different corner than SangerM. True, Clinton perjured himself, but on the other hand the topic wasn't relevant to the original investigation. Even a United States "special" prosecutor isn't a member of the Star Chamber; s/he isn't entitled to freely peruse someone's entire life on the off chance s/he might find something juicy. S/he should be strictly limited to what is relevant to the current investigation, in the same manner one executes a search warrant. Otherwise we have a nearly-literally unlimited warrant to investigate anything, under any circumstances, as long as funding and justification may be found. I'm purt darn sure that's a violation of several parts of the Constitution, especially due process.
 
By Hawk on March 7, 2007 11:21 PM
Sending the prosecution a message with a $1 verdict does little for the guy with the felony conviction. If you felt the soldier's actions fit the letter of the law but not the spirit of the law you can acquit. Its called jury nullification. Nobocy has the authority to question it. The defense cannot argue it as a valid defense, but there is nothing stopping a jury from voting that way. Justice is not always black and white.
 
By SangerM on March 8, 2007 12:01 AM
Casey Tompkins, I don't think we disagree at all... I'm not sure what part of my stuff you were looking at but my point was yours: that KStarr was way out of bounds on this, and that's why I was opposed to his conviction by the Senate... I still felt he should have resigned, even though 'acquitted.' As it is, he committed adultery in his government office (either part of which which would get any caught military person in beaucoup trouble), and then he lied about it on top of it. Yes, I agree the Whitewater investigation had nothing to do with it, but as it stands, he committed two crimes while in office (literally) and he walked. And THAT just pisses me off.
 
By John of Argghhh! on March 8, 2007 6:38 AM
Hawk - I 'm aware of the concept of jury nullification, and have some understanding of the pluses and the minuses. Though it's really intended as a "people's defense" against perceived unjust laws, not bad prosecution. We did, in effect nullify the bad prosecution by returning the Not Guilty verdict on the bulk of the charges. But the bald fact remained that a Sergeant First Class with 18 years of service falsified a document. And essentially admitted falsifying a document. Because he was tired of the hassle, and wanted to take an easy way out - and this was *before* he knew he was facing a potential prosecution on the over-arching issue. I voted to convict. If he hadn't done it, he would have walked. He wasn't entrapped. He succumbed to temptation and falsified an official document. He decided to short-circuit the system, flawed as it was. Sorry if the Lieutenant Colonels, Majors, Captains and 1SGs on the panel just couldn't take ourselves around that one. And we tried. But reality is, he chose to do it and didn't have to. Sorry if that bothers you. But sometimes the choices all suck. It's like being involved in an accident. The guy who hit you is at fault, and t-boned you in an intersection where you clearly had the green light and right of way. But you were drunk. The accident wasn't your fault - but you're going to get hit for the DUI anyway.
 
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