|
Banned
|
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by aceventura3
This does not answer the question. I understand the legal standard, I also understand that it is a high standard, but I don't understand why Fitzgerald doesn't step up to that challenge - given what is common knowledge. Fitzerald basically has unlimited resources to bring this case to trial. Even if he does not win the case, at least there would be a judicial record of the evidence, at least we can minimize the speculation, at least he can get the key players to testify on the stand. Perhaps we can bring closure to the issue one way or the other. The point of his investigation, I thought was to come to a conclusion. He needs to say a crime was not comitted or he needs to bring the matter to trial in my opinion. I don't think he has done either.
So you give an answer telling me about the burden of proof, but that response does not address what I want to know. I believe my question is valid and perhaps Fitzerald needs to go on record an explain why he is not going to bring the case to trial, and perhaps the public should pressure him into addressing the question.
I admit it is possible that he has given a detailed explanation and I have not read it, if so a link would be helpful, rather than telling me to stop saying I don't have a clear answer.
I don't get it. I am asking about the crime of "outing" a covert CIA agent. Is someone guilty of this crime or not? If someone is guilty of that crime, why hasn't the matter been taken to court? If the answer is - the investigation continues - at least that is something - but it is disappointing, how much longer is he going to investigate?
|
ace......just to add to your confusion, and to our own satisfaction with the "just" outcome.....DO YOU WONDER ABOUT THE DOUBLE STANDARD OF CONSERVATIVES WHO SUPPORT THE DEATH PENALTY....A PENALTY THAT IS IRREVERSIBLE AND LARGELY BEFALLS FOLKS WITHOUT THE RESOURCES TO BE REPRESENTED AGAINST CRIMINAL CHARGES WITH A MULTI MILLION DOLLAR, ELEVEN LAWYER DEFENSE TEAM....LIKE LIBBY ENJOYED.
IF CONSERVATIVES BELIEVE SO STRONGLY THAT THE JUSTICE SYSTEM DID NOT "GET IT RIGHT", IN CONVICTING LIBBY....HOW COME THERE IS NO OBJECTION FROM THEM WHEN POORLY DEFENDED FOLKS ARE SENTENCED TO DEATH BY THE SAME SYSTEM?
Judge Walton noted, in response to a Libby appeal drafted by an even more prestigious "dream team" of lawyers than Libby's defense team:
Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...d=sec-politics
"It is an impressive show of public service when twelve prominent and distinguished current and former law professors of well-respected schools are able to amass their collective wisdom in the course of only several days to provide their legal expertise to the Court on behalf of a criminal defendant," Walton wrote in granting the scholars' request.
He added: "The Court trusts that this is a reflection of <h3>these eminent academics' willingness in the future to step up to the plate and provide like assistance in cases involving any of the numerous litigants, both in this Court and throughout the courts of our nation, who lack the financial means</h3> to fully and properly articulate the merits of their legal positions."
|
ace....this is a contest about justice vs. class and privilege and there already are two standards of justice....one for Libby and the elite who support him, and another for the rest of us. Why not save your confused indignation for an instance where it can possibly aid someone who is treated unfairly and is unable to properly defend himself. Libby can take care of himself.....
Quote:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/bl...is_pardon.html
Begging His Pardon
by Bill Moyers
We have yet another remarkable revelation of the mindset of Washington's ruling clique of neoconservative elites—the people who took us to war from the safety of their Beltway bunkers. Even as Iraq grows bloodier by the day, their passion of the week is to keep one of their own from going to jail.
It is well known that I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby—once Vice President Cheney’s most trusted adviser—has been sentenced to 30 months in jail for perjury. Lying. Not a white lie, mind you. A killer lie. Scooter Libby deliberately poured poison into the drinking water of democracy by lying to federal investigators, for the purpose of obstructing justice.
Attempting to trash critics of the war, Libby and his pals in high places—including his boss Dick Cheney—outed a covert CIA agent. Libby then lied toLibby cover their tracks. To throw investigators off the trail, he kicked sand in the eyes of truth. "Libby lied about nearly everything that mattered,” wrote the chief prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. The jury agreed and found him guilty on four felony counts. Judge Reggie B. Walton—a no-nonsense, lock-em-up-and-throw-away-the-key type, appointed to the bench by none other than George W. Bush—called the evidence “overwhelming” and threw the book at Libby.
You would have thought their man had been ordered to Guantanamo, so intense was the reaction from his cheerleaders. They flooded the judge's chambers with letters of support for their comrade and took to the airwaves in a campaign to “free Scooter.”
Vice President Cheney issued a statement praising Libby as “a man…of personal integrity”—without even a hint of irony about their collusion to browbeat the CIA into mangling intelligence about Iraq in order to justify the invasion.
“A patriot, a dedicated public servant, a strong family man, and a tireless, honorable, selfless human being,” said Donald Rumsfeld—the very same Rumsfeld who had claimed to know the whereabouts of weapons of mass destruction and who boasted of “bulletproof” evidence linking Saddam to 9/11. “A good person” and “decent man,” said the one-time Pentagon adviser Kenneth Adelman, who had predicted the war in Iraq would be a “cakewalk.” Paul Wolfowitz wrote a four-page letter to praise “the noblest spirit of selfless service” that he knew motivated his friend Scooter. Yes, that Paul Wolfowitz, who had claimed Iraqis would “greet us as liberators” and that Iraq would “finance its own reconstruction.” The same Paul Wolfowitz who had to resign recently as president of the World Bank for using his office to show favoritism to his girlfriend. Paul Wolfowitz turned character witness.
The praise kept coming: from Douglas Feith, who ran the Pentagon factory of disinformation that Cheney and Libby used to brainwash the press; from Richard Perle, as cocksure about Libby’s “honesty, integrity, fairness and balance” as he had been about the success of the war; and from William Kristol, who had primed the pump of the propaganda machine at THE WEEKLY STANDARD and has led the call for a Presidential pardon. “The case was such a farce, in my view,” he said. “I’m for pardon on the merits.”
One beltway insider reports that the entire community is grieving—“weighted down by the sheer, glaring unfairness” of Libby's sentence.
And there’s the rub.
None seem the least weighted down by the sheer, glaring unfairness of sentencing soldiers to repeated and longer tours of duty in a war induced by deception. It was left to the hawkish academic Fouad Ajami to state the matter baldly. In a piece published on the editorial page of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, Ajami pleaded with Bush to pardon Libby. For believing “in the nobility of this war,” wrote Ajami, Scooter Libby had himself become a “casualty”—a fallen soldier the President dare not leave behind on the Beltway battlefield.
Not a word in the entire article about the real fallen soldiers. The honest-to-God dead, and dying, and wounded. Not a word about the chaos or the cost. Even as the calamity they created worsens, all they can muster is a cry for leniency for one of their own who lied to cover their tracks.
There are contrarian voices: “This is an open and shut case of perjury and obstruction of justice,” said Pat Buchanan. “The Republican Party stands for the idea that high officials should not be lying to special investigators.” From the former Governor of Virginia, James Gilmore, a staunch conservative, comes this verdict: “If the public believes there’s one law for a certain group of people in high places and another law for regular people, then you will destroy the law and destroy the system.”
So it may well be, as THE HARTFORD COURANT said editorially, that Mr Libby is “a nice guy, a loyal and devoted patriot…but none of that excuses perjury or obstruction of justice. If it did, truth wouldn’t matter much.”
|
Quote:
http://www.abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/Pol...3277944&page=1
....Trial Judge Threatened
At the top of the hearing, Walton said he had received hate mail and phone calls since the sentencing. "Unfortunately, I received a number of angry and meanspirited letters and phone calls … wishing bad things on me and my family," Walton said.
Walton said he discarded the letters but then, given the volume, decided to keep them in case anyone acted on the threats.
The judge said the harassment would not influence his decision. ........
|
Quote:
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/politic...tin_070615.htm
Walton Puts The Squeeze On Libby, Bush
Judge Walton yesterday denied "Scooter" Libby's request to stay out of prison while he appeals his conviction for perjury. Not only that: ABC World News notes the judge said that "he's received so much hate mail, from Libby's supporters and critics, that he saved the letters in case something happens to him." The Washington Post reports Libby "remained stoic as Walton announced his decision, while his wife, Harriet Grant, wiped away tears."
It now appears that unless a higher court rules in Libby's favor in the "emergency" appeal his lawyers are filing, Dick Cheney's former chief of staff is going to jail. USA Today reports Libby's attorneys will argue that "when Attorney General John Ashcroft and other senior Justice Department officials recused themselves from the leak investigation, they gave" prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald "unconstitutional and unchecked authority." Most analysts do not expect that argument to carry much water.
Therefore, says the New York Times, "the only thing standing between Mr. Libby and prison is a pardon," and President Bush "has so far shown no inclination to intervene." Democrats "have said that any pardon would be improper and a display of favoritism. The discussion among Republicans has been occasionally vitriolic, demonstrating the vexing political situation the Libby conviction has thrown up for Mr. Bush." The Washington Post notes that as president and as the governor of Texas, Bush "has been sparing in granting pardons and has typically done so only after those involved served partial sentences." But "he is under substantial pressure from conservatives who are indignant that Libby was convicted of lying in an investigation that never charged anyone with the illegal leak of information." White House spokeswoman Dana M. Perino said, "Scooter Libby still has the right to appeal, and therefore the president will continue not to intervene in the judicial process. ... The president feels terribly for Scooter, his wife and their young children, and all that they're going through." The Los Angeles Times and Washington Times, among other news outlets, also note the conservative pressure on Bush.
|
|