Thursday, February 23, 2006

 

Libby's Lawyers Pound on the Table

There's an old lawyer's saying: If the law is against you, pound on the facts. If the facts are against you, pound on the law. And if both the law and the facts are against you, pound on the table. Looks to me like Lewis I. Libby's lawyers are pounding on the table.

Lawyers for Vice President Dick Cheney's former top aide asked a federal judge Thursday to dismiss his indictment on grounds that the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case lacked authority. In a court filing, lawyers for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby said his indictment violated the Constitution because Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald was not appointed by the president with the consent of the Senate. The defense attorneys also said Fitzgerald's appointment violated federal law because his investigation was not supervised by the attorney general. They said only Congress can approve such an arrangement.
This sudden concern for scrupulous observance of the most minute details of the law, from the gang that brought us the Iraq War, electronic surveillance that circumvented the FISA court, and the handover our of seaports to one of three countries in the world that recognized the Taliban government— What would you call it? Hypocritical? Shameless? Or an admission that there's no way Libby's going to beat the rap? Firedoglake says that a motion by the defendants' lawyers to dismiss is standard procedure in any case. But if they have to stretch this far to claim grounds for dismissal, it definitely makes the defense look weak.
Comments:
SusanG over at DailyKos (with help from Armando, among others) just eviscerates the Libby legal team on this one. The Libby team is really quite pitiful; they are past the clutching-at-straws point and well into the drowning-man-hallucinating stage.

Dear Libby Legal Team:

Here is the law.

Here is a leach-field.

You are not allowed to open your mouths in a professional capacity until you can tell these two things apart.

If you're not quite up to that, we'll start you off with something simpler:

Here is shit.

Here is Shinola.

Can you at least handle that?
 
I caught part of a report on Keith Olbermann's show that gave the distinct impression the judge is Not Impressed by Libby's lawyers' motions.
 
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