Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.
Valerie Plame Archive
July 12, 2007
Subpoena Cheney!
He's personally unpopular and Constitutionally independent and insignificant. What better target for a subpoena and a contempt citation?
July 11, 2007
My Favorite Libby Commentary So Far
Borowitz. It does make for a good sound bite....
July 02, 2007
The Libby Commutation: Let's have some hearings!
Bring Libby in, immunize him, and ask him under oath what he had on Cheney and Bush.
June 19, 2007
"The few are always the friends of the few"
Richard Cohen accuses Reggie Walton and Patrick Fitzgerald of Stalinism, because they've read the Federal Sentencing Guidelines and he hasn't.
June 14, 2007
"Stand-up guys do time"
If Scooter doesn't talk, Scooter goes to jail. Those are the rules of the game.
May 29, 2007
Fred Thompson and Scooter Libby
Fred Thompson announced two weeks ago that "everyone knew" - "it was obvious from the outset" - that Valerie Plame Wilson "was not a covered person" under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. Oooops!
Shorter Patrick Fitzgerald
Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert CIA office for the purposes of the IIPA up until the Novak column blew her cover. But by the time Scooter Libby got finished lying, there was no way of proving that any of the people involved had revealed her identity with the requisite knowledge and intent.
March 12, 2007
Financial Constraints on the Pardon Power?
Mark proposes that Congress limit the president's ability to pardon Scooter Libby by limiting his ablity to use Congressionally appropriated funds for that purpose. He argues that this position is consistent with the framers' intent, because they were "Whigs." This is a defensible position, but both on the basis of original intent and a larger understanding of the structure of...
March 11, 2007
The power to pardon and the "no-funds" rider
Congress doesn't have to take the Libby pardon lying down.
March 08, 2007
Inside the Libby jury room
A juror's first-hand account.
March 07, 2007
"No crime"? Not so fast!
Maybe there was a crime, but not enough admissible evidence to convict.
March 06, 2007
Strategery and national security
Having the national-security team in Permanent Campaign mode may not be the best way to keep the nation secure.
Guilty
Libby goes down. Cheney next?
February 22, 2007
Libby betting
Closing arguments drove the market estimate of the probability of a conviction up to 80%.
February 21, 2007
Classicism
What was Ted Wells smoking before he made that closing argument?
He must have known the prosecution had its case nailed down, and was just hoping to confuse one juror enough to get a hung jury.
February 19, 2007
Challenge update
Tom Maguire responds to my challenge. Yes, VPW's employment status was classified. That being the case, the charges of prosecutorial misconduct against Patrick Fitzgerald fall to the ground.
February 17, 2007
Was Valerie Plame Wilson's employment classified information?
A challenge to Red Blogistan
If it wasn't classified, why hasn't the President said so? Or Libby's lawyers? Can the fact that something wasn't a secret be itself a secret?
February 01, 2007
Puzzle solved?
Now we know why Fitzgerald didn't indict anyone for the substantive crime in the Plame case: because the President of the United States can't be indicted by a Federal prosecutor.
January 23, 2007
Vindication
Cheney and Rove outed Valerie Plame Wilson, working as a CIA agent under non-official cover.
July 13, 2006
Legal query
Grand jury testimony is not available in a civil suit. That's a given. But when a witness makes a statement to criminal investigators outside the grand jury, can the statement be supoenaed in in a civil suit? In particular, can the Wilsons' attorneys ask Patrick Fitzgerald to disclose what George W. Bush said to him?...
A Presidential deposition?
The Wilson/Plame lawsuit against Libby and Rove should lead to some delicious discovery.
June 13, 2006
Thoughts on the Rove non-indictment
1. Damn! 2. Will the two people I lost bets to please send me their snailmail addresses? (My email is mark [at] samefacts [dot] com.) 3. Fitzgerald hasn't said anything in public. In particular, he hasn't announced that the grand jury investigation is over. The rules don't allow him to use the grand jury just to keep piling up evidence...
May 20, 2006
Truthout backs off
Now that we know that Leopold's sources got things badly wrong, let's hear who they were and what they said.
May 14, 2006
OK, I give up
Four questions for those hugging themselves in anticipation of a Rove indictment based on Jason Leopold's reporting.
May 01, 2006
MS-NBC: Plame was working on Iranian nukes
Or so says MS-NBC, confirming an earlier report from Raw Story.
Will the warbloggers finally admit that the proposition "Joe Wilson is a blowhard" is not logically incompatible with the proposition "Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert operative working on intelligence vital to the national security, and revealing her connection with the CIA was damaging and unforgiveable"?
April 13, 2006
Fitzgerald corrects himself
It is not the case that Scooter Libby told the grand jury that he'd falsely claimed to Judith Miller that the affirmation of the Yellowcake Road story was a "key finding" of the leaked National Intelligence Estimate.
April 08, 2006
Secrets and lies
Tom Maguire makes a point which he correctly says is obvious: when George W. Bush says that he's against leaks of classified information, he means that he's against the revelation of information that might damage him politically. Right. Obvious. But obvious to whom? You and Tom and I knew all that. But of course the public, and in particular the...
April 04, 2006
Feet-of-clay dep't
Joseph Wilson gay-baits Mehlman and Dreier, says he'd like to punch Khalilzad in the face. Isn't there some way we can send this jerk back to Team Bush, where he belongs?
February 09, 2006
Bush's dilemma
If revealing classified information is against the law, then either Bush or Cheney (or both) broke the law. And Bush promised that anyone who committed a crime would have to leave the Administration. So is Bush going to ask for Cheney's resignation, or offer his own?
February 05, 2006
The missing emails
If emails about the Valerie Plame Wilson case weren't saved on White House servers, it could hardly have been an accident.
Not so fast!
Fitzgerald implied that Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert agent, and Judge Tatel picked up on that implication. But, despite Mike Isikoff's report in Newsweek, Fitzgerald didn't actually say it and Judge Tatel didn't actually make it a finding of fact.
February 02, 2006
Graymail and missing emails
Libby's defense strategy: demand classified information the Administration can refuse to produce, thus forcing a dismissal.
Who scrubbed the White House servers?
November 23, 2005
A new Deep Throat?
Looks as if the source for the original Washington Post 2 x 6 story has talked to Fitzgerald.
November 19, 2005
The three most beautiful words in English
"New grand jury."
Fasten your seat belts, folks. Turbulence ahead.
November 17, 2005
November 12, 2005
November 09, 2005
No pardons! hits the Hill
Reid hits 'em again, harder.
November 07, 2005
No pardons NOW!
Mickey Kaus joins the chorus.
November 02, 2005
No pardons!
Kaus suspects Libby has been promised a pardon. The Anonymous Liberal suggests making a fuss about it.
October 31, 2005
Rove told Cooper; Libby knew VWP was covert
Updated and corrected. The Rove news is old; the Libby news is new, but may not be accurate. If it is accurate, Cooper is changing his story.
No pardons!
That phrase should be part of every Democratic speech until the President issues a clear no-pardons pledge or until November of 2008, whichever comes first.
The Gracie Allen of blogging
Glenn Reynolds can't wrap his head around the idea that outing a CIA NOC was a bad thing to do, even if the NOC was married to someone he dislikes.
October 29, 2005
Query: sealed indictments
Are we sure that Libby was the only person indicted last week, or could there be a sealed indictment out there?
October 28, 2005
No, really, it isn't over
Rove's lawyer, who should know, says Rove is still under the gun.
No, this game isn't over
Fitzgerald did a very skilful dance in refusing, politely but persistently, to answer various versions of the question "Are you going to indict anyone else?" But he very carefully didn't say that his previous request to witnesses not to discuss their testimony was no longer in force....
Sand in the eyes of the umpire
Fitzgerald did a pretty good job of explaining the nature of an obstruction charge, and why he might wind up indicting someone for obstructing an investigation that never resulted in an substantive charge. I can't quote it precisely, but to paraphrase: If a pitcher hits a batter in the head, the umpire needs to know whether it was deliberate or...
Full text links
Press release Indictment...
Another wingnut talking-point bites the dust
The Espionage Act was on the table from the beginning.
Yes, Valerie Plame Wilson was covert
And Fitzgerald claims he can prove that beyond reasonable doubt.
No longer complete?
If Fitzgerald's investigation was essentially complete before he talked to Cooper and Miller, something must have happened since to open it up again.
Drip, drip, drip ...
Libby but not Rove to be indicted tomorrow, says the NYT. Investigation to continue. The suspense is bad for you and me. Just think how brutal it is for the bad guys. Maybe one of them will crack.
October 26, 2005
No news is good news
Fitzgerald's delay is both a Good Thing and a good sign.
October 25, 2005
Adding two and two
What did Fitzgerald have to say to Rove's lawyer that required a face-to-face meeting yesterday?
October 24, 2005
How vulnerable is GWB?
Why did George W. Bush decide to say something nice about Patrick Fitzgerald? Could he possibly be scared?
The backstory
Who fingered Libby and Cheney? And how do they feel about it?
Tenet to Cheney to Libby
... was the path of the information that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA. And Fitzgerald has Libby's notes to prove it.
Wilson, timing, and the Yellowcake Road
Kevin Drum has a good guess about what the White House was trying to conceal when it outed Valerie Plame: the fact that the documents purporting to show Iraqi yellowcake purchases in Niger were known to be forgeries before the 2003 State of the Union speech.
McNulty for Deputy AG?
Looks like he'll do a helluva job.
Slime & defend: Fitzgerald next?
WH on Fitzgerald: "vile, tetestable, moralistic" ... "no heart and no conscience" ... "believes he's been tapped by God ..."
Documents, charges, and the Yellowcake Road
Fitzgerald may bring in the Yellowcake Road story insofar as he needs it to show motive, but the charges will be limited outing a NOC and covering it up.
October 23, 2005
If you meet the Special Counsel
on the Yellowcake Road,
no-bill him.
No, Patrick Fitzgerald isn't going to indict the Sixteen Words or the Project for a New American Century or Ahmed Chalabi. He's going to indict whoever outed Valerie Plame Wilson and whoever helped cover it up.
Novak talked
Now we know why he didn't go to jail. He talked.
Left hand, meet right hand
Two NYT reporters outline the White House spin control strategy in case Rove and Libby are indicted. A third helps execute that strategy. Ooops!
"It's Only A Leak"
All leaks are not created equal.
October 22, 2005
Scratch one heroine
Bill Keller calls Judith Miller a liar.
Aren't you glad he finally noticed?