You May Want to Sit Back and Bring Some Popcorn For This One

The Libby trial is scheduled to begin Tuesday and it may be live up to the billing in one respect: Vice-President Cheney's appearance as a witness for Libby. The prospect of Fitzgerald cross-examining Cheney has been making Fitzmas fans salivate for weeks. After all, Fitzgerald is the guy who absolutely obliterated Libby's memory "expert" on cross several months back -- he ever got her to say that she never remembered meeting him before.

But the Cheney appearance should live up to expectations. Anyone who thought that Fitzgerald might pull his punches with the sitting Vice-President should mull over this tidbit from voir dire:

Late yesterday, Patrick Fitzgerald asked a juror who expressed admiration for
the office of the vice president whether that potential juror would have any
problems if counsel (Fitzgerald) conducted an aggressive cross examination of
the vice president.

And Fitzgerald may have reason to do just that, judging by these voir questions from Libby's team:

A Libby lawyer, for the second time in this process, asked a potential juror how
they will view Vice President Cheney if his testimony is “contradicted” by
another witness.

Hmm. Sounds to me like Fitzgerald might have some more work cut out for him once this trial is over. Cheney does not have the best record of telling the truth in these kinds of settings -- remember he and Bush appeared together before the 9/11 Commission, NOT under oath, and the Commission raised serious questions about Cheney's veracity concerning whether Bush had ever given the order to shoot down airplanes, or if Cheney had just done that himself. And remember Cheney wasn't under oath during his previous interview with Fitzgerald's investigators in this case. So it should be interesting...
- posted by Joshua @ 9:15 PM