{"id":9388,"date":"2006-12-19T16:08:46","date_gmt":"2006-12-19T21:08:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/9388.html"},"modified":"2006-12-19T16:08:46","modified_gmt":"2006-12-19T21:08:46","slug":"were-calling-the-vice-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/were-calling-the-vice-president\/","title":{"rendered":"‘We’re calling the vice president’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, this<\/a> should certainly be interesting.<\/p>\n

Vice President Dick Cheney will be called as a defense witness in the CIA leak case, an attorney for Cheney’s former chief of staff told a federal judge Tuesday.<\/p>\n

“We’re calling the vice president,” attorney Ted Wells said in court. Wells represents defendant I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who is charged with perjury and obstruction.<\/p>\n

Early last week, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said he did not expect the White House to resist if Cheney or other administration officials are called to testify in Libby’s trial, expected to begin in January.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, what prosecutors expect and what they’ll get from the White House may be two different things. While sitting presidents have testified in criminal cases, no sitting vice president has — and it’s not as if Cheney is known for his cooperative side. (Then-VP George Bush was subpoenaed to testify in the Iran-Contra trial of Oliver North, but Bush was president by the time a judge ruled he did not need to testify.)<\/p>\n

If Cheney does give testimony, there are all kinds<\/i> of interesting angles\/questions to be explored.
\n
\nChristy Hardin Smith runs through<\/a> some of the bigger possibilities.<\/p>\n

(1) Is Cheney going to be called as a regular defense witness, or will they be calling him as a hostile witness to the defense?<\/p>\n

(2) If Team Libby calls Cheney as a defense witness, this means that Patrick Fitzgerald and his team get to cross-examine Cheney on the stand. (Yes, I am running through C\/E scenarios in my mind, and they are all quite interesting.)<\/p>\n

(3) Beyond the annotated NYTimes Wilson op-ed piece, how many other things can you think of that Cheney will be able to help identify and elaborate on as evidence? Libby’s detailed notebook of oppo on Joe Wilson? Notes from the WHIG meetings? Libby’s calendar? <\/p>\n

(4) How many questions can you think of regarding the plane ride on AFII?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here’s another angle to ponder: is it possible Libby will get a presidential pardon, thus keeping Cheney from giving testimony under oath?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, this should certainly be interesting. Vice President Dick Cheney will be called as a defense witness in the CIA leak case, an attorney for Cheney’s former chief of staff told a federal judge Tuesday. “We’re calling the vice president,” attorney Ted Wells said in court. Wells represents defendant I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who is […]<\/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-9388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9388","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=9388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9388\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}