Sigh... the thrashings of the hypocrite

[pecunium]

karl_lembke is trying, again, to mock me. this post where he says my post is wrong because, The sense I get from those who support commutation (and indeed, an outright pardon) is that Libby's crime was prosecutable, but not worthy of prosecution.


I disagree. I disagree because of the difference Karl and I have about the Clinton prosecution, which relies on a fundamental misunderstanding on his part of what happened. Karl sees it like this

In Bob's case, he at least did commit a crime. In Libby's case, there was no underlying crime.

In this comment), I can't resist following up on the parallel with the impeachment of President Clinton. He was not impeached for sex – he was impeached for lying to investigators (obstruction of justice) and perjury (lying under oath – about anything).

Um no, not all lies under oath are perjurious.

Per 18 USC PART I CHAPTER 79

§ 1621. Perjury generally

Whoever—
(1) having taken an oath before a competent tribunal, officer, or person, in any case in which a law of the United States authorizes an oath to be administered, that he will testify, declare, depose, or certify truly, or that any written testimony, declaration, deposition, or certificate by him subscribed, is true, willfully and contrary to such oath states or subscribes any material matter which he does not believe to be true; or

(2) in any declaration, certificate, verification, or statement under penalty of perjury as permitted under section 1746 of title 28, United States Code, willfully subscribes as true any material matter which he does not believe to be true;

is guilty of perjury and shall, except as otherwise expressly provided by law, be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. This section is applicable whether the statement or subscription is made within or without the United States.

So, as Clinton's relationship with Lewinsky wasn't material to the Jones' lawsuit (as proven by the judge throwing it out as immaterial), he didn't commit perjury.

Also, and this is important, Libby was convicted.

The CIA, under Tenet, a Bush appointee, asked for an investigation of the outing of a covert agent.

The DoJ, unde Bush, decided to appoint a prosecutor.

That prosecutor, appointed by Bush began to investigate. Libby lied, so as to obstruct justice (Fitzgerald said he couldn't indict Armitage, nor anyone else, because of what Libby did).

He then presented the case to the Grand Jury, which issued a true bill.

A trial, with a jury of his peers, presided over by a judge Bush appointed to the bench, convicted him.

He was sentenced, in accord with the Sentencing Guidlines the present administration both defended (in a perjury/obstruction of justice case) before the Supreme Court this term, and is trying to make more rigid.

I happen to care about the rule of law. I also happen to have read the law in question (18 USC, etc.)

But he doesn't seem to care about any of that, because he thinks Bush is just ducks, and that Clinton wasn't.

If it weren't the case, he'd be just as pissed off about Libby getting off as he was when Clinton did. But he isn't. Rather he is smugly trying to score points by saying those who saw through the kabuki of the Clinton impeachment and are opposed by the blatant self-serving nature of this one (because the commutation allows for Libby to stand mute in any further attempt to find out who really started this whole thing going).

This case isn't like the Clinton impeachment, because Libby did commit perjury (and Bush, with his commutation admits it).

The commutation isn't like the Clinton pardons either (and the ironic side of me has to point out that the one the DoJ most thoroughly investigated, with the intent of seeing if it was criminal, was the one which Libby was the advocate for); no this is rather more akin to the Christmas Eve Pardons, where Bush pere, on his way out of office, pardoned people who might have been able to implicate him in Iran-Contra.

The apple, it seems, doesn't fall far from the tree.

Comments

[wetdryvac.livejournal.com]

Interesting. The exact wording on what defines perjury isn't what I'd always been led to believe it was, thus making it necessary for me to re-look at a number of legal matters where I may have been mistaken.

...thus showing again that texts dumbing legal issues down can result in legal issues being addressed in an ignorant manner. I really hate when I find out years after the fact that I had a broken logic tree.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

What has you thought the law to be?

TK

[wetdryvac.livejournal.com]

Specifically, I had thought perjury was a matter of lying under oath irregardless of whether the subject under discussion was material to the matter at hand. In other words, the example of Clinton's immaterial untruths I would have taken to be perjury prior to reading how perjury is defined.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

And that's the talking point the Right beat on.

They didn't say perjury. They said, "He lied under oath," and then let the conflation of the two soak into the public mind.

Lies under oath can be used to impeach credibility, but if it material, it doesn't touch justice; which is the reason perjury is so important. Lying about material facts of the case perverts justice.

Enough such perversions, and the public stops believing justice is done. That what mattters is who you are, or who you know.

Things like the Libby commutation were actually discussed as a reason for impeachment... cases where the president might order a crime, and then use his power of pardon to forgive it.

TK

[karl-lembke.livejournal.com]

What I find interesting is how people seem to be going away for lying to investigators, even when not under oath. Martha Stewart, for example. And Scooter Libby.

One blog I read is by a lawyer, who actually makes his living in a courtroom. He hasn't commented much on this case, but he did offer a couple of comments recently. His most recent one, here (http://beldar.blogs.com/beldarblog/2007/07/on-libbys-enhan.html), is looking at just how much damage Libby's false statements actually did to the case.

The subtitle of this post could be: "No sentence enhancement was appropriate unless Fitz at least had a legitimate 'Drat that Libby!' shout."
....
...the prosecution has not been able, as far as I understand, to articulate a causal chain in which anything that Libby did actually did obstruct Fitzgerald's investigation, or even a plausible chain of events by which it could ever have been expected by Libby or by anyone else to do so. There wasn't anything to his obstruction, in other words, than telling a story that would conflict with someone else's story. Nothing was permanently hidden; no path of inquiry was blocked. For Libby's feeble obstruction to have succeeded in hiding another crime, or preventing its investigation and proof, the FBI and Fitz would have had to be completely vegetative.

(This in response to your

That prosecutor, appointed by Bush began to investigate. Libby lied, so as to obstruct justice (Fitzgerald said he couldn't indict Armitage, nor anyone else, because of what Libby did).

Clinton's lie was considered actionable because it was considered to obstruct an ongoing sexual harassment investigation. (One of the paths of such an investigation involves establishing a pattern of behavior on the part of the accused. Clinton's actions with Lewinsky were thought to be part of that pattern.) Since a judge declared it non material, we may assume it wasn't material after all. But then, "materiality" seems to be a bit subjective.

In his post, Beldar argues that the grounds for sentence enhancement are asserted but never proven.

Anyway, the point is, I notice the people who believe justice was done by the court in Libby's case tend to be the very people who believe the Clinton impeachment was bogus.

And generally, those seem to be the very people who have never forgiven Bush for winning in 2000, and think he tracks dog poop on his cowboy boots everywhere he goes.