Libby Defense Seeks Discovery Against Fitzgerald

Here is a link to the Part One of the court filing by the Libby team.

Part Two contains the exhibits, including lots of transcripts.  Good grist for the mill here, I am sure - some of the transcripts are obvious, bit others have no obvious relevance.

Part Three is the proposed order.

Here is my original post with links to the AP, Reuters, the WaPo, and the NY Times.

Comments

[clarice]

Thanks! I really wanted to read this.
My first take.(1) I had n't realized how broadly this Circuit has defined the discovery obligations of the prosecutor--it includes not only exculpatory but inculpatory evidence. (2) Libby makes an interesting argument about being able to thoroughly question reporters who advanced the retaliation theory to expose bias..by forcing them to disclose other government sources supposedly in on this plot.(3) there is a request for all subpoenas issued to reporters and all agreements that limited the scope of their testimony..Very interesting and very aggressive.

[maryrose]

They}{Libby's lawyers}need to be as agressive as possible in turning over all the rocks. I can't help but feel with an incomplete investigation that a terrible injustice has been perpetrated here. Plame has experienced no harm from this whereas Libby has been dragged through the mud.

[larwyn]

HUFFINGTON REALLY GOES AFTER RUSSERT - SHE HAS LINKS ON ALL

Russert/NBC may have overstepped
making her enemy - don't you think
she has access to lots of gossip-
wonder it Libby's lawyers will
want to call her.

They wanted a circus - they are going to get one - only not the
people they wanted wearing the clown noses!

EXCERPT:

NBC News refuse to publish its ethical guidelines, claiming that they are an internal document?)

Look, I know NBC News and Russert would much prefer to debate hoary charges against me rather than the real issues at hand. So let me remind them what those issues are.Russert refuses to come clean with his audience about his role in Plamegate. He is a participant. He was interviewed under oath by Fitzgerald. But he continued to report on Plamegate as if he were a disinterested observer rather than a major player. And he still refuses to come clean and explain why he fought to keep from testifying in front of the Plamegate grand jury about his fateful chat with Scooter Libby -- even after Libby signed a waiver allowing him to do so.Plamegate is the perfect segue to another unanswered question. How can someone with these ethical issues go and speak on ethics in the media, as Russert is about to do at Ripon College in Wisconsin next Thursday? And why is NBC refusing to disclose what his speaking fee is?

Click here: The Blog | Arianna Huffington: NBC News PR Department Gets Down and Dirty... | The Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/nbc-news-pr-department-ge_b_14540.html

[Tom Maguire]

Per a court order of Jan 27, there will be a hearing on classified info on Feb 3; a non-classified transcript will be made available to the public ASAP.

[clarice]

Thanks for the tip, TM and for posting these documents.

[Jeff]

TM - I'm posting here, since what's the point of a sublog if you don't post the relevant things here? Don't you think someone should ask Mitchell if Fitzgerald or his investigators have been in touch recently? Mitchell's current assertion is that she didn't know about Plame's CIA affiliation before Novak's column. Presumably that is what she is going to testify to, unless she has reason to fear that her source, assuming she has one, would tell on her. (All she has to do is say, "Is misspoke on October 3 in the heat of the live tv moment. Sorry about that.") emptywheel has suggested that Libby may even know who her source is, but can't be explicit about that without pointing toward underlying crime(s). (It was Cheney, she guesses.) I know you want to point toward State of CIA, but it's also the case that during the July 6-14 week, Mitchell reported, I believe, on White House officials talking smack about Wilson (just not the wife smack specifically). It would be interesting to know too whether, if Mitchell has a source, that source has testified, was asked about who s/he told about Plame, and identified Mitchell. Now that Mitchell's October 3, 2003 performance has come to light, I would imagine Fitzgerald either has identified her source, if she had one, or been in touch with her (as per DoJ guidelines, possibly).

[Jeff]

TM - It appears you got so distracted by the apparent attribution of a phrase from the indictment and Libby's motion to Mitchell herself that you failed to pick up on another very interesting (and, I believe, new) formulation in Leonnig's WaPo article on a topic of ongoing interest in this case. Think Pincus.

[clarice]

Jeff, as I recall the July Mitchell comment it was that people had called Wilson a Democratic "partisan". Since he was then working for the Kerry campaign and his identity known, I think there is nothing in this to suggest a concerted effort to retaliate. Unless you are of the opinion that fair political comment is indicative of criminal intent.

[Jeff]

clarice - It's pointless to throw up such strawmen and argue so literal-mindedly, if you actually care about the truth. You know very well that the Bush administration was not literal-mindedly simply stating a fact about Wilson's Democratic affiliations. The charged was not simply that Wilson was a partisan, but rather that he was motivated by partisanship, and therefore what he said was illegitimate. (One sign of this is that very prominent Republicans committed lies of omission in their descriptions of Wilson's political giving.) Only a delusional person or a deliberately narrow-sighted person could say that the Bush administration and their Republican allies were simply stating a fact. Furthermore, the very fact that this along with several other key points went out as talking points to prominent Republicans within and without the administration speaks to concerted effort.

There is, of course, nothing illegal per se about such a concerted effort at retaliation, however sleazy it might be, and your comment about fair political comment and criminal intent is an absurdity. If Wilson's wife had never been brought into it, or if she were not a CIA agent, no question of illegality ever would have come up. The question of illegality came up when the question of whether one component of the effort to retaliate against Wilson (and the CIA) involved a law-breaking blowing of his wife's cover. Obviously we can disagree about whether such a crime took place. I suspect that it did, and I further suspect that Fitzgerald thinks that it did; that he refrained from charging Libby with it may speak rather to whether he thought he could prove it in court and/or whether it deserved prosecution.

Your comment is completely unworthy of someone who cares about precision and understanding what actually happened.

[Jeff]

clarice - It's pointless to throw up such strawmen and argue so literal-mindedly, if you actually care about the truth. You know very well that the Bush administration was not literal-mindedly simply stating a fact about Wilson's Democratic affiliations. The charged was not simply that Wilson was a partisan, but rather that he was motivated by partisanship, and therefore what he said was illegitimate. (One sign of this is that very prominent Republicans committed lies of omission in their descriptions of Wilson's political giving.) Only a delusional person or a deliberately narrow-sighted person could say that the Bush administration and their Republican allies were simply stating a fact. Furthermore, the very fact that this along with several other key points went out as talking points to prominent Republicans within and without the administration speaks to concerted effort.

There is, of course, nothing illegal per se about such a concerted effort at retaliation, however sleazy it might be, and your comment about fair political comment and criminal intent is an absurdity. If Wilson's wife had never been brought into it, or if she were not a CIA agent, no question of illegality ever would have come up. The question of illegality came up when the question of whether one component of the effort to retaliate against Wilson (and the CIA) involved a law-breaking blowing of his wife's cover. Obviously we can disagree about whether such a crime took place. I suspect that it did, and I further suspect that Fitzgerald thinks that it did; that he refrained from charging Libby with it may speak rather to whether he thought he could prove it in court and/or whether it deserved prosecution.

Your comment is completely unworthy of someone who cares about precision and understanding what actually happened.

[clarice]

Wilson slung a pile of shit at the administration that the SSCI found was a pile of shit, and it was sleazy to suggest that the ex-Ambassador who at the time was working his way into the Kerry campaign "brain trust" was behaving as he was for "partisan" purposes ? Nice try.

Not a single one of the conversations cited by Fitz was a call made by Libby to undercut Wilson--not a single thing has appeared after this extensive witch hunt to justify a claim of a concerted effort to retaliate against Wilson.Try to remember that as Fitz' case gets demolished bit by bit.

[Jeff]

clarice - I'm glad you've acknowledged your initial mischaracterization of what the administration was doing and what it said about Wilson's partisan affiliations and connection to the Kerry campaign (which, pretty obviously, was effect and not cause of his experience with the administration). It's a start.

I don't see what difference it makes who initiated the call, unless you're somehow who understands nothing about how Washington works, which you evidently are not. Among other things, don't you think the fact that Libby was planning media strategy regarding Wilson with Cheney immediately before talking with Miller and Cooper on July 12 makes it irrelevant who called who? Here is the grain of truth in your literal-minded nonsense, in my judgment: there is a comedy of errors element to this whole mess, with lots of people talking about the Wilsons for different purposes. I suspect Cooper, for instance, was not particularly a target for leaking and laundering the info about Plame. I suspect Rove screwed up and said more than he should have, and maybe even lied to Hadley and others about whether he had said anything. From what we know, it looks to me like Libby was working hard on laundering the leak through Miller in particular, which would make perfect sense, since she was about (and remains) the most friendly reporter around to his point of view, as well as one of the most important reporters in the country at the time.

[clarice]

What is media strategy? You assume it means slamming Wilson of which there is no evidence. I assume it means getting the truth out to refute his charges--beginning with the Tenet statement.

As for this remark"clarice - I'm glad you've acknowledged your initial mischaracterization of what the administration was doing and what it said about Wilson's partisan affiliations and connection to the Kerry campaign (which, pretty obviously, was effect and not cause of his experience with the administration). It's a start." WTF?

Actually, I think we are speaking two different languages and therefore I think it futile to attempt to keep up a dialogue.

[clarice]

Here's my latest on this--trying to get some typos corrected so maybe you should hang on a bit before clicking. http://americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=5205

[Jeff]

New documents in the Libby case, apparently several other motions from the Libby team. Check the AP, since this subblog evidently doesn't allow HTML. Tom, how about it? Produce the documents.

[Jade sale]

Your comment is completely unworthy of someone who cares about precision and understanding what actually happened.