Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Libby Guilty; Pokey in Future?

We won't have Scooter Libby to kick around any more; he was found guilty today on four of five charges:

A federal jury today convicted I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby of lying about his role in the leak of an undercover CIA officer's identity, finding the vice president's former chief of staff guilty of two counts of perjury, one count of making false statements and one count of obstruction of justice, while acquitting him of single count of lying to the FBI.

The verdict, reached by the 11 jurors on the 10th day of deliberations, culminated the seven-week trial of the highest-ranking White House official to be indicted on criminal charges in modern times.

Question: will he serve a day for this, or is his Presidential pardon all but guaranteed? Probably guaranteed--but wouldn't a pardon indicate presidential complicity? Maybe Bush doesn't care.

Nancy Pelosi, who has a blog (who knew?), piled on:
This trial provided a troubling picture of the inner workings of the Bush Administration. The testimony unmistakably revealed – at the highest levels of the Bush Administration – a callous disregard in handling sensitive national security information and a disposition to smear critics of the war in Iraq.
Good news, I suppose, but what will we all talk about now?

3 comments:

Zakariah Johnson said...

My money would be they'll stretch out an appeal as long as possible hoping for a pardon from W. on his last day in office. As long as a pardon is a possibility, Scooter would be a fool to roll on Cheney.

Jeff Alworth said...

There is no reason for Scooter to roll on Cheney now--the deal appears dead. It seems almost inevitable that Libby will be pardoned.

Zakariah Johnson said...

I agree. Scooter's team will stretch out the appeal though in order to keep him from having to even serve a single day in stir before the pardon.