I prefer to judge the perjury by the circumstances of the lie, not the circumstances of the investigation that found the lie.
Clinton lied* in a deposition for a sexual harassment suit, on the topic of his sexual conduct with government employees. The investigation of it and impeachement over it may have been a partisan hackjob, but the original suit was deemed to have merit, and as such, deserved a truthful deposition. Frankly, our system of justice alone deserved a truthful deposition from the head of state.
Obviously, the Libby lies dealt with a more serious circumstance than sexual harassment, and deserve a harsh punishment.
*was accused of lying, was sanctioned by the judge, but was never convicted of perjury I don’t really want to debate whether or not he lied.
Is that actually the case, or is it a partisan opinion? I’m honestly curious now as to when, exactly, Starr began investigating a blowjob. How could a prosecutor conduct an investigation on something that isn’t a crime? Did the prosecutor’s office actually - in a way that you can defend with objective evidence - spend a substantial amount of time investigating, primary, whether or not oral sex took place? That sounds very unlikely.
I fully agree with Shodan. Time to buy a lottery ticket.
I think there’s a world of difference between Starr and Fitzgerald. Starr I believe set out with the goal of getting Bill Clinton. Fitzgerald was charged with investigating an act of what amounts to treason, leaking the name of a covert agent for political reasons. Whether or not that is technically a crime, you can’t lie to him or the grand jury or the FBI while it is being investigated.
But the question is: once Fitzgerald concluded that a crime was not committed, should he have stopped the investigation right then and there?
I say yes.
Of course I have no way of knowing when Fitzgerald concluded that leaking Plame’s identity was not a crime. But if he determined that leaking her name was not a crime, why did he continue to investigate the leaking of her name? Makes no sense to me, unless he was fishing for perjury.
I don’t think we can say that Fitzgerald ever concluded that leaking Plame’s identity was not a crime. All we can say, based on what is publicly known, is that Fitzgerald chose not to prosecute anyone for the leak itself. He may have concluded that it was a crime but that the evidence ultimately wasn’t strong enough to meet the somewhat stringent statutory standard in court, for example. Just because a prosecutor exercises his discretion doesn’t mean that he doesn’t believe a crime was committed.
I’m pretty sure a confession is sufficient to convict someone if a crime has been committed. I’m having a hard time thinking of any reason why Fitzgerald would decide not to indict Armitage, unless he concluded that leaking the name was not a crime.
Okay, so there’s no answer, apparently as to why Fitz didn’t prosecute Armitage, et al, for outing Ms Plame.
I thank all of you for contributing.
How about another issue in this matter - Bush’s statement to the effect that as far as a pardon is concerned, he’s leaning toward the Justice Department’s guidelines for presidential pardons.
Now, some say there’s a deep rift between Bush and Cheney, considering all the problems the VP has caused. So Bush’s stance on the pardon could get Cheney very worried, for if Libby gets a long sentence with no pardon in the offing, he (Libby) might start thinking about making a deal with Fitzgerald to implicate his boss. Which might cause Cheney to make big doo-doo’s in his pants.
Ah, but Cheney knows where all the bodies are buried. If he made a deal, the government would have to build a great big Republican Federal Prison and Torture Complex to accommodate the onslaught of new felons. (Just kidding.)
Gagarene, I think that the quotes you provided above are talking about two seperate things. In one case, they seem to be saying that Fitzgerald thinks there was a crime committed but doesn’t think he has enough evidence to prove it. In the other case, he knows what was done, but does not believe that what was done satisfies the statutory guidelines for a crime. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Now, I have shown that the first case is likely not realistic, because he has a confession, which usually makes for a pretty strong case.
That leaves us with case number two, he knows exactly who did what but does not believe it satisfies the statutory requirements for a crime. This seems to be the only logical conclusion.
Now, the question is, once he determined that what was done did not satisfy the statutory requirements for a crime, why did he continue the investigation?
The point is, I believe, that one has to show certain things like that Armitage knew he was revealing something that was covert and intentionally did it anyway. I.e., one has to show not only that he revealed her name and that she worked for the CIA but that he understood that he was revealing the name of a covert agent and thus compromising classified information. To show that sort of knowledge and intent is a very high standard.
Just to expand on the point I made, Armitage claims that his leaking of the name was inadvertent, so he did not admit to the statuatory crime…He admitted to the leaking in a manner that he probably knows gets him off the hook legally (unless Fitzgerald could prove that it was not inadvertent). Here is a CNN story about it:
The standard is low enough, and the intent would be sufficiently obvious for the likes of Dick Cheney. The only problem is the lack of evidence. But that might be forthcoming someday.
Hi, I’m progressive politically to an untenable degree. Nice to meet you. I’m also (1) a lawyer who (2) knows something about the statute to which you refer and (3) about legal standards of proof generally. Do any of those things apply to you?
And yeah, I recognize I’m being kind of unnecessarily snarky here. My apologies. It’s just that I’ve been inundated and saturated with the facts of this damn case for so long that some of these simple misstatements and distortions (many of them no doubt coming from one side or another of the partisan blogosphere), often wielded by people with no real experience with the weird world of the law, really get my dander up.
