Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Another Libby Motion

TopsecretK9 has provided a Libby Memo in Reply to the Government's Response to the Defendant's Third Motion to Compel Discovery which is reproduced here. TeamLibby makes some assertions that Patrick Fitzgerald may have difficulty in rebutting. In particular, the section concerning Grossman's recollections is very interesting.

Clarice Feldman offers insights as to the import of this memo at American Thinker. Her comments concerning Fitzgerald's tactics - particularly his use of newspaper articles as grand jury exhibits are also very intriguing. What does a newspaper article prove (aside from the 'fact' that a reporter found something of interest - at least to the reporter)?

5 comments:

brylun said...

Rick and Clarice, Once again thanks for the postings. Very informative.

Rick Ballard said...

DT,

This whole thing appears to be a war between State and the CIA - Grossman is on the State team and knows that when Armitage fed Novak the tip on Plame he slipped up by telling him that Plamed worked in WMD analysis. Her "affiliation" with the WMD team was classified, her "status" as an employee of the CIA was not. Fitz was very cute about her employment status having been classified at one time but having since been declassified - he acknowledges the fact without ever giving the date of declassification.

I agree that Fitz has ridden this case a lot longer than he should have but I don't have a clue as to motive - when he found out that Armitage didn't know that Plame's 'affiliation' was classified he had to have known that he wasn't dealing with a chargeable offense.

cf said...

fresh air, You said a mouthful. Comey sent Martha Stewart to jail on similar hooey, but the Anderson case is the shame of our criminal justice system. Anyone could be brought up on obstruction charges given the loose handling of it by ambitious prosecutors and the failure of the Courts to clamp down on this misuse of the charge.

cf said...

knucklehead, in the general case you have a point, but the IIPA is a very narrow statute. Since it appears the predicates for it could never have been met, I think it obvious there was no legitimate investigation to be obstructed.And since there wasn't allowing the Prosecutor to claim obstruction is to give an imprimatur to setting up perjury traps.

Rick Ballard said...

Knuck,

How can one obstruct the investigation of a non-crime? It's the very existence of a crime that is in question - one of those teeny, tiny hurdles that one might hope a prosecutor would verify before fully launching. In this case, with the CIA as a client, Fitz had a moral duty to make sure that a violation of a statute had in fact occurred before he asserted that Libby obstructed - except that the obstruction statute doesn't make that moral duty a legal duty.

If you look at what Fitz has done very closely, you'll begin to have a good deal of sympathy for Hillary Clinton and her "I don't recall" Arkansas Alzheimer replies. He's not helping the investigation business and he's a fair distance from anything involving justice.