The jury in Scooter Libby’s criminal trial began deliberations a couple of hours ago, and no one has any idea what’s going to happen. While we wait, however, it’s worth taking a moment to consider some of the fascinating remarks prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald made in his closing remarks yesterday.
As Dan Froomkin noted, by the time Fitzgerald rhetorically asked the jury, “What is this case about? Is it about something bigger?” the prosecutor pointed directly to Dick Cheney’s mysterious role in the entire fiasco.
“There is a cloud over the vice president . . . And that cloud remains because this defendant obstructed justice,” Fitzgerald said.
“There is a cloud over the White House. Don’t you think the FBI and the grand jury and the American people are entitled to straight answers?” Fitzgerald asked the jury. Libby, Fitzgerald continued, “stole the truth from the justice system.”
After literally years of keeping his public pronouncements about the case to an absolute minimum, Fitzgerald yesterday finally let slip a bit of the speculation that many of us have long suspected has lurked just beneath the surface of his investigation.
Suddenly it wasn’t just the defendant alone, it was “they” who decided to tell reporters about Wilson’s wife working for the CIA. “To them,” Fitzgerald said, “she wasn’t a person, she was an argument.” And it was pretty clear who “they” was: Libby and his boss, Cheney.
Considering Murray Waas’ National Journal piece the other day, which indicated that prosecutors may pursue Cheney if Libby is found guilty, Fitzgerald’s comments were quite intriguing.
Moreover, the New York Sun’s Josh Gerstein added his own related take, explaining that Fitzgerald’s closing statement suggested “in his strongest terms yet that Vice President Cheney was involved in an effort to unmask a CIA operative married to an administration critic.”
The prosecutor also asserted that Mr. Libby violated a request from investigators by discussing his recollections about the case with his boss, Mr. Cheney, while the probe was under way. “He’s not supposed to be talking to other people,” Mr. Fitzgerald said of Mr. Libby. “The only person he told is the vice president. … Think about that.”
Broadening his attack on the White House, Mr. Fitzgerald took a shot at President Bush, indirectly criticizing him for not firing officials implicated in the leaks about the CIA officer, Valerie Plame. The prosecutor noted that in 2003 the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, said Mr. Bush would immediately dismiss anyone involved in leaking Ms. Plame’s identity.
“Any sane person would think, based on what McClellan said in October 2003, that any person involved in this would be fired,” Mr. Fitzgerald said. The prosecutor’s clear implication was that Mr. Bush failed to keep his word. […]
Mr. Fitzgerald’s pregnant statements yesterday about Messrs. Bush and Cheney may have been intended to bolster the chance of convicting Mr. Libby by tying him to the unpopular political figures atop the executive branch. Another possibility is that the closing statements offered the prosecutor who has headed the investigation for more than three years his last clear opportunity to opine on the actions of the president and the vice president in the case. While prosecutors appointed under the independent counsel law were permitted to file reports on their findings, there is no such provision for Mr. Fitzgerald, a U.S. attorney who was appointed by the Justice Department after senior officials there recused themselves because of the political sensitivity of the case.
And then, for good measure, Newsweek’s Mike Isikoff told MSNBC last night Fitzgerald’s comments “really underscored … why the White House was so nervous about this trial.”
“One thing Patrick Fitzgerald said in his closing arguments that kind of stunned me, he just laid it out there and because the defense had raised questions about vice president — had suggested that — that Scooter Libby might be unfairly portrayed as protecting Vice President Cheney. Fitzgerald said there is a cloud on the vice president, but the cloud is there because Scooter Libby put it there. We, the prosecution, didn’t put it there. Scooter Libby put it there by obstructing justice.
“And then Fitzgerald ran through everything that Cheney did: writing the talking points, tearing out those articles from the newspaper and making those notes on them. Did his wife send him a junket? Putting the sort of junket claim argument in play.
“All of that was done was because the vice president — Fitzgerald pretty much made it clear to the jury that Libby, in the prosecution’s mind, was protecting the vice president of the United States.”
Stay tuned.