Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[seabass]

>>>The question that I (and many others) have is did Libby actually lie or did he rely on faulty memory<<<


That possibility was addressed by the prosecution, the jury that convicted him and 4 judges and was soundly rejected by all.


But mainly, Libby is betting on what one lawyer calls his "busy man defense."

The defense is unusual because Libby is in essence admitting that he might not have told the truth, which lawyers said is a risky gambit in perjury cases, where defendants usually argue that what they said was technically true or that they were confused by the questions posed to them. They said they could not recall another case where it had been tried in court.

Jeffrey Frederick, a Charlottesville, Va., jury consultant, said the test for Fitzgerald would be showing that the conversations with journalists dealt with a subject that was so important that a reasonable person would have remembered it. That could be tough for Libby to overcome because the subject matter was the war and Wilson - whom the White House clearly had concerns about.

"We are not talking about whether you had tuna or sirloin on a Friday night," Frederick said.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.libby16jan16,0,6265238.story?track=rss




>>>Fitzgerald knew the whole time who really "outed" Plame (Richard Armitage) so his whole investigation was a sham and a fishing expedition to begin with,<<<


I never understood this argument. Any prosecutor building his case for any crime will ask questions high and low, left and right or wherever he feels he can get an another piece of the puzzle. Libby was front and center of this whole story and Fitzgerald would have been criminally negligent had he not asked him questions. Libby is an attorney and a smart man and surely understood what he was up against. Yet you still believe he unknowingly lied 5 times in front of a grand jury?

If you'd been in Libby's shoes, would you - under oath - wish yourself good luck and just mouth off hoping your memory served you or would you be honest and say you just couldn't recall for sure?