Feeding Frenzy over Cheney and Libby

RUSH: When this news gets broadcast about Patrick Fitzgerald?s opening argument today about Cheney — I mean, it’s going to be a feeding frenzy. You’re going to see headlines, maybe they’re out there already, ?Bush fighting for political life, not just Iraq,? ?Bush fighting for survival in Washington, the last two years of his administration,? going into the State of the Union tonight.
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RUSH: Here’s the Cheney story. ?Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald used his opening statement in the CIA leak trial Tuesday to allege that Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff lied and destroyed a note showing Cheney’s early involvement. Fitzgerald said Cheney told his chief of staff, ?Scooter? Libby, in 2003 that Wilson?s wife worked for the CIA and Libby spread that information to reporters. When that information got out, it triggered a federal investigation. ?But when the FBI and grand jury asked about what the defendant did,? Fitzgerald said, ?he made up a story.? Fitzgerald alleged that Libby in September 2003 ?wiped out? a Cheney note just before Libby’s first FBI interview when he said he learned about Wilson and his wife, CIA operative Valerie Plame, from reporters, not the vice president. ? But Fitzgerald told jurors that was clearly a lie because Libby had already been discussing the matter inside and outside of the White House. ?You can?t learn something on Thursday that you?re giving out on Monday,? Fitzgerald said. ? Libby says he didn?t lie but was simply bogged down by national security issues and couldn?t remember details.?
I still remain confused over this. There was no crime. Fitzgerald did not charge anybody in this leak. This is a process crime. Now he’s alleging in an opening statement that Cheney’s deeply involved, but Cheney’s not indicted. He’s not even an unindicted coconspirator. So what goes on here? Okay. He says there’s a note that Libby destroyed and so forth, but it was Armitage that was the leaker, and this was known a week after Fitzgerald took the case. It was also known that she was not covert, otherwise he could have charged Armitage or whoever with a crime for this. So while no crime was committed, we got Libby accused now of destroying a note that Cheney was more deeply involved in this than anybody knows, but he’s not indicted, he’s just being savaged in an opening statement by Patrick Fitzgerald. We, of course, will keep a sharp eye on this.
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RUSH: This is going to get nasty. Scooter Libby’s lawyer’s opening statement: “I’m not taking the fall for Karl Rove.” That’s what Libby lawyers said that Libby told Cheney. The trial is underway.
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RUSH: I want to go through the Scooter Libby stuff for a second because now this whole trial has been turned into a political fiasco, thanks to the special prosecutor. As you know, Patrick Fitzgerald in his opening statement today alleged that Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, lied and destroyed a note showing Cheney’s early involvement. Fitzgerald said that Cheney told Libby in 2003 that Joe Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA, and Libby spread that information to reporters. When that information got out, it triggered a federal investigation. But when the FBI and the grand jury asked when the defendant did, Fitzgerald said he made up a story. Libby says, (paraphrased) ?Hey, I was working on national security. I don’t remember all the details of this. Far more important things were going on.? Now, Cheney was not indicted. There was no crime committed based on the original purpose of the investigation. This was a process crime, and now even though Cheney’s not indicted, he?s not even an unindicted coconspirator, in the opening arguments, I tell you, those of you who watch Chris Matthews, they may have to put a straitjacket on him and a bucket nearby to control the spittle.
This opening statement of Fitzgerald is giving them their Fitzmas. Here’s Cheney, Cheney is deeply involved. Not indicted. This reminds me of what they did to Ed Meese when Meese was in the Reagan administration. I don’t remember the total details, but they had a special prosecutor on some loan that he took out for a house in California. It was all about the appearance of impropriety. After the investigation was concluded and there were no charges, the prosecutor still went on television and said, ?Well, we might not have found anything, but we still think he’s a rat. We still think he’s dirty, and we still think he’s guilty.? Well, fine, go ahead and destroy the guy, even though your own investigation proved nothing, Fitzgerald’s investigation about the original charge of outing a covert CIA agent. There was no covert, and the leak was from Richard Armitage. Now his name doesn’t even get mentioned, Fitzgerald new all this, now it’s time to rake Cheney over the coals in an opening statement.
Here’s the latest. ?Attorneys for Scooter Libby said today that Bush administration officials tried to blame Libby for the leak of the CIA operative’s name to cover up for Karl Rove’s own disclosures. The prosecution insisted it was Libby who lied about his role in the case. As the trial opened with a preview of each side’s case, it was clear the jury will be tasked with sorting through conflicting statements. The lawyer Theodore Wells for Libby, in opening statements, said Libby went to Cheney in 2003 and complained that the White House was subtly blaming him for leaking Valerie Plame’s identity to Robert Novak. ?They’re trying to set me up. They want me to be the sacrificial Lamb,? Wells said, recalling the conversation between Libby and Cheney.? He quotes Libby as saying, ?I will not be sacrificed so Karl Rove can be protected.? Let me tell you what I think is going on here, ladies and gentlemen.
I think what is happening here is that Libby’s lawyers have figured out that some of the jurors, and Fitzgerald wanted these jurors, hate the White House. They hate Bush, they hate Rove, and they hate Cheney. So they’re trying now to distance Libby from the White House and part of the Rove team. If that’s the case, and look, the lawyer’s job is to get their client acquitted. We know about the jury selection in this trial because Fitzgerald wanted all the Bush hating jurors he could get, and the defense got rid of as many as they could, as they could identify, but there’s still some Bush-haters and White House haters on this jury. It’s a DC jury, what do you expect? So it’s obvious here that the legal team for Libby is doing everything they can to make it look like, ?Hey, he’s not part of that White House bunch. They set him up. They set him up to save Rove.? Which is not a bad legal tactic, but it is going to feed the Drive-By Media. This is like giving a great white shark as much raw meat as he can handle.
You know, some days I sit here and I look out there and it just appears everything’s disintegrating right around us. That’s because there’s no elected conservative leadership in Washington that provides a standard for everybody to get in line and follow. There just isn’t. Everybody is wandering off on the reservation doing their own thing, in the Republican Party. The libs are who they are. Folks, I told you after the election it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better. I knew what I was talking about then, as I always do, and I know what I’m talking about now. Anyway, this whole trial is nothing now but a political fiasco, and that’s thanks to the special prosecutor and the way he has sought to go about this. This is a political crime that he couldn’t find any evidence for so he found a process crime and he’s going to use the trial of the process crime to make it look like it’s all about politics.
The State of the Union tonight, the Democrats flexing their muscles against the war in Iraq, I tell you, it might be worth it to turn on some cable news channels tonight just to see if some of these people don’t have heart attacks in their glee. Matthews is going to want to say so much in the first 20 minutes of his show?. (Babbling.) Slow down. (Babbling.) It’s just going to be a riot. He’s going to want to say so much, he knows he doesn’t have time to say what he wants to say, it’s going to be like listening to chipmunks.