woodward saves libbyFollow

Sweet Sassy Molassy!

Jophiel

Heavens to Murgatroid!

Varus:

I sure miss old Libby, you know he could dance almost as well as he could play the piano.

So admins, I still don't understand why Varus is allowed to have a sock to rate all of his OPs up above filter.





Edited, Thu Nov 17 17:12:21 2005 by trickybeck

Ah, ok. Just curious since it happened with 90% of his OPs even back when he was using "Varus."

I rated him up in this thread so nobody misses the grand mal shi[/i]theadness of entertainment value that he brings to this forum.

I did it a couple of times long ago, just to be a ****, but I've since repented my sins and have been washed in the blood of the lamb, yada, yada, yada, I rate the focktard below my filter settings too, yada, yada, yada, praise Haysooz, amen!

Wow, SR just made sense. where are my meds?

She used her covert CIA training to kill Mr. Greene in the kitchene with the candlesticke.

*cough*

No. The perjury and "giving false testimony" charges are for lying. The obstruction of justice charge is <drumroll> for "obstructing justice". It's predicated on the assumption that the contradiction in his testimony resulted from a willfull desire to obstruct the investigation. The investigation was attempting to discover who outted Plame.

That's how it's significant. The obstruction charge specifically claims that Libby's perjury and false testimony obstructed the investigation's ability to discover who outted Plame. Finding out that Libby could *not* have been the one who did it changes those charges enormously. If he was not concealing his own guilt, then his testimony cannot actually have obstructed the investigation. More to the point, since it's now been revealed that Fitzgerald had access to this information before but choose not to follow up on it, it calls into question the entire "focus" on Libby in the first place. It says that the investigation wasn't obstructed, but the person leading it choose to ignore leads that could have provided information and choose instead to focus on specific targets.

And that's exactly how a defense attorney will play this. He'll stand before a jury. Show them Woodward's statements. Show them that the lead investigator choose to ignore solid evidence that reporters were told about Plame months before the conversations Libby was questioned on. And then paint his client as an innocent man who was unfairly targetted by the investigation for political reasons. He'll ask why Fitzgerald didn't follow up on any leads that pointed in directions other then his client. He'll then go through the questions asked, how many were asked, on how many occasions they were asked, and in what way they were asked. And he'll ask the jury to put themselves in his clients position. How many of *you* could consistently answer that many detailed questions about a couple conversations you had months ago, and keep every detail about them straight over the course of a 2 year time period?

It'll be an easy sell. While you're right that perjury is an easy charge to indict someone one, it's a lot harder to actually convict someone on. Especially in a long running investigation like this, where the perjury is based on inconsistencies in statements made years apart. All the defense has to show is the slightest amount of bias in the investigation towards "getting" his client and he'll win the jury to his side. And Woodward's statements provide that in spades...





Really? Ok. Tell me what he said that as a lie? I'm betting you don't actually know, and haven't actually read the indictment. You're just parroting what you heard.

Perjury simply means that your testimony was inconsistent, either with other testimony you already gave, or with someone else's testimony. In this case, it's a little bit of both, but there's no single "caught in a lie" statement he made. The charges against him really are hinged on whether or not his claims that rummors about Plames identity were floating around the reporter pool were true or not. He said this. He based his testimony on it, and the grand jury didn't believe him and charged him with perjury.



Again. It makes a huge difference. If you actually read the indictment, it's clear that the reason he was charged is because of an assumption that he was involved in the outting of Plame, but lied sufficiently to prevent the investigation from proving it. Fitz's statement to the press specifically claimed that Libby was involved in the outting of Plame. He certainly seemed to have linked them in his mind. Removing the first part severely weakens the significance of the second. That's the part you're missing.

Edited, Fri Nov 18 20:58:27 2005 by gbaji