It's Friday

@beckyromero [quote]Scooter's pardon was probably the right thing to do.[/quote]

Not the point I'm debating. This is about Trump's war on leakers, while simultaneously pardoning an admitted leaker, not of gossip, but the identity of a CIA operative.

I supported Libby can have his law license back, and join the shady Trump defense team

@Northwest [quote]This is about Trump's war on leakers, while simultaneously pardoning an admitted leaker, not of gossip, but the identity of a CIA operative.[/quote]

Libby didn't leak Valerie Plame's name.

Assistant Secretary of State Richard Armitage did, to columnist Robert Novak.

The prosecutor in the case, Patrick Fitzgerald, knew this.

Furthermore, New York Times reporter Judith Miller has said that Fitzgerald used her testimony to implicate Libby only after she was jailed 85 days for refusing to reveal sources.

In 2015, Miller published an autobiography. She questioned if her memories had been wrong, if her testimony had been false and wrote, "Had I misconstrued my notes? Had Fitzgerald's questions about whether my use of the word Bureau meant the FBI steered me in the wrong direction?"

Last week, Miller wrote:

"In 2007 I had testified against Libby, saying that I thought he and I had discussed Valerie Plame, a CIA agent whose identity he was said to have leaked to the media to punish her husband for challenging intelligence about weapons of mass destruction that President George W. Bush had cited to justify the 2003 war in Iraq.

"Critics of the war were outraged and demanded an independent investigation of the leak by a special prosecutor. While Libby was never charged with leaking Plame's name, he was convicted of lying to the FBI and a grand jury and of obstructing justice in the leak investigation.

"At a news conference after Libby's conviction, Patrick Fitzgerald – the special prosecutor appointed by then-Deputy Attorney General James Comey (who later became FBI director) – called my testimony crucial to the verdict. ...

"Fitzgerald refused to discuss the case with me after the trial. Nor would he say why he pursued Libby after learning early in the inquiry that the source of the leak was not Libby, but Richard Armitage, an aide to Secretary of State Colin Powell, who had argued against the war. But Armitage was never punished for releasing classified information.

Then I learned that Fitzgerald had withheld exculpatory evidence not only from me but also from Libby's lawyer that might surely have jogged my memory and prevented me from unwittingly giving false testimony against him. Finally, the prosecutor opposed letting the jury hear information about how often memories of such conversations fail."

@beckyromero Thank you for copying and pasting the self-serving article Judit Miller wrote for Fox News a week ago.

The conviction and the leak are two separate things. If Libby was truly innocent, he would have taken the stand for himself, during the trial, but he wanted to avoid an additional perjury conviction, or he would have appealed, which is not something he did.

At the time, his issue was not that he did not reveal the names, but that some of the information should not have been allowed in front of the Grand Jury.

@Northwest [quote]Thank you for copying and pasting the self-serving article Judit Miller wrote for Fox News a week ago.[/quote]

"As Miller has now revealed, Fitzgerald knew all along what the word Bureau had meant in her June 23 notes. It had been a reference to Plame’s earlier cover with the State Department when she was overseas. The CIA isn’t divided into bureaus; the State Department is.

"Neither Miller nor Libby had known at the time that Plame had ever been under cover at State. Fitzgerald did know, however, when he deposed Miller; he had Plame’s entire job history in his files. But he deliberately withheld that information from Miller and from Libby’s lawyers. Instead, he encouraged Miller to believe the word Bureau had referred to Plame’s current CIA employment, and that the information had to have come from none other than Scooter Libby—even though she had had no clear memory of her conversation with Libby."

source:
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-smearing-of-scooter-libby/

If you're interested in the truth, read the background and understand how his prosecution took place.

If you're interested in partisanship, keep doing what you're doing.

If you know you are the victim of over-zealous prosecutor who wanted you to give false testimony in order to indict someone higher up (Cheney or Rove) for something they didn't do either, why in the world would you "take the stand"?

@beckyromero Thank you, once more, for re-posting quotes from Judith Miller, to prove nothing.

[quote]If you're interested in partisanship, keep doing what you're doing.[/quote]
You don't know anything about me, so I suggest you not go there.

[quote]why in the world would you "take the stand"?[/quote]

The question is why he did not take the stand. While Armitage and Cheney may be equally guilty, it does not absolve Libby. He would not take the stand, because he will further perjure himself.

@Northwest [quote]The question is why he did not take the stand.[/quote]

Libby never leaked Plame's name. The prosecutor [b]WANTED[/b] him to perjure himself by testifying that he leaked her name. That's why he never took the stand. He would have been forced to answer that question. If he truthfully answered, "No," he would have been hit with another perjury charge. If he [b]LIED[/b] and said "Yes" that would have been perjury as well. Since the prosecutor [b]KNEW[/b] that wouldn't have been the truth as he knew Libby didn't leak Plame's name.

If you fear the government is already wrongly prosecuting you and [b]WANTS[/b] you to perjure yourself by wrongfully testifying about something you did [b]NOT[/b] do, maybe [b]YOU[/b] can explain why someone in that position would take the stand?

This is what infuriated Cheney so much, that President Bush only commuted Libby's sentence instead of a issuing a full pardon. Of course, Bush didn't have the hindsight about Judith Miller's discovery since that came after he left office.

We've seen it over and over. When the government doesn't have enough evidence to initially convict someone, they force them to testify over and over and then nail them for perjury. People aren't computer with brains than never make mistakes in recalling minute details, as Judith Miller later recounted.

This is where I say, I’m done with the hair splitter @beckyromero