Scooter Libby went to prison for less than what Hillary did

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scooter libby

 

David Petraeus saw his career come to an end for mishandling classified information.

Sandy Berger was punished for mishandling classified information.

Scooter Libby got it worst of all. And he did virtually nothing.

Remember Scooter Libby?

Libby was the Bush aide who went to prison for having a bad memory. He was hunted down and persecuted by Peter Fitzgerald who was looking for the scalp of the person who allegedly leaked the name of Valerie Plame.

Libby went to prison and he wasn’t even the leaker. Richard Armitrage was. Jennifer Rubin:

Right Turn readers know my view that former vice president Dick Cheney’s chief of staff Scooter Libby was dealt a severe injustice by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald who knew early on that another official, Richard Armitage, had leaked Valerie Plame’s name. Fitzgerald asserted that Libby had lied to prosecutors rather than mistakenly recalled a phone call with now-deceased reporter Tim Russert. The case should never have gone forward (or, if it had, a memory expert should have been permitted to testify), and President George W. Bush should have granted Libby a full pardon before leaving office.  (As an aside, Libby’s memory was notoriously bad as now-Fact Checker and then-State Department reporter Glenn Kessler’s testimony in the case confirmed. As Glenn has summarized it, Libby told the FBI that he told Kessler about Plame; Kessler testified he did not. So Libby was convicted for telling the FBI he didn’t tell Russert about Plame and falsely admitted to telling Kessler about Plame—when he did not. If this was a “cover up,” it was the oddest in history, but it does seem in retrospect that Libby’s memory was awful.) Getting back to the conviction, it cannot be forgotten that Armitage and his boss Colin Powell deserve our scorn for not coming forward early on to exonerate Libby.

It is argued that Fitzgerald engaged in prosecutorial abuse:

Mr. Fitzgerald, who had the classified file of Ms. Plame’s service, withheld her State Department cover from Ms. Miller—and from Mr. Libby’s lawyers, who had requested Ms. Plame’s employment history. Despite his constitutional and ethical obligation to provide exculpatory evidence, Mr. Fitzgerald encouraged Ms. Miller to misinterpret her ambiguous notes as showing that Mr. Libby brought up Ms. Plame.

He already knew Libby was not the source of the leak. Libby ends up in prison for having a bad memory. Criticism of Fitzgerald came from several quarters:

On August 28, 2006, Christopher Hitchens asserted that Richard Armitage was the primary source of the Valerie Plame leak and that Fitzgerald knew this at the beginning of his investigation.[132] This was supported a month later by Armitage himself, who stated that Fitzgerald had instructed him not to go public with this information.[133]Investor’s Business Daily questioned Fitzgerald’s truthfulness in an editorial, stating “From top to bottom, this has been one of the most disgraceful abuses of prosecutorial power in this country’s history…The Plame case proves [Fitzgerald] can bend the truth with the proficiency of the slickest of pols.”[134]

In a September 2008 Wall Street Journal editorial, attorney Alan Dershowitz cited the “questionable investigation[s]” of Scooter Libby as evidence of the problems brought to the criminal justice process by “politically appointed and partisan attorney[s] general”.[135] In April 2015, also writing in The Wall Street Journal, Hoover Institution fellow Peter Berkowitz argued that statements by Judith Miller, in her recently published memoir, raised anew contentions that her testimony was inaccurate and that Fitzgerald’s conduct as prosecutor was inappropriate.[136]

Libby did essentially nothing and went to prison. Hillary Clinton mishandled classified information. The Inspector General for the intelligence community sampled 40 Clinton emails and concluded that 10% of them contained classified information. Moreover, it was determined that the emails “were classified when they were sent and are classified now.”

That’s unfortunate for Hillary, who continues to assert something different:

“But the facts are pretty clear,” Clinton said. “I did not send or receive anything that was classified at the time.”

The matter has been referred to the Justice Department where it is likely to die. The FBI has begun an investigation. Apparently the server she used to conceal her communications from everyone is the same one she used for her 2008 campaign.

It has been established that Clinton DID send classified information over her private email system. Her argument that it wasn’t classified at the time of transmission is both stupid and laughable. It was her obligation to properly handle classified information. It was her obligation to check it ahead of time. Clinton’s argument is that she is an idiot and it hard to argue against it.

At Breitbart John Sexton conducted an interview with Peter Van Buren, a former State Department diplomat. He had this to say about the handling of potentially classified information:

It’s very hard for me to understand why she’s saying that except that she may not have much else to say in her defense and she doesn’t want to admit it. The most important thing to understand about classification is that the information itself is inherently classified or it’s not. Labels are applied as a matter of convenience, if you will, and a matter of standardization so that I know we’ve all agreed this is confidential, not secret, and therefore it’s handled under the procedures for confidential. But at the end of the day, it’s the information itself that is inherently classified or not.

Information gets classified one of two ways. One is what’s called derivative classification. If you and I are working at the State Department and I give you a secret document and you write a longer piece based on that secret document. Your piece must be classified at least secret, derived from the source document. So anything they got from the intelligence agencies or the military that originally had a classification on it is itself classified. Whether they excerpt a sentence or they try to talk about it obliquely, it has derivative classification.

The other way that something gets classified is by its originator. So you go out and you meet an Iranian diplomat who tells you all sorts of juicy stuff and you come back and you write a report about that. You’re the first person to touch that and you assign a classification to that. You are given training as part of this to understand that information is supposed to be classified. So if Huma and Hillary are bouncing emails back and forth talking about how best to approach the Chinese next week, they are expected to exercise a level of judgment to know that that information is extremely sensitive and should have been labeled classified because it was in fact something that was classified under the executive order which lays down a set of things that are classified.

The bias here could not be worse than it is. Obama has put one left wing stooge into the AG chair after another. What Clinton has done screams for accountability yet it is very unlikely that will come to pass. At worst, Clinton ought to face trial, be convicted and imprisoned. At best, she has proven to be unfit for the handling of sensitive materials.

It is not debatable that Clinton intentionally secreted her emails. It is highly likely that that she was involved in affairs that would bring her world crashing down on her head were all the emails to be recovered. It is my opinion that she enjoyed the financial reward of trading her position for cash donations to her foundation and to her husband’s speaking career. Let us not forget that in so doing, she was also enjoying the cash herself as what Bill collects is also hers. I believe that’s what she’s really hiding.

Finally, when is someone going to call her out? She reamed out Dick Cheney for having a secret email account. Why are we not entitled to ream her out now for exactly the same reasons?

Is there no one in the press to ask about her duplicity and disingenuousness?

JUSTICE FOR SCOOTER!

Bonus via The Weekly Standard : a new video of Clinton affecting her “Suthin” accent for the rubes complete with intensity scoring.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxgL-v1MtIQ#t=60[/youtube]

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Is there no one in the press to ask about her duplicity and disingenuousness?

When she gets to the point where her self-inflicted wounds are too severe and mortal, the media will turn on her like a pack of jackals. They don’t like her anyway and doing so will make them appear to be actual journalists. If the left is drafting Biden to run, that moment may not be too far off.

Dr J that ABC article that you cited said that the 2 Inspector General’s had sent a “non criminal referral” to the DOJ. Why did you decide to leave out that word “non-criminal” in this post?
Was it an oversight?
And of course on the link you provided to your July 23rd post you specifically say that the referral was CRIMINAL?
So I am a bit confused here Dr J first July 23rd it WAS criminal but now it ISN’T?

Libby was thrown under the bus by Cheney who along with Bush should both be in jail. It’s so comical to watch loons on the right scramble to discredit Hillary. You won’t. She will be our next President. You have losers running in the GOP.

@Reem:

Tell us, Reem. What did Hillary accomplish as senator or Sec State that qualifies her to be president?

Sandy Berger was a thief, albeit a sloppy one, according to testimony. Although, it is important to remember: we have a different system of laws for Democrats, and that is the way it is supposed to be in a Third World Dictatorship.

Hillary better win or lose to a RINO; otherwise, she will be wearing an Ex Large orange pant suit every day.

Scooter Libby went to prison because he was convicted by a jury of one count of perjury, two counts of obstruction of justice, and one count of knowingly making false statements to federal investigators.

None of the accusations against Hillary Clinton have been proven. In fact, there hasn’t even been a clear statement from her accusers concerning the specific law or laws she has supposedly broken. Clearly stating that would allow for a decisive rebuttal. It’s all a load of manure being rolled out as part of an attempted character assassination, deemed necessary because the GOP has no potential presidential candidate that could win next year’s election on merit alone.

@Greg:
They could have gone after NBC’s Tim Russert for the same thing Libby was convicted of, but they chose not to. He also was guilty of a faulty memory in testimony in this case. It was politics that drove it, nothing more.

@Greg: Nixon never attempted to impede the Watergate investigations. In fact, there WAS no Watergate break-in; that was just invented by the Democrats. Reagan never armed the Contras. Never happened.

Gee, Greg, I see why you like to pretend that just denying something bad that your has done makes it so. What a relief.

Meanwhile, back in reality-land, those charges and the laws and regulations she has broken have been clearly described. OK, you can go back into your bubble of denial.

@DrJohn, #8:

He had committed no crime, he wasn’t the leaker and he went to prison. Typical liberal justice.

The 4 charges he was convicted of are crimes, in and of themselves.

If it wasn’t Libby who outed Valerie Plame, then someone else in the former Bush administration knows a lot more than they’ve ever acknowledged. Such a person would have knowingly let Libby take the fall.

But when it comes to Hillary’s criminal acts, liberal logic says if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and sounds like a duck, it’s a giraffe.

Hillary Clinton has committed no criminal acts. Her accusers aren’t even bothering to state the specific law or laws that she has supposedly broken. Liberal logic requires that a law be identified before someone is pronounced guilty of breaking it.

I don’t see much evidence that her accusers can distinguish a duck from a kangaroo.

@Bill, #10:

Meanwhile, back in reality-land, those charges and the laws and regulations she has broken have been clearly described.

No, they have not been clearly described, nor has any clear evidence been presented.

This is the same sort of fabricated scandal that Benghazi turned out to be in the end. People seem to think they’ve seen something incriminating, but no one can clearly state what it was. The official conclusions of the investigative committees themselves are largely ignored.

@Greg: Just because you don’t (or won’t) grasp it doesn’t mean they have not been explained. Further, there is no evidence provided by Hillary; she destroyed it (knowing full well the suspicions that would raise)… remember? However, it has already been clearly shown that she had classified data on her private server (10% of the emails so far) and also transmitted that data. So, it is clear what the situation is; all that is currently lacking is an administration that wants to be “transparent” and resolve it.

Benghazi “fabricated”? In case you missed it, that’s what this centers on; destroying the information of what she knew and when. And, again, what has been deleted is suspicious enough, but many of her lies (securing the consulate, sending Stevens there, ignoring calls for security and, of course, the stupid video) are already enough to prove she is incompetent to lead, not to mention corrupt.

Some correspondence on her private server has become classified as a result of reviews conducted owing to efforts to make it all public. That level of “transparency” regarding internal State Department communications that were expected to remain private shouldn’t be expected.

It isn’t Clinton who presently threatens to compromise that privacy. It’s the politically motivated scandal mongers.

@Greg:

Some correspondence on her private server has become classified as a result of reviews conducted owing to efforts to make it all public.

You are not keeping up very well. The IG has confirmed that the classified data found so far was classified when it was put on the server.

Steeeeeeeeerike THREE!!!

You people really seem intent on smoothing the path that leads to a President Joe Biden.

@Greg:
No Greg that would be O’bama as he is the one controlling who gets investigated and who doesn’t
Good ol Hillary supported Iran deal publicly along with every other bs admin doctrine and O’bama repays her by sabotaging her campaign so he can get mini me the nomination as he thinks ha can control slow Joe

@Greg:

You people really seem intent on smoothing the path that leads to a President Joe Biden.

Oh, you apparently never noticed what an idiot he is. No, actually, Hillary is exactly the candidate I want the Republicans to face because she is, as anyone that is willing to open their eyes and face facts, so terribly, terribly fragile. Even in 2008 I wanted it to be Hillary the Republicans had to oppose because even before she spread classified information around like the donations her manipulators spread around the Clinton Foundation and stood idly by while an ambassador got killed, she had scandalous liabilities along with NO accomplishments.

Your Democrat field is in serious trouble. Hillary is so crippled by scandal and corruption she fears assault by question and the rest, but for Webb who is a fish out of far left liberal water, are noting but a bunch of clueless hippies. All this (but for Webb) may appeal to the majority of the liberal victim-mentality, “what has America done for me lately”, success-haters, but they can’t appeal to those who are hungry for the opportunity to grow their own lives and opportunities.

I thought Libby didn’t go to prison because President Bush commuted that part of his sentence.

I think it’s the GOP that’s got a huge problem. Clinton or Biden? Not so much.

The GOP’s resume won’t be helpful. The last time they were in power they launched a multi-trillion dollar war with no clue regarding the long-term consequences and turned the U.S. economy into a multi-car pile-up. As the nation struggled to recover it’s equilibrium and confidence they became the cheerleader squad for impending doom, obstructing the new president’s efforts at every turn and assuring the nation that total ruin was just around the corner. As we waited for this disaster to materialize, corporate America busily totaled up record profits quarter after quarter. Republicans condemned national stimulus measures on the one hand, while taking personal credit for any local gains that resulted on the other.

Once they regained control of the House, they repeatedly brought the government to the point of a shutdown, blaming the dysfunction on the president. They turned their attention to a series of scandal-mongering investigations and the production of politically motivated bills that pandered to their base but were in reality nothing more than stage props. Seven months after adding the Senate to their area of control, they still haven’t produced a single useful piece of legislation addressing a single serious problem. They’re at war with the president, at war with the democrats, and an inch away from going to war with themselves. The only thing that prevents that is the avoidance of any and all meaningful legislative action. After a year, they still won’t authorize U.S. military action against ISIL. They won’t even allow the topic to be discussed on the floor of Congress. If pressed for an explanation, it’s somehow all Obama’s fault. Apparently doing their job would become some sort of victory for him. Meantime, damn it, that fool in the White House is doing nothing to address the danger of ISIL—thousands of airstrikes over the past year notwithstanding. And never mind the long list of top-level terrorist extremist that have been methodically eliminated. That was done by the military. The Commander in Chief of all U.S. military forces had nothing to do with it.

They reflexively attack anything and everything the president does with no regard for its merit. By definition, anything Obama promotes is wrong and must be stopped. They’ve exceeded their authority in this quest, attempting to interfere directly with the Executive Branch’s proper conduct of foreign policy and attempting to undercut the proper administration of domestic policy.

For the most part, their current presidential aspirants are nothing more than a reflection of their dysfunction. They’re all seeking some imaginary middle ground within the Republican Party itself, hoping to then find some middle ground between that and a majority of all American voters. If the first existed, we wouldn’t be witnessing republican House and Senate majorities incapable of putting forward a single meaningful bill; the second is about as likely as a horse covered with pink feathers.

So, these clowns the people that should be given charge of the Executive Branch as well as Congress? Tell me the reasons.

Good lord so many talking points it makes your head spin
Yep economy was bush’s fault not the democrats forcing banks to make loans to people who couldn’t afford them along with no or little down payments which gave them no equity and put their loans underwater when things went south
Wasn’t the democratically passed ethanol mandate which drove up the price of wheat because we were subsidizing corn for ethanol which skyrocketed food costs just before the 2008 financial crisis
Wasn’t democrat passed dodd frank bill which is destroying small medium banks because they now can’t compete with the Obama supporting mega banks and which destroyed lending for low income people forcing them to take payday loans at 300-400% interest rates
Wasn’t democrats who couldn’t support war enough being the little two faced buttheads they are pissing away all our gains to kiss not arab but radical islam terrorist ass and give our enemy a nuke
Wasn’t Obama ruling by executive decree hampering our recovery and putting forth decisions that are undecidedly unpopular with American public
Spout your drivel we all know its BS and so does america
Why do you think you lost house and senate and republican debate broke viewership records
Must be because you’re so popular ha ha ha!

Can you name one useful thing Congress has done since republicans have had control of both the House and the Senate?

What would be happening if we had to rely on these bozos to deal with ISIL? They won’t even allow an open discussion of Obama’s request to use military force against ISIL on the floor of Congress out of fear that somebody might say the wrong thing.

@Matt:

Good lord so many talking points it makes your head spin

Your head will always spin when talking to the brain dead. That’s why it is best to avoid them.

___123___Scooter Libby went to prison for less than what Hillary did | Flopping Aces___123___

@Greg: And, Scooter Libby never served a day, as Boy George commuted his prison sentence. Tell the truth for once!