Permutez-Moi?
Bill Otis, a career prosecutor, former member of the Attorney General's Advisory Committee on the Sentencing Guidelines under both parties, and the Bush41 special counsel who had a big hand in recommending the Iran-Contra pardon of Caspar Weinberger, says that Bush the son should not pardon Lewis "Scooter" Libby, but commute his prison sentence instead:
And like all compromises, this one would please nobody and leave the fundamental injustice of the entire "Plamegate" witchhunt unaddressed and uncorrected.
I maintain that, just as any prosecutor, much less one designated an Independent Counsel in everything but name, can "indict a ham sandwich" if s/he chooses, so any rogue menace can bully and manipulate any poor bastard who falls under his 5 kilowatt klieg lights in an open-ended, unlimited investigation where his case is based upon the under-oath testimony of people grilled on their recollections of years-ago conversations. I've had a couple of tastes of that myself, and I can, well, "testify" that once the credibility of a witness, much less the accused, is impeached, it's a simple matter to attach the taint of "lying" to him/her, and s/he is pretty much toast. Unless s/he is a Democrat, of course.
True, I wasn't on that jury and I didn't hear the evidence as Pat Fitzgerald presented it. Heck, it wouldn't take more than a matter of minutes of perusing through my blog archives to firmly establish that I would never have made it onto that jury had I been eligible and willing (I've had a taste of the jury selection process as well). But it seems to me that Mr. Otis' commutation arguments are quite similar to the arguments for a pardon. Indeed, it was Fitzgerald who pushed so hard for the harshest sentence possible on the bait & switch grounds that Libby is, in effect, guilty of what Fitzgerald himself never prosecuted him for: the "exposure" of Valerie Wilson's "covert identity," which he knew damned well was actually perpetrated by Richard Armitage, the then-Deputy SecState whom Fitzgerald never sought to prosecute at all. The "process crimes" of perjury and obstruction of justice were just the vehicle.
I don't oppose a commutation of Libby's jail sentence in and of itself. If only stuck with the fine I'm sure he can do what practically all former Bush Administration officials do after they return to the real world: write a kiss & tell book blasting the President for their particular laundry list of grievances and resentments. I've no doubt he'd make enough in royalties to more than cover the fine, and his status as a martyr on the Right would set him up quite nicely in some conservative think tank or other, or perhaps get him a media gig in talk radio or as an analyst with Fox News. Ollie North blazed that trail twenty years ago.
But that would not right the wrong done to Mr. Libby by being singled out as a Bush surrogate effigy in a vindictive partisan revenge-fest. It wouldn't expunge the fact that Libby was set up to be screwed by yet another out-of-control prosecutor who, again, knew who the real perpetrator was from day one. It wouldn't erase the felony convictions from his record that never could have arisen if he had been treated fairly and justly.
And on top of all that, Dubya himself owes Libby a pardon for knuckling under to his enemies and authorizing this entire sorry, despicable mess in the first place instead of telling the Democrats to go pound sand.
They say justice delayed is justice denied. Pardoning Lewis Libby would be a long-overdue exception to that rule.
U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton noted that there was ample evidence that Libby intentionally lied. Jurors took care (they did not convict on all counts), and the evidence before them makes it hard to believe that Libby's misstatements were merely a product of poor memory or confusion. The case was proved, and the conviction should not simply be wiped away.
Yet the sentence is another matter. Neither vindication of the rule of law nor any other aspect of the public interest requires that Libby go to prison. He is by no stretch a danger to the community, as "danger" is commonly understood. He did not commit his crime out of greed or personal malice. Nor is his life one that bespeaks a criminal turn of mind. To the contrary, as letters to the court on his behalf overwhelmingly established, he has been a contributor to his community and his country....
To pardon Scooter Libby would not be consistent with the imperative that the mechanisms of law be able to demand, and receive, the truth. But to leave the sentence undisturbed would be an injustice to a person who, though guilty in this instance, is not what most people would, or should, think of as a criminal. Commutation offers a middle ground.
And like all compromises, this one would please nobody and leave the fundamental injustice of the entire "Plamegate" witchhunt unaddressed and uncorrected.
I maintain that, just as any prosecutor, much less one designated an Independent Counsel in everything but name, can "indict a ham sandwich" if s/he chooses, so any rogue menace can bully and manipulate any poor bastard who falls under his 5 kilowatt klieg lights in an open-ended, unlimited investigation where his case is based upon the under-oath testimony of people grilled on their recollections of years-ago conversations. I've had a couple of tastes of that myself, and I can, well, "testify" that once the credibility of a witness, much less the accused, is impeached, it's a simple matter to attach the taint of "lying" to him/her, and s/he is pretty much toast. Unless s/he is a Democrat, of course.
True, I wasn't on that jury and I didn't hear the evidence as Pat Fitzgerald presented it. Heck, it wouldn't take more than a matter of minutes of perusing through my blog archives to firmly establish that I would never have made it onto that jury had I been eligible and willing (I've had a taste of the jury selection process as well). But it seems to me that Mr. Otis' commutation arguments are quite similar to the arguments for a pardon. Indeed, it was Fitzgerald who pushed so hard for the harshest sentence possible on the bait & switch grounds that Libby is, in effect, guilty of what Fitzgerald himself never prosecuted him for: the "exposure" of Valerie Wilson's "covert identity," which he knew damned well was actually perpetrated by Richard Armitage, the then-Deputy SecState whom Fitzgerald never sought to prosecute at all. The "process crimes" of perjury and obstruction of justice were just the vehicle.
I don't oppose a commutation of Libby's jail sentence in and of itself. If only stuck with the fine I'm sure he can do what practically all former Bush Administration officials do after they return to the real world: write a kiss & tell book blasting the President for their particular laundry list of grievances and resentments. I've no doubt he'd make enough in royalties to more than cover the fine, and his status as a martyr on the Right would set him up quite nicely in some conservative think tank or other, or perhaps get him a media gig in talk radio or as an analyst with Fox News. Ollie North blazed that trail twenty years ago.
But that would not right the wrong done to Mr. Libby by being singled out as a Bush surrogate effigy in a vindictive partisan revenge-fest. It wouldn't expunge the fact that Libby was set up to be screwed by yet another out-of-control prosecutor who, again, knew who the real perpetrator was from day one. It wouldn't erase the felony convictions from his record that never could have arisen if he had been treated fairly and justly.
And on top of all that, Dubya himself owes Libby a pardon for knuckling under to his enemies and authorizing this entire sorry, despicable mess in the first place instead of telling the Democrats to go pound sand.
They say justice delayed is justice denied. Pardoning Lewis Libby would be a long-overdue exception to that rule.
posted by JASmius at 6:31 PM
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