{"id":4799,"date":"2005-07-25T10:29:40","date_gmt":"2005-07-25T14:29:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/4799.html"},"modified":"2005-07-25T10:29:40","modified_gmt":"2005-07-25T14:29:40","slug":"the-russert-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-russert-deal\/","title":{"rendered":"The Russert Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

We learned last week that I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, told prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that he first learned from Tim Russert<\/a> about Valerie Plame’s identity. This never really made any sense. Apparently, Fitzgerald doesn’t think so<\/a> either.<\/p>\n

A deal that special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald cut last year for NBC “Meet the Press” host Tim Russert’s testimony may shed light on the emerging White House defense in the Valerie Plame leak case. The agreement between Fitzgerald and NBC avoided a court fight over a subpoena for Russert’s testimony about his July 2003 talk with Dick Cheney’s top aide, Lewis (Scooter) Libby. The deal was not, as many assumed, for Russert’s testimony about what Libby told him: it focused on what Russert told Libby. An NBC statement last year said Russert did not know of Plame, wife of ex-ambassador Joseph Wilson, or that she worked at the CIA, and “he did not provide that information to Libby.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This tells us that Libby was almost certainly fibbing — badly — when he blamed Russert for telling him about Plame. But it also lets us in on what’s on Fitzgerald’s mind. This is a prosecutor who is, as Michael Isikoff put it, “testing statements by White House aides.”<\/p>\n

Libby lied, Fitzgerald knows he lied, and now the grand jury has heard proof he lied from Russert.<\/p>\n

Drip, drip, drip…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We learned last week that I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, told prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that he first learned from Tim Russert about Valerie Plame’s identity. This never really made any sense. Apparently, Fitzgerald doesn’t think so either. A deal that special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald cut last year for NBC […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4799\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}