Media Matters for America has a front page post, "Libby's guilty verdict: Media myths and falsehoods to watch for" in which they predict that "conservatives and other media figures can be expected to revive and advance numerous myths and falsehoods regarding the CIA leak case that have circulated throughout the media since Libby's indictment in October 2005." Of course, everyone familar with the Repug "spin machine" already knew this.
Within a matter of hours, I saw a Repugnicant talking head on a cable news show spouting the lies predicted by Media Matters.
I went to Fox News to see what the "official" line on the conviction would be, but, no surprise here: Fox News Headline the evening of the guilty verdicts was: "Comedian Bill Maher on his controversial Cheney comments." Brit Hume's title on the Political Grapevine was "John Edwards speculates on Jesus' thoughts about poverty while living in 28,000 square-foot mansion," with the lead-in "Edwards Raising 'Coulter Cash'." Bill O'Reilly repeated the lie that Sadddam "... tried to get Uranium for nuclear weapons from Africa ... which was true ..."
Scrolling down the front page to "Politics," an article on the "Libby Verdict" included "Columnist Robert Novak, radio talk show host Laura Ingraham and atty David Boies react." I couldn't get the video to play, but I'm sure that they were spewing the same crap that Victoria Toensing had to offer on the Situation Room. Excerpts from Wolf's interview with Victoria:
BLITZER: He, according to this jury, men and women of his peers, he's convicted of lying to the FBI, lying to a federal grand jury ... Was justice served?
TOENSING: Well, I didn't think justice was served by bringing the case in the first place.
I had never heard...
BLITZER: But you can't justify lying to a federal grand jury...
TOENSING: Well, wait a minute...
BLITZER: ... or obstructing justice.
TOENSING: That's not (UNINTELLIGIBLE) -- but, Wolf, there's a difference between lying and two witnesses' memories differing. I mean look at how the inconsis...
BLITZER: These aren't just two witnesses. These were like 10 wit -- nine witnesses ... said they discussed her identity with him... before he claims he learned about it from ... Tim Russert...
TOENSING: You usually have to have something else, like Martha Stewart, there was witnesses there that she asked me to lie. You have none of that in this case and...
BLITZER: But are you questioning Patrick Fitzgerald, his integrity?
TOENSING: Oh, absolutely.
BLITZER: But, you know, he was named the special counsel by John Ashcroft, the attorney general.
TOENSING: Well, I wrote an article that questioned this...
BLITZER: He's an attorney...
TOENSING: ... his capability.
BLITZER: And he's a U.S. attorney in Chicago.
TOENSING: That's right.
BLITZER: So he comes with a really credible reputation.
TOENSING: Yes, well, I'm not alone in questioning his judgment in pursuing a case where you don't have evidence more than just some other witnesses...
Right off the bat, Victoria says charges should should not have been brought; she wouldn't agree with Wolf that "you can't justify lying to a federal grand jury ... or obstructing justice." Then she questions Patrick Fitzgerald's integrity. Wolf, to his credit, points out Fitzgerald's "really credible reputation" so Toensing switches to his "judgment." It continued:
BLITZER: Why did the jury convict him on four of five counts?
TOENSING: Because I don't think the jury understood. When you listen to the one juror
BLITZER: This was a pretty smart juror, by all accounts ... Educated.
TOENSING: ... he did. But when he came out, I don't know what kind of bias he had, but when he said, well, as we all said, this bothered us a bit because, as one juror said, where's Karl Rove? It showed that they didn't understand the law in any way whatsoever. But that's our jury system ... and you accept that.
Now Toensing says the jury doesn't "understand the law in any way whatsoever." Poor scooter, he was convicted by a pool of not-too-bright people who sat through a seven-week trial and deliberated the evidence for more than a week. People who are apparently just not capable of understanding what constitutes obstruction of justice, perjury to a grand jury and lying to the FBI.
Wolf went back to his earlier remarks:
BLITZER: But you -- but let me just be clear, because you're a former Justice Department official.
TOENSING: I am, indeed.
BLITZER: You're not justifying lying to FBI agents...
TOENSING: Absolutely not.
BLITZER: ... or to the -- to a federal grand jury?
TOENSING: But I'm saying the standard, when you have a perjury case, as a prosecutor -- and they're very few and far between -- you either have to have an underlying crime or.. you have some kind of extraneous evidence...
Here we have a "former Justice Department official" who will not say straight up that you can't lie to a grand jury ... even when pushed on the issue.
Then we move on to Victoria's favorite meme: "you to have an underlying crime."
BLITZER: He says he couldn't -- he couldn't come up with the underlying crime ... because "Scooter" Libby threw dust in his... in the referee's eyes...
Toensing's response: "Oh, please."
Then on to the fundamantal issue:
BLITZER: He says she was a covert officer of the CIA and that as a result, you know, this was a serious breach of ... security.
TOENSING: See, that just shows what a ... what a warped, you know, approach that is, because, look, he knew from day one that Dick Armitage had actually made the leak ... he was opposed to the war, Armitage was. So this was not some cabal to go get the people who were for the war or against the war, and that Armitage was the person who leaked it to Bob Novak.
That didn't prevent him from doing an investigation. "Scooter" Libby didn't prevent him from doing an investigation. He got to talk to all kinds of people.
He knew whether she was covert or not from day one. And she isn't. So there was no underlying crime.
Rather than address Ms. Toensing's remarks myself, I will refer to the Fitzgerald News Conference transcript, published October 28, 2005 in the N.Y. Times:
...Valerie Wilson was a CIA officer. In July 2003, the fact that Valerie Wilson was a CIA officer was classified. Not only was it classified, but it was not widely known outside the intelligence community. Valerie Wilson's friends, neighbors, college classmates had no idea she had another life. The fact that she was a CIA officer was not well- known, for her protection or for the benefit of all us. It's important that a CIA officer's identity be protected, that it be protected not just for the officer, but for the nation's security...
....At the end of the day what appears is that Mr. Libby's story that he was at the tail end of a chain of phone calls, passing on from one reporter what he heard from another, was not true. It was false. He was at the beginning of the chain of phone calls, the first official to disclose this information outside the government to a reporter. And then he lied about it afterwards, under oath and repeatedly...
... I also want to take away from the notion that somehow we should take an obstruction charge less seriously than a leak charge. This is a very serious matter and compromising national security information is a very serious matter. But the need to get to the bottom of what happened and whether national security was compromised by inadvertence, by recklessness, by maliciousness is extremely important. We need to know the truth. And anyone who would go into a grand jury and lie, obstruct and impede the investigation has committed a serious crime...
Victoria: anyone who would go into a grand jury and lie, obstruct and impede the investigation has committed a serious crime. What's hard to understand? You do have a law degree, right?
Apparently, others anticipated the "right wing spin," as evidenced by this question:
QUESTION: Mr. Fitzgerald, the Republicans previewed some talking points in anticipation of your indictment and they said that if you didn't indict on the underlying crimes and you indicted on things exactly like you did indict -- false statements, perjury, obstruction -- these were, quote/unquote, technicalities, and that it really was over reaching and excessive...
FITZGERALD: I'll be blunt.
That talking point won't fly. If you're doing a national security investigation, if you're trying to find out who compromised the identity of a CIA officer and you go before a grand jury and if the charges are proven -- because remember there's a presumption of innocence -- but if it is proven that the chief of staff to the vice president went before a federal grand jury and lied under oath repeatedly and fabricated a story about how he learned this information, how he passed it on, and we prove obstruction of justice, perjury and false statements to the FBI, that is a very, very serious matter.
And I'd say this: I think people might not understand this. We, as prosecutors and FBI agents, have to deal with false statements, obstruction of justice and perjury all the time. The Department of Justice charges those statutes all the time...
...If these facts are true, if we were to walk away from this and not charge obstruction of justice and perjury, we might as well just hand in our jobs. Because our jobs, the criminal justice system, is to make sure people tell us the truth. And when it's a high-level official and a very sensitive investigation, it is a very, very serious matter that no one should take lightly...
... We have not charged him with a crime. I'm not making an allegation that he violated that statute. What I'm simply saying is one of the harms in obstruction is that you don't have a clear view of what should be done. And that's why people ought to walk in, got into the grand jury, you're going to take an oath, tell us the who, what, when, where and why -- straight...
Another simple statement: " ... if it is proven that the chief of staff to the vice president went before a federal grand jury and lied under oath repeatedly and fabricated a story about how he learned this information, how he passed it on, and we prove obstruction of justice, perjury and false statements to the FBI, that is a very, very serious matter."
As for the "underlying crime" that Victoria wants to talk about:
QUESTION: Just to go back to your comments about the damage that was done by disclosing Valerie Wilson's identify, there are some critics who have suggested that she was not your traditional covert agent in harm's way, that she was working, essentially, a desk job at Langley.
Just to answer those critics, can you elaborate on, aside from the fact that some of her neighbors may now know that she was -- and the country, for that matter -- that she was a CIA officer, what jeopardy, what harm was there by disclosing her identity?
FITZGERALD: ... I will say this: To the CIA people who are going out at a time that we need more human intelligence, I think everyone agrees with that, at a time when we need our spy agencies to have people work there, I think just the notion that someone's identity could be compromised lightly, to me compromises the ability to recruit people and say, Come work for us, come work for the government, come be trained, come invest your time, come work anonymously here or wherever else, go do jobs for the benefit of the country for which people will not thank you, because they will not know, they need to know that we will not cast their anonymity aside lightly. And that's damage. But I'm not going to go beyond that...
The Washington Post published an op-ed by Victoria Toensing February 18, in which she made similar statements. Media Matters refuted those arguments, such as they are, so I will refer the reader to that work.
Of interest to some, here are some remarks on Toensing's website that she made in an op-ed in the San Diego Union Tribune, January 17, 1999:
... grand jury testimony is not the only evidence to support a guilty verdict on the two impeachment charges: perjury and obstruction of justice. ... Credibility of witnesses and key facts need to be established or refuted for us and for history ... The factual record has been distorted by White House spin ... The problem for the White House lawyers is that the more they argue this perjury, this obstruction of justice are not impeachable offenses, the more they must argue the facts ...
Perjury and obstruction of justice were apparently more important to Toensing when it involved Democrats. Another op-ed (Written for Washington Post Outlook but not published because of Clinton/Ray "plea bargain" - according to the website) by Victoria Toensing and Joseph E. diGenova:
...Courts "categorically reject any suggestion" that perjury is "less serious when made in a civil proceeding." .... For example,... a U.S. Attorney in Virginia indicted Edward Conk for perjury for lying in a civil deposition; a U.S. Attorney in Michigan indicted William Sassanelli for perjury for signing a false affidavit in a civil action: and a Georgia U.S. Attorney indicted Wendell J. Kersey for perjury for lying in both an affidavit and a deposition. (the) Justice Department charged Barbara Battalino, a Veterans Administration psychiatrist, with obstruction of justice for denying, in a civil case, her sexual relationship with a patient. In 1999, a Wisconsin U.S. Attorney charged EPA Attorney, Marc Radell, with perjury for false statements he made in deposition and affidavit....
...For perjury, for example, the legal test under majority federal case law is whether at the time of the statement it was material, a minimal standard requiring only that the truthful answer could "reasonably lead to discovery of evidence admissible at trial of the underlying case." ... one of the charges being considered is obstruction of the underlying crime, the false statements. ...
... The guideline text specifically states that "the fact that the accused occupied a position of trust or responsibility which he violated in committing the offense" could weigh in favor of prosecution.... He was ... a lawyer ... when he committed the crimes. It signifies little and can hardly be used as a factor of consequence in his favor that ...(he) ... has no previous convictions. The guidelines also specify that even if a jury pool in a community is likely to acquit because of an unpopular factor in a case or the popularity of a defendant that is not a reason to decline prosecution...
Another instance of double standards. Obstruction of justice and perjury should be prosecuted if it involves a Democrat, "even if a jury pool in a community is likely to acquit."
A little reported fact in the Libby conviction: Scooter Libby is the highest-ranking White House official convicted of a felony (same ol' obstruction and perjury charges) since John Poindexter was convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, perjury, defrauding the government, and the alteration and destruction of evidence pertaining to the Iran-Contra Affair in April 1990. But ... he is a Republican.
UPDATE: For those who may not be familiar with Victoria Toensing, she was a fixture on cable news as the number one Clinton basher in the late 1990s. BuzzFlash described her as "one-half of the 'Ken Starr' dream team of GOP legal assassins" and said her WaPo article (cited above) "was so specious – and the Washington Post's timing of the publication to influence the Scooter Libby jury so transparent –that it crossed the line into de facto, but legal, jury tampering."
For more background on her: A Howard Kurtz WaPo article from 1998.