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Friday, July 06, 2007
Exhibit A in Obstruction of Justice Prosecution of Bush and Cheney
Josh Marshall, as usual, sums up the outrage over the Libby commutation the best:
Setting aside whether Scooter Libby should spend 0 days in jail for what
most people spend from 1 to 3 years in jail, the key here is that it's
inappropriate for the president to pardon or commute a sentence in a case in
which he (i.e., the president) is a party to the same underlying crime. Because
it amounts to obstruction of justice.
It's really not that complicated.
And here's why Bush is involved, shown through Cheney's own handwritten note, introduced as an exhibit in the Libby trial:
Later that fall, as the scandal erupted, Libby asked Cheney to ensure that the
White House spokesperson publicly exonerated him, as he had earlier done for
Karl Rove. To make sure this happened, the Vice President started to write a
note, "Not going to protect one staffer [meaning Rove] and sacrifice the guy the
President..." But then Cheney stopped. He crossed out the first four letters of
the word, "President" and finished the sentence: "...that was asked to stick his
neck in the meat grinder because of the incompetence of others." He came close
to writing that President Bush had asked Libby to take the lead on responding to
Wilson. And then, according to some trial testimony, he got Bush to make sure
Libby got his public exoneration, a public claim that Libby had nothing to do
with the leak of Plame's identity.
It would be nice if somebody asked the Vice President why he started to write that "the President" was the one who ordered Libby to take these actions, but I understand that Cheney is not taking too many questions these days. Hopefully, for all of our sakes, this Administration is finally in its "last throes," as the Vice President might say.
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